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.