Guild Wars 2

ANet seems to believe that temporary content does that.
- For any of you who have checked out Archeage you will know that the world is player controlled. Justice system, jury, guards and all that is player controlled and not NPC controlled. Each server could potentially look very different from all others, depending on if the system is corrupt or not, whether an evil empire has been established and outlaws and rebels are working together to overthrow that.

To me, what would make this world seem a little more living is not temporary content.
- Colin said in a video some time back “… the Super Adventure Box was a huge success and something we can bring back anytime we like…” and I immediately thought “Shouldn’t players be able to access this content whenever THEY want?”
- Coming into the world I have noticed that ships don’t sail, the same events are spawning all over and everything that potentially could’ve looked a lot different is not.

- I would like to see the war with the centaurs come to an end, because we are fighting those in Queensdale, Kessex Hills and Harathi Hinterlands. A lot of the same encounters are all over the place, so it doesn’t feel dynamic, it feels stale.
- The Inquest suddenly taking over Rata Sum in a Living World event leading to us, the players, having to fight them off. The world could then act on that so that the Inquest might not be so apparent in the world, making room for some new Dynamic Events after the Living World event or something like that.

- The main enemies that each race struggle with is a major issue but a part of the world that doesn’t move anywhere.

(And make the ships sail… there are ships, in a living breathing world they would sail, c’mon)

Sinifair,
I can’t find much wrong with your interpretation of a living world, and it’s in fact a poor choice of description on ArenaNets behalf to use it…

Ships should sail, their should be dynamic weather, proper seasons, animal migrations (obviously where possible, I do understand this is just a game)
why not have shops and merchants shut or go home for the evening? guards on active patrols, random dynamic events, freak weather events, ships sinking while coming into port..

These are just a few suggestions, perhaps people have more…perhaps people like the game the way it is…but if your going to describe your game as a ‘living world’ perhaps you should start by breathing some live into it first…or change the wording.

Anet´s “Living World” is a poor marketing obfuscation for constant Asia-like grindy “new” theme-park content.

The only successful living world I know of is EVE Online.
Mind you for their western market, not so much the Chinese offshoot. There´s a reason for that.

Mentality.

IMHO Anet is making the great error of transplanting gameplay primarily successful in the Asian market to the Western audience.
Pretty sure this will eventually fail, spectacularly so when a true alternative comes along.

On paper Everquest Next seems to me 10x as alive as what Anet could manage with double the teams they have now.

Sad part is that their WvW could´ve been that “promised” living world.
But it too is slowly failing with a silent fart, no matter how many “horizontal-vertical” progressions they are making people grind for, in a couple of tiny frozen maps with endless back and forth Zergs.

Primedoughnut.2305:

Sinifair,
I can’t find much wrong with your interpretation of a living world, and it’s in fact a poor choice of description on ArenaNets behalf to use it…

Ships should sail, their should be dynamic weather, proper seasons, animal migrations (obviously where possible, I do understand this is just a game)
why not have shops and merchants shut or go home for the evening? guards on active patrols, random dynamic events, freak weather events, ships sinking while coming into port..

These are just a few suggestions, perhaps people have more…perhaps people like the game the way it is…but if your going to describe your game as a ‘living world’ perhaps you should start by breathing some live into it first…or change the wording.

Fair enough.
- I think a Living World needs motion, thus I want ships to sail, and I think the intention of waypoints was counterproductive, because it is the reason players are not in the world, traversing Tyria and finding DE’s and have fun with other players.

- I think that adding more Dynamic Events to an area would be one way of giving it some variety.
- Take Nebo Terrace as an example. I had just saved the village from centaurs. Barely had I sold the junk loot and set foot outside the village before it was under attack again… actually, I didn’t make it out of the village before it spawned again. So to add variety, more DE’s are needed.

