Lifeless world ?

[Elexia]

What's the point complaining about "Alpha" game....?

That's exactly the point. You're supposed to complain and show concerns. That's what Alpha and Betas used to be about until the western developers turned them into early demos.

[Belgarion]

i like yer wishfull thinking

[Soukyuu]

I'm testing GW2 atm (free trial) and I have to say the towns are pretty lively there. Having something like this in ARR would be nice, even if it's just set patterns, it's still better than having mutes. NPC talking can also be used to tell more about the different races, kinda like the charr teaching history about their war with humans to their cubs.

Also, humor! Some dialogues in recent western games made me laugh multiple times, without feeling forced to do so.

One thing they should be careful about is not making the NPC trigger their speech when a player comes into vicinity, and most important, not show it on everyone's screen when someone triggers it. Imagine 800 players triggering the speech over and over again @.@;; (GW2 players will know)

@Garion: Aunt Pol was looking for you.

[Skies]

I'm testing GW2 atm (free trial) and I have to say the towns are pretty lively there. Having something like this in ARR would be nice, even if it's just set patterns, it's still better than having mutes. NPC talking can also be used to tell more about the different races, kinda like the charr teaching history about their war with humans to their cubs.

I don't know, the towns DON'T seem lively at all for me, though that might be more related to the fact that the design of the Black Citadel is awful in making it seem like it is a city and less a wide open field with people here and there, maybe. Gridania seemed more lively than this.

[Soukyuu]

I don't know, the towns DON'T seem lively at all for me, though that might be more related to the fact that the design of the Black Citadel is awful in making it seem like it is a city and less a wide open field with people here and there, maybe. Gridania seemed more lively than this.

Divinity's Reach or Lion's Arc is what I was talking about. Most of the atmosphere comes from the sound, followed by NPCs running around (kids chasing each other) or chatting. Those kind of things.

The Black Citadel is... full of sweaty packmates, "BOOM", "KLANG" and "Help, my tail is on fire!" :P

[Tsubarta]

If there's one thing FFXI did well, it was making a "world" instead of just a "game". Currently ARR is just a game, like WoW is. It's a side effect of being a theme park MMO, and I hope they balance it out with a lot of open world content hidden away in the deep and dark places of the world.

[HiirNoivl]

I don't know, the towns DON'T seem lively at all for me, though that might be more related to the fact that the design of the Black Citadel is awful in making it seem like it is a city and less a wide open field with people here and there, maybe. Gridania seemed more lively than this.

Maybe you should turn your volume on Skies.

FFXIV has the whole company behind it. And it's a company that has way more experience with making MMOs than ArenaNet could ever hope for. It shouldn't be a big deal to add a lot more NPCs and to make them move around. It's not too much to ask and it makes a big difference.

This should be in at launch. Lots of people want it, and it will make the game way better than it's empty prequel.

[HiirNoivl]

Yeah but Uni, we're talking 800 people should be able to be in the same place and viewable. Servers are not the same as 1.0. 1.0 server structure was so broken you couldn't even display more than 20 people at a time. You had to split the city across servers it was so horrible.

I don't think it's going to be nearly as big of an issue as people are making it. If the server structure is not capable of playing a couple dozen NPC behavior on a loop, I'm not optimistic about the games future.

[Freyane]

I think this is a good illustration of 1.0 problem. Take a look at the Introduction of Uld'ah. And then at the town itself during real game.

During the intro, you have people browsing market, girl buying flowers, children running around, mother buying vegetables. You have "car" carrying travelers, gates are opening, lalafell laughing all together, etc. Mercants carrying their stuffs...
And when it switch to real, game, everything disappear.

[Vydos]

I think this is a good illustration of 1.0 problem. Take a look at the Introduction of Uld'ah. And then at the town itself during real game.

During the intro, you have people browsing market, girl buying flowers, children running around, mother buying vegetables. You have "car" carrying travelers, gates are opening, lalafell laughing all together, etc. Mercants carrying their stuffs...
And when it switch to real, game, everything disappear.

Not exactly the best example to take to be honest. Considering Ul'dah had a festival going on during the cutscene. Not to mention a large accident. Basically, it would have been weird if the festival was still on-going for ages.

That said, it certainly would have been nice to see people buy stuff from the merchants or the likes.