They should scrap the PS3 version.

[Abriael]

That's part of it. They were also obviously split to deal with memory limitations.

Also you can't really stream the assets of a MMO or any online game for that matter very well because it's too expensive to keep track of what you would need to server side so that the client is able to stream in the asset before it is displayed. Streaming is only realistic when each display frame is predictable. MMOs are anything but this.

Almost all modern MMORPGs do it without a single problem. Streaming the assets is very possible, and in *very few games* each display frame is predictable.

There's absolutely no way all the assets for a zone can be fully stored in the ram of even most PCs, even more so on the much more limited video ram. Most modern MMOS are designed to be able to run on cards with 512 Mb.

The lesser predictability of a MMORPG (that isn't even so relevant, because the only really unpredictable assets are player character assets, that of course have nothing to do with zones) can be addressed by raising the level of pre-streaming.

Server load is the whole picture.

[Ladon]

Almost all modern MMORPGs do it without a single problem. Streaming the assets is very possible, and in *very few games* each display frame is predictable.

There's absolutely no way all the assets for a zone can be fully stored in the ram of even most PCs, even more so on the much more limited video ram. Most modern MMOS are designed to be able to run on cards with 512 Mb.

The lesser predictability of a MMORPG (that isn't even so relevant, because the only really unpredictable assets are player character assets, that of course have nothing to do with zones) can be addressed by raising the level of pre-streaming.

Server load is the whole picture.

You can't stream common assets, this is why games have minimum memory requirements to begin with. You could stream local assets but you'd still need to keep your common asset memory size constant for performance reasons.

Also I don't really see any evidence the ARR engine is streaming any assets except LOD. That will save on mipmapping memory requirements and nothing much else.

[Kallera]

The PS3 launch provides a new audience with which to sell the game to. It would have been a lot harder to justify making 2.0 if they only had the pc crowd to deal with. (As in, those that have played 1.0 and have made their judgements already.)