- The best way to use Living Story, in my opinion, is as it was done with the Lost Shores. Some major events that will sometimes happen instead of minor ones that is quantity over quality.
- As I describe in the OP, if the Inquest suddenly made a move to take over Rata Sum or the centaurs in Kryta started moving forward, or bandits suddenly had organized in Divinity’s Reach and made their move and there’d be fighting in the streets of DR.
- The “nemesis” or the villains that are apparent in the starting zones (centaurs, Inquest, Nightmare Court, Ghosts and Flame Legion, Sons of Svanir) make for some nice Living World stories. And while we’re at it, maybe we defeat them and new threats will come instead.
- Or how about the Shadow Behemoth making an invasion. Demons spawning all around Kryta (Queensdale, Kessex Hills, Gendarran Fields and Harathi Hinterlands) and let nature take its course? Just something to break the old way of “Boss spawning, zerk incoming” way of things.

- Let me make it clear, though, that I don’t mind updates every two weeks with fixes and new features and stuff. The story is just not compelling.
I liked the Razing, it was the most fun I’d had with the Living Story wish it would’ve went on for more than just one chapter in Retribution, maybe if it had been taken to the point where we would be fighting in the Black Citadel.
- There is so much potential with the Living Story. I hope it doesn’t end with the model it has going on right now.

TL;DR
(Make ships sail)
- Make more Dynamic Events for PvE to make the world (and I mean the WORLD) seem more alive and dynamic. It adds variety.
- Living World as in the Lost Shores is a nice climactic variation to other content in the world. The Razing was also a nice way of telling the story (read above for ideas on the Living Story)
- Two weeks updates are OK, but the stories seem hurried and not very thorough. I don’t mind getting new features and such, but I dislike how the story seems like quantity over quality.

A living world to me is something that is breathing, changing, and rearranging according to the involvement made by itself, the players, the devs, and the npcs across the world. At the moment factions just do loop quests were if they fail or succeed their is no real consequence because it will just repeat again in a few minutes. It makes the dynamic events feel meaningless and shows that the world isn’t changing because of our involvement it’s just made to look that way. Centaurs aren’t some force that travels around taking land and planting bases in ideal locations they are just there repeating the same dynamic events over and over showing no signs of intelligence or planning. They don’t have an agenda unless Anet make it that way and even then it shows that once again if Anet don’t get involved their world is set up to stand in the same place. We can’t even move forward simple stuff like construction in Cities the players can’t go collect materials and help push forward the construction of the statue in LA or the countless repairs that need to be maid in DR and the BC.

Not to bring in another game and cause a thread derailing but the Ideas brought forward by the Everquest Next team recently are what i would believe to be a living world. Players being sent by a friendly faction to build up a town over the course of a few months building at the pace that players around the new town help it be built up. Enemies don’t respawn in the same spot 30 seconds later either they have an agenda and if fought off enough will retreat and move their base of operations to a new area that interests them(depending on the enemy factions characteristics like if it were krait they would move to a new underwater location)or those enemies you tried to push out could get kitten ed and fight back with even more strength causing that city you helped to build to be attacked. These events can happen without player or dev involvement to making it a living breathing world that does what it wants and can change due to the interaction that everyone in the world is giving it. Of course this game isn’t made yet but i just wanted to talk about the Ideas that the EN team talked about and brought forward and explain that to me those ideas make a world feel more alive whether or not they actually execute it properly.

I love gw2 it’s an awesome game and has given me many hours of fun but the way they set up their world makes it really hard to even notice it to be living. If anet were to add a ton of dynamic events i doubt players would even notice. They would just assume this is another dynamic event and move on without questioning how this new event came to be or even knowing it was new. It’s because it didn’t happen due to past player involvement in the zone(causing big changes in the faction their and how they operate) it happens because anet added it and now it will loop till Anet decided to remove or add to it.

TLDR

The world of Tyria doesn’t change it just stays the same and due to this even dynamic events lose their feeling of impact. thus making it so anything added doesn’t feel like it’s impacting the world making it really hard for players to notice new dynamic events across the world or when they do feel lik their actually changing something. We don’t help the world progress and the world doesn’t progress without us or the devs getting involved it’s forever stuck in the current state until Anet decided to jump in and change it. This is not, at least to me, in anyway living.

