Most of your last post boiled down to "well that's your opinion" which isn't something to argue with. Are you simply incapable of exiting a debate graciously, Korrigan? Are you so tweaked from all the conversations we've had over the years that even when I freely let you have the last word for most of a post, you take offense? Would you prefer I argue every point for all eternity? You KNOW I can.



I'm not really sure which doomsday theories you mean. Could you explain further?

 

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I think their use of the phasing tech to tell a specific narrative to many different players at their own pace is a major leap forward for MMOs.

 

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Agreed.

 

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I think it is a huge step back for mmos, at least as implemented. What part of phasing relates to the first m? It barely registers on the second.

Tell me this - if instead of phasing, you played the entire leveling up from 80-85 OFFLINE, only going online when you are in a city for the auction houses (or chatter)... how much different would the game be?

Be honest.

I am not an enemy of phasing. Unlike instancing, phasing is actually something that can be put to good use to ENHANCE the "massively multiplayer" part, because phasing demonstrates it is possible to dynamically change the mmorpg landscape from actions of the players. The railroad style, stilted method Blizzard chose is a clumsy and misguided first effort of using it, but some dev, whether it be Blizzard or someone else, will realize it can be used to ACTUALLY change the game according to player actions (not the illusion that they are, like now).

 

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It would be different in that you wouldn't see the other players who are also in your current phase, nor would you be able to interact or party with them. What would you change specifically? I get the gist of your statement, but I can't think of away they could change it, in the manner I think you're suggesting, and still preserve the content for new players. They want to get some life out of the content, after all.

 

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I'm not going to go into what could be changed for WoW specifically because everything depends on everything else and if you change one thing other things need to also be changed to reflect it.

But imagine this: a pvp mmorpg, with much much smaller "zones" as a honeycomb across the landscape. When one side does something, ie kills a boss NPC while the two sides are battling it out, that zone dynamically flips to a different style landscape, different NPCs, different buildings (perhaps taking time to appear) etc etc, to reflect that the new side controls it. And all completely reversible if the other side wins there in the future. Heck, you can have any number of sides doing this, as long as it has a set architecture etc. This is a possibility that phasing brings. I'm just boiling this down a long way so don't get hung up on particulars, but I think you can see the potential there if someone wants to use it.

 

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Ah, I see. But that's really not Blizzard's goal with their implementation (telling a narrative at an individual's pace), but comparative nonetheless.

Your idea could also be used in a PvE setting, too. Blizzard sort-of did that with whatever that island that preceded The Burning Crusade was called (a community effort to gather resources caused major changes within the zone). This wasn't dynamic, though (no reverting). It could also be done by introducing a third NPC faction, kind of like in Aion, in which the players have to fight off some arbitrary resource conditions and random attacks.

 

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