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Old 10-13-05, 09:13 AM   #50
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Join Date: Jul 2002
Location: Brit in USA
Posts: 1,203
Default Re: Everquest 2 high end system verses WoW high end system..

Originally Posted by |MaguS|
MMORPGs are bottlenecked by CPU because they have so much more background opperations. They have to calculate all the math during combat, plus locations of objects and characters constantly. Its not like Doom 3 that only needs to calculate 4 things on screen at once, it needs to do 50 or more random objects (wether it be a player running by or another NPC near by) at any given time.

Umm no, in a MMORPG your CPU is not doing the math during combat. Its would be too open to hacking. All your PC does is tell the server "okay, I am attacking this person now". And server goes through all the process of determining when each sword swipe or arrow twang is done, what damage is rolled, how much damage is reduced to armor resistance etc. Your PC basically just sits back and reports the numbers as it gets them from the server. Seeing you char actually swing his sword or shoot an arrow is just mindless graphical effect added on top.

Also, I don't know what EQ2 is like, but with WoW most of the world is static, its all just part of the map. Only a few things like NPCs and player chars actually move, and there is no collision detection on them. E.g. you can't drop a box infront of an NPC and watch him kick it or walk around it. Infact in WoW you can stand infront of an NPC or player and he will just walk straight through you.

There is a network bottleneck when you are in a city with hundreds of players and NPCs around you. The server has to update you with their location several times a second. This is probably why most NPCs in cities don't move. Still, network lag should not affect your framerate. They should be in different threads and independant processes. E.g. in a high load situation you should expect to see characters move in a jerky manner, but you can still rotate your FoV and look around the world with a good framerate.

Core2 Q9400 @ 3.0, eVGA GTX 260, 4G DDR 800, Vista64
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