Emmet.2943:

(…)
TLDR

The world of Tyria doesn’t change it just stays the same and due to this even dynamic events lose their feeling of impact. thus making it so anything added doesn’t feel like it’s impacting the world making it really hard for players to notice new dynamic events across the world or when they do feel lik their actually changing something. We don’t help the world progress and the world doesn’t progress without us or the devs getting involved it’s forever stuck in the current state until Anet decided to jump in and change it. This is not, at least to me, in anyway living.

To sum it up isnt “Livin story” yet or if ever will be, just storyline updates i wish gw2 LS were more like Fighting Fantasy books from Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone.

Yes Emmet, you accurately described what happens in a Sandbox game like EvE Online or the as of yet theoretical(thus let´s better be cautious) EQNext.

And consequently what is a truly living world compared to a Theme-Park that just gets constantly patched.
At tremendous cost I must add.
Those teams don´t work for nothing and time will tell if this is actually sustainable.

Again I must mention WvWvW.
It should´ve been the actual Living World in GW2 with as much “Sandbox” as this aging engine can possibly handle.
So that a manageable team only has to provide the RULES to play by and maybe tweak the “Playground” from time to time.

Even Blizzard with their deep coffers cannot dare hope to create PvE content that can measure up to the emergent game-play hundred-thousands of players would freely provide.
They know this all to well and have solved this scary fact by gating their finite content through a cascade of mandatory repeatable hoops players have to jump though.

ANet thinks they can do this by giving us new temporary rides every 2 weeks.

Aeolus.3615:

To sum it up isnt “Livin story” yet or if ever will be, just storyline updates i wish gw2 LS were more like Fighting Fantasy books from Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone.

LOL

Love it!
Those were in fact superior as they gave you choices that actually changed the end of the books!
Which of course isn´t feasible in a Theme-Park MMO as it shatters the player base.

The Living story, as I see it, is use to make the “time” of the game move forward.

Because when the game launched, everything was stuck at Time “X”, when the living story hits a zone, that time moves forward… but not for everyone. So new NPCs are living on the new timeline “Y”, but older NPCs are still on timeline “X”.

So tyria as a world, has multiple timelines co-existing together in the same world.

Mind Blown

HawkMeister.4758:

Aeolus.3615:

To sum it up isnt “Livin story” yet or if ever will be, just storyline updates i wish gw2 LS were more like Fighting Fantasy books from Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone.

LOL

Love it!
Those were in fact superior as they gave you choices that actually changed the end of the books!
Which of course isn´t feasible in a Theme-Park MMO as it shatters the player base.

Here is my opninion about that thme-park u say.

Actually the only thing that limits that model is the “mechanics limit” of the game engine, having X districs and player limit due small maps and system load ( YES gw2 is small), is in my opinion a true KILLER for any MMO evolution, it has fitted nice in gw1, but now it does not even make sense, as it puts the game on a stale world that cant be living due conflits of happening/event ends and player decisions in the several districs of the same area/map.

If gw2 could improve to a seamless world would be more easy to get teh LS working properly, even new events and sub-events could introduced into a LS model, but nothing comes free, work on one more ending would be necessary but that would give players more time between the rain of achievements that gw2 turned to be and almost nothing else, if i want achievements i would play offline cloud Steam games or some FPS lan party tounaments with real prizes.

But each one to their own…

You were talking about WvW sandbox, a true sandbox IS always welcome, theme-park games can have a pre model of a sandbox system (openbox), by having pre builted options to choose when resources were met(YES resource system as RPG/Strategy ones, and then built, wich is not possible to again more “non permanent content” that WvW is due servers resets to fight for a ladder were skill is not the first, but numbers and coverage, (i would remove WvW and work on something w/o the server vs server).

The future of MMO’s success will be due player group immersion in server/game advacements carrying the players to take care and shape the WORLD.

We’ve just had an event in which players directly decided what content would be. That’s pretty good for a themepark game.

The Living World is something the devs are still developing, give them time.

