BlackwingsWhile waiting for Age of Conan to arrive, I thought I’d delve more into my thoughts about what I thought Star Wars Galaxies should have done. At this point, I’d be happy if it were any space MMO that could pull off some of the stuff I’m mentioning, but Star Wars would of course take it to a whole other level. The MMO community is starving for a really good space MMO that’s incredibly immersive. It’s only a matter of time, but until then let’s imagine what we’d like in it.
Seamless means seamless, the only load screen you should see is when you first start the game, period. The original Star Wars Galaxies did a good job on the surface of planets, for the most part. They could have worked up something for no load on instances, I’m sure that wouldn’t be easy but I have no doubt it could be done with some creative thought. They could begin a sort of pre-load as you got close to the instance for individuals or groups. The biggest problem however was not on planet, it was in travel.
If you wanted to go to another planet originally, you had to take a shuttle as Jump to Lightspeed wasn’t released yet. You didn’t board the shuttle at all, you just told the ticket collector you were ready and off went the load screen and you appeared at your destination a few seconds later. Convenient yes, immersive no. If I were designing this it would have taken longer to come out because I’m a perfectionist on these things, but when you wanted to travel to another planet you would have borded the shuttle and been able to look out of the window as you took off from the spaceport and cruised across the terrain either on your way to another city on the planet or lifting up into space and jumping to hyperspace to get to your destination.
With Jump to Lightspeed and shuttles, jumping into hyperspace would not have induced a load screen at all, you would be able to maneuver about your ship or shuttle if it were large enough for the minute or so flight and if aboard a shuttle would have had the same experience on landing as you had on takeoff - cruising into the atmosphere coming down to skirt the terrain until you got to your destination and landed to disembark. Seamless.
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