Also, does nobody read dev posts any more? They’ve stated numerous times that the temp content we’ve been seeing is a phase they’re having to go through to get used to the tools they’re using for updating content. They’ve also stated several times that, going forward, the Living World content will feature more permanent changes, and some permanent content left over even from temporary events.

It’s a little known fact that Everquest was called “Everquest” because it was initially designed to be something like what Anet are trying to do now. It’s been a kind of holy grail for developers for a long time to have a themepark game where the world changes and develops around the players.

I mean, sandboxes, yeah, they have some plus points, but let’s face it, the quality of the “stories” made by the players in EVE Online isn’t terribly entertaining to anyone but the participants themselves, and the big news that bleeds through to the media are usually about “wow, look, scamming in a game lol”. Stories written by people who are good at writing stories are generally more interesting than random kitten that people do to each other.

For me it has nothing to do with frequent content updates or new explorable areas or progressing storylines or an evolving environment. For me, what makes an MMO world feel alive is ambiance. It’s the idle chit-chat between two market goers in Divinity’s Reach; it’s the crows cawing in Lornar’s Pass; it’s the fireflies floating lazily about during the night. It’s the little touches – the attention to fine detail – that brings an MMO world to life.

gurugeorge.9857:

I mean, sandboxes, yeah, they have some plus points, but let’s face it, the quality of the “stories” made by the players in EVE Online isn’t terribly entertaining to anyone but the participants themselves, and the big news that bleeds through to the media are usually about “wow, look, scamming in a game lol”. Stories written by people who are good at writing stories are generally more interesting than random kitten that people do to each other.

You´re applying two different meanings to the same expression.

Stories in a Theme Park like GW2 are actually that. A tale told by (more of less) professional writers that is awesome when you first play it.
On the 14th time .. not so much.
Or does anybody still listen to the NPCs in the Dungeon they´re currently grinding?
That´s why the expression “Theme Park” was coined.

Sandboxes have grind too. In the case of EVE, friggen humorously massive huge grind.

The major difference is that the grind itself becomes the story, as in YOUR ACTIONS, the very game-play you´re engaged in becomes actually the tale.

Do I want to play it safe and stay in policed space but only do average profit or take a risk and venture out into more profitable low security space? Lawless even? Now I need to scout the systems ahead, a friend would be handy right now. Or a 2nd account( DING +profit for CCP). ETC…
This is called emergent gameplay and not a single Dev had to get payed to sit down and script any of it.

The only thing barely approaching this in GW2 is WvWvW.
But it actually fails due to the incredibly stale permanence in the pitiful number of unconnected maps. Although the numbers seemingly tell a different tale.
But that is simply because the overwhelming majority of players actually have no idea what a true sandbox feels like. They only notice that after the 50th Zerg up and down the same hills “something isn´t fresh” anymore.

ANet could actually save WvW and make it a true LIVING Sandbox. But I´m afraid they neither have the balls nor the vision for it.

HawkMeister.4758:

ANet could actually save WvW and make it a true LIVING Sandbox. But I´m afraid they neither have the balls nor the vision for it.

I don’t disagree with what you’re saying. A WvWvW sandbox within the themepark? Sign me up!

There’s a bit of a problem with comparisons with EVE though. CCP happened to be interested in making a space game, and a space game just happens to be much easier to make into a sandbox than, say, a fantasy game like this. I mean, basically, EVE is one of the most heavily instanced MMOs there is (the “boxes”) and all that vast space is totally illusory – they didn’t have to actually make much in the way of assets to realize the illusion apart from a few rocks and space stations.

With any other type of game, making a sandbox that’s also an AAA class game must surely be exponentially more difficult, requiring tons more resources (there are some perfectly fine sandboxes out there – Mortal Online, Darkfall, but they’re not as massive as EVE because they just aren’t AAA games, the dev teams are tiny. CCP’s dev team was tiny when they started, but (by accident or design) they chose a type of game that was forgiving of small dev teams.

I don’t know what ArcheAge is going to be like, but if it’s a good game, it will be because an absolute kitten-ton of resources has been put into making it.

So yeah, I guess what I’m saying is, making MMOs is really, really, REALLY difficult By all accounts it’s one of the most difficult, monumental programming tasks human beings can yet do – it’s comparable to a big budget movie in the amount of resources and management of those resources it needs, and there are so many, many things that can go wrong.

So, knowing that, I’m usually quite forgiving of even things like MO or Darkfall. And sure, Anet are a far more massive and professional team – but GW2 even as it stands, for all its flaws (and you can’t please all the people all the time … ) is a miraculously good MMO even as a themepark MMO.

Anet are actually on the verge of actually doing what’s been a dream for some designers for a long time – having the tools to be able to change the world on the fly. If you think about what that requires in order for it to be something that’s updated as regularly as this game is and is as relatively bug-free and polished as this game is, you have to stand in awe.

So … patience, young padawans. GW1 took a while to get to where it became the “classic” it is today, even in terms of balancing, etc.

All I know is, I can now no longer play any other MMO, they all just seem so last-gen to me. GW2 isn’t totally innovative, but it’s moving the genre along nicely. The one thing that annoys me about GW2 is it’s so good, but it’s a kitten fantasy MMO. I so wish I was playing a superhero or s-f MMO of this quality! (Looking forward to Wildstar, judging by the hype, if it’s honest, then it might push innovation in some other directions nicely too.)

gurugeorge.9857:

I don’t disagree with what you’re saying. A WvWvW sandbox within the themepark? Sign me up!

There’s a bit of a problem with comparisons with EVE though. CCP happened to be interested in making a space game, and a space game just happens to be much easier to make into a sandbox than, say, a fantasy game like this. I mean, basically, EVE is one of the most heavily instanced MMOs there is (the “boxes”) and all that vast space is totally illusory – they didn’t have to actually make much in the way of assets to realize the illusion apart from a few rocks and space stations.

Not sure why you say heavily instanced as pretty much nothing is really instanced in EVE, it´s the only single shard MMO I know of .
Even the NPC missions that do create what could loosely be called “an instance” can be broken into at any time.
If you mean that each solar system is a singular instance, then this isn´t comparable to standard MMO instances either, as these solar system “maps” are the same for everybody to hang out in.

This trick BTW is the one ANet could´ve used for WvW too.
Instead of giving us 3 tiny separated maps with “static destructibles”(thus negating the very concept), they should´ve made about 30 interconnected maps with destructible player created keeps/towers thus making these “islands in the mists” actually conquerable.
But that would´ve meant a working guild & alliance system and a proper configurable chat, voice-chat even.
Creating 6 Festivals in a year was clearly a bigger priority.

Edgar Doiron.2804:

The Living story, as I see it, is use to make the “time” of the game move forward.

Because when the game launched, everything was stuck at Time “X”, when the living story hits a zone, that time moves forward… but not for everyone. So new NPCs are living on the new timeline “Y”, but older NPCs are still on timeline “X”.

So tyria as a world, has multiple timelines co-existing together in the same world.

Mind Blown

This was actually a good way of putting what exactly the Living World is.
- The problem that lies before ANet that they must deal with in some way is “How do they get the rest of the world up to speed?”

Personally, I would’ve loved it if they’d waited a bit with this Living Story and fixed/improved their mechanics some more. Combat, Dynamic Events, World Bosses, Dungeons and all such needs a lot of tweaking, and the more of it that gets released, the more needs to be tweaked.

- One way of “fixing” the problem would be to have more teams making new dynamic events or radically changing some zones and such. Altering the world and having it move on would be nice. I know it’s probably never going to happen, but following such a model and having Orr becoming the great city it once were would be awesome. The world would actually feel living, and we would be able to see our endeavours come to fruition.
- Right now, GW2 is calling itself something it isn’t yet… but I’m all for ANet’s idea of trying to make a world that actually seems living and breathing, but in order to do so, I think they need to think even bigger than this. A ton of more Dynamic Events and changes to the world and some real incentive to get people out there in the Open World.

HawkMeister.4758:

gurugeorge.9857:

I don’t disagree with what you’re saying. A WvWvW sandbox within the themepark? Sign me up!

There’s a bit of a problem with comparisons with EVE though. CCP happened to be interested in making a space game, and a space game just happens to be much easier to make into a sandbox than, say, a fantasy game like this. I mean, basically, EVE is one of the most heavily instanced MMOs there is (the “boxes”) and all that vast space is totally illusory – they didn’t have to actually make much in the way of assets to realize the illusion apart from a few rocks and space stations.

Not sure why you say heavily instanced as pretty much nothing is really instanced in EVE, it´s the only single shard MMO I know of .
Even the NPC missions that do create what could loosely be called “an instance” can be broken into at any time.

EVE players interact with their spaceships in what are called “boxes”, which are basically ad-hoc instances (instances that others can enter). They are created when someone comes out of warp to a mission spot (an abstraction up till that point) or whatever, and they “disappear” a while after, say, a mission is done. Again, when you scan for a plex, nothing actually exists (in the way that a zone does) until someone first warps in, it’s all just abstract information until that point.

The closest thing to zones (permanent instances) in other MMOs are the areas in the vicinity of space stations, and gates.

Also, there is no actual solar system zone, as in a comparable place where large numbers of players have to play together, as in GW2; the only thing that people are “in” all together in a solar system is the solar system’s chat system (and of course the info accessibility for players).

Really, the “single shard” thing is basically PR. All that’s actually shared between all players in the game is some of the global chat systems (e.g. the Help channel) and info accessibility, the rest is pure illusion. It would be like saying that a global chat system shared between all the servers in GW2 is some special thing that actually puts players together in a shared virtual universe. Well it kind of does, but it’s misleading. You can have tens of thousands of people in a single chat system. Big whoop.

Not to diminish what CCP do, because it’s a fantastic game of its type, and some of those big space battles are something to see – and that time warp thing they introduced recently was a clever bit of technical wizardry.

But the WvWvW zones in GW2 are IMHO a far bigger technical achievement than anything in EVE Online, because so much more has to be kept track of.

(Notice how something so apparently simple as customization for ships in EVE Online has taken a long, long time for CCP to even consider, and in order to prepare for it they had to revamp their system entirely, and it’s still not in the game?)

Just to recall: the only reason I’m saying all this is because I see lots of players sort of wondering why other games can’t be as good as EVE in the sense of presenting a sandbox with humungous game world, empire struggles between players, etc. etc. The reason is because CCP were lucky enough or canny enough to pick a type of game, a space game, where that type of play is relatively easy to realize, because the virtual world being depicted consists mostly of empty space that doesn’t have to be rendered in any way, so long as nobody’s “in” a given portion of it.

gurugeorge.9857:

HawkMeister.4758:

gurugeorge.9857:

I don’t disagree with what you’re saying. A WvWvW sandbox within the themepark? Sign me up!

There’s a bit of a problem with comparisons with EVE though. CCP happened to be interested in making a space game, and a space game just happens to be much easier to make into a sandbox than, say, a fantasy game like this. I mean, basically, EVE is one of the most heavily instanced MMOs there is (the “boxes”) and all that vast space is totally illusory – they didn’t have to actually make much in the way of assets to realize the illusion apart from a few rocks and space stations.

Not sure why you say heavily instanced as pretty much nothing is really instanced in EVE, it´s the only single shard MMO I know of .
Even the NPC missions that do create what could loosely be called “an instance” can be broken into at any time.

EVE players interact with their spaceships in what are called “boxes”, which are basically ad-hoc instances (instances that others can enter). They are created when someone comes out of warp to a mission spot (an abstraction up till that point) or whatever, and they “disappear” a while after, say, a mission is done. Again, when you scan for a plex, nothing actually exists (in the way that a zone does) until someone first warps in, it’s all just abstract information until that point.

The closest thing to zones (permanent instances) in other MMOs are the areas in the vicinity of space stations, and gates.

Also, there is no actual solar system zone, as in a comparable place where large numbers of players have to play together, as in GW2; the only thing that people are “in” all together in a solar system is the solar system’s chat system (and of course the info accessibility for players).

Really, the “single shard” thing is basically PR. All that’s actually shared between all players in the game is some of the global chat systems (e.g. the Help channel) and info accessibility, the rest is pure illusion. It would be like saying that a global chat system shared between all the servers in GW2 is some special thing that actually puts players together in a shared virtual universe. Well it kind of does, but it’s misleading. You can have tens of thousands of people in a single chat system. Big whoop.

Not to diminish what CCP do, because it’s a fantastic game of its type, and some of those big space battles are something to see – and that time warp thing they introduced recently was a clever bit of technical wizardry.

*But the WvWvW zones in GW2 are IMHO a far bigger technical achievement than anything in EVE Online, because so much more has to be kept track of. *

(Notice how something so apparently simple as customization for ships in EVE Online has taken a long, long time for CCP to even consider, and in order to prepare for it they had to revamp their system entirely, and it’s still not in the game?)

Just to recall: the only reason I’m saying all this is because I see lots of players sort of wondering why other games can’t be as good as EVE in the sense of presenting a sandbox with humungous game world, empire struggles between players, etc. etc. The reason is because CCP were lucky enough or canny enough to pick a type of game, a space game, where that type of play is relatively easy to realize, because the virtual world being depicted consists mostly of empty space that doesn’t have to be rendered in any way, so long as nobody’s “in” a given portion of it.

You are vastly underselling CCP’s accomplisments here for the sake of simplicity. I wont go into all of it but the statement about WvW being a bigger technical achievement just needs a reply: Combat in EVE is not just a range check and boom damage. In a fleet fight of say 500 players they are calculating the chances for hits for every gun based on both ships flight behaviour and the flight path of every missile. That by far outclasses the entire WvW map tech. EVE has alot of boring or weak spots but their engineering and mechanical depths is on another level compared to the rest of the genre.

My idea of a living world (just an example I have written out)

In an elaborate exploration of the Citadel of Flame, an adventurer finds a secret passage, locked by heavy chains. He and his compagnions decide to break the chains and delve into the darkness. Upon clearing the passage, they follow it… and it opens up in broad daylight. They have passed the great mountains north of Fireheart Rise.
Further and further north they trek, discovering all manner of creatures they had never seen. A certain day, they find a fresh campfire, the embers still smoking.
Beware of eyes upon their backs, they turn only to see a sky filled with arrows, falling toward them. The adventurer – he who discovered the passage – manages to jump across the campsite, grab a sitting log and protect his body with it. But barely has he lowered it when a pain fills his head and he is a captive of the mysterious people across the mountains. The adventurer wakes, in shackles, with a number of strangers with fiery, gleaming eyes watching him from beneath their cloak hoods. They are long descendants from the Ebon Vanguard, who have survived in these wild lands since the fall of Eye of the North, but they have been transformed, creatures of the shadow, with everlasting flames for eyes. They force the adventurer to show them the passage, choosing, learning of the charr, who now live peacefully in Tyria, seeking to settle their ancient blood feud.
Thus far, the story background. The real living story content would be an invasion. Not just a few mobs spawning, but a full-fledged invasion force. The descendants of the Ebon Vanguard, who didn’t make it to Ebonhawke come through the Citadels of Flame in force and decide to attack the Black Citadel at once. They bring with them catapults and trebuchets, shooting balls of fire, and wave upon wave of spellcasters and warriors. At first, the humans from Kryta try to reconciliate them, but they see any human who sides with the Charr as an enemy and violently assassinate the peacemakers. Every Charr (players) is recalled to the Black Citadel by Asura Gate to defend it. After that, the asura close the gates to the Black Citadel, not wanting them to fall before the onslaught and making other cities vulnerable. The humans of ebonhawke feel the strain of old bonds and new and decide to fight against the charr. Those who don’t give in, are subjugated. Players that have a non-charr character have the choice to join one side or the other.

Mastruq.2463:

You are vastly underselling CCP’s accomplisments here for the sake of simplicity. I wont go into all of it but the statement about WvW being a bigger technical achievement just needs a reply: Combat in EVE is not just a range check and boom damage.

Neither is it in GW2.

In a fleet fight of say 500 players they are calculating the chances for hits for every gun based on both ships flight behaviour and the flight path of every missile. That by far outclasses the entire WvW map tech.

Maps in WvWvW were originally supposed to hold 500, they’ve revised that down since then, but I’m not sure if we know how much. But zergs are huge in GW2, and the experience is much less laggy than big fleet battles in EVE (and I mean lag of course).

But anyway, that’s ALL CCP has to do in a given box – calculate the flight paths of several hundred un-customizable point-objects (not even hitboxes, note) which move based on baked-in fluid dynamics (i.e. they don’t have to deal with constant player steering), plus yes, missiles and drones. And maybe a few rocks.

And when have such big fleet battles ever gone smoothly in EVE? (At least before time dilation, which as I said, I think is a stroke of technical genius.)

(Come to think of it, when has any game ever been able to deliver on smooth gameplay in big battles? )

I’m not saying CCP are crap, obviously they’re brilliant at what they do, and I’m not an expert at all, just an interested amateur; but it’s over-hyped, and when it comes to dreaming about ideal sandboxes, it’s a poor comparison to games that actually have to a) design and implement, b) make work over the interent, and c) test, fully-realized actual environments and customizable characters with complex combat systems.

Incidentally, if you want a real example of technical wizardry with an MMO, consider City of Heroes: “mothership raids” had several hundred absurdly customizable players and mobs, about half of whom at any given time were flyers, and lots of super-leapers, super-speedstsers and teleporters too. And that was real 3-d combat-in-flight, not CCP’s fluid dynamics with occasional input from the player, but actual honest-to-goodness, moment-by-moment player-controlled, fully 3-d in-flight combat.

Ok, I really don´t want to start discussing the technological prowess of all those MMOs , or your erroneous definition of an instance.
It´s totally off topic too btw.

But using sirendor´s above fanfic as an example, this game is miles away from such an dynamic and actually living world.
This would in fact require either a real world simulation with a proper self-determined AI like EQNext seems to head for.
Or a Sandbox.

ANet´s scripted ever repeating puppet show just can´t deliver this and so will always fall short of such a lofty goal.

HawkMeister.4758:

Ok, I really don´t want to start discussing the technological prowess of all those MMOs , or your erroneous definition of an instance.
It´s totally off topic too btw.

I agree, so I won’t respond again. But I’ll just leave this here:-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instance_dungeon

You think that because players can join the instances, and because there aren’t multiple copies, they don’t fit the definition, but they do. EVE “boxes” are instances. Note in particular:-

“Because the player characters in the instance do not need to be updated on all the information going on outside the instance, and vice versa for the characters outside the instance, there is an overall decrease in demands on the network, with the net result being less lag for the players.” [my bold]

The only difference between EVE boxes and instances is that there is only one instance for any given notional area of space, and some boxes (i.e. space-stations, asteroid belts, gates, etc.) are permanent (making them the nearest thing to zones in other MMOs, but of course they are tiny and still have the same informational self-containment). That, I agree, is different from having multiple instances of a dungeon, say. But the technology is basically the same. An instance spawns when it’s needed, has its players passing combat and positional information that’s only relevant to them, and not to other players outside the instance, and it disappears when it’s not needed any more.

i.e., the hype says “40,000 players in the same shard”, and while that’s technically true, what it really means is “40,000 players sharing the same chat system and info database, with 10 players in this instance here, 50 players in this instance here, 100 players in this instance here, 1 player in this instance here, etc, etc., etc.” The “40,000 players in a single universe” is pure hype and illusion, and I stand by my statement that EVE is the most heavily-instanced MMORPG of them all, and therefore a poor comparison for games based on fantasy or s-f or whatever, that actually have to design and render and test large persistent shared spaces.

You must have seen those threads about people wondering why we can’t dispense with gates? Think about it.