View Full Forums : Withered Aegis attacks


B_Delacroix
05-10-2004, 10:44 AM
It wasn't an officially announced event but there were reports of bone dragons attacking the cities of Augendell and Dalimond over the weekend. They were flying and strafing players with fire.

Augendell fell on Twilight server but apparently people were able to hold back the withered aegis from dalimond without too much damage.

Augendell was back in living races control. The aegis just wanted to test out their new found (or newly dug up) toys.

There were also Withered Aegis agents around Kion and Slanis over the weekend.

I had wondered if they were going to do another huge attack, maybe the next event is going to be just that.

Aly
05-10-2004, 11:04 AM
Mein gott. I really, really need to get Horizons soon as I get a new job. Each time you post about some event makes me seethe with jealousy. Glad you're having fun though.

B_Delacroix
05-10-2004, 01:41 PM
Don't get me wrong, there are some issues with stability that I've managed to work around. Horizons is a huge memory hog. It also has its share of gripers. I am, however, enjoying it and thank you.

Oldoak
05-10-2004, 02:07 PM
More or less my feeling too, Baptismo.

I am not blind to the faults of the game, but I enjoy it a lot for what it is. And a big part of that is that it supports a more casual play style than EQ. Very easy for me to just play for a bit and stop, whenever I have time or am in the mood. I still play almost every day (barring real life stuff) but I only play for a couple hours. I realize now that I would only have played EQ that much if there were not such forced interdependence for the raid goals.

I hope to see Horizons flesh out into a very interesting game. A lot of the high end content is still lacking, but my response to that has simply been to be in that much less of a hurry to level up. I take more time to multischool, and do my hybrid of tradeskilling and adventuring. The game has a lot to offer me for the way I play.

The performance issues generally are improving but still could be better. There still really could be a much greater variety of monsters and more monsters overall (and they say they are working on that). And there are some game design elements that are strained a bit, but I think they will fix those.

I don't ever really want a game experience to be like EQ was again. It is easy for me to lose track of time while playing horizons, yes, but it is still very clearly just a game for me, and that is a great improvement.

Aly
05-10-2004, 02:10 PM
I've got a gig of ram. Not too worried about memory issues. ^.^

Oldoak
05-10-2004, 03:07 PM
Hehe unfortunately, so do I ; ).

Do you have an ATI card though? I do, and they just don't play as well in Horizons, at least not yet.

The things that seem to really help at this point is having a 64 bit CPU, or having an nVidea card, or better still, both.

THe game is perfectly playable for me, and improving - don't get me wrong about that. But there are still some lag issues, which I attribute to the ATI card I am using more than anything else.

There is one technical issue some tech minded players identified. The game engine doesn't seem to properly handle occlusion. ie, if you see the top of a building behind a wall, the game will draw the whole thing. And there are some indications I have seen that the game always draws the whole thing of everything on screen. That is generally only a problem in Tazoon, the biggest city in the game (and also the most empty because it is laggy and because it has no consigners). It is a hub of transportation, but most players avoid it.

I find it ok...and I am bound there since it is easier to get around that way.

B_Delacroix
05-10-2004, 03:59 PM
Wow, truly uses the painter algorithm? If they find a way to fix that the frame rates should skyrocket.

Aly
05-10-2004, 04:46 PM
Nah, I have the Nvidia GeForce4 ti4200 video card. Only 64 mb though. After a new car, that's the first thing I'm upgrading once I find a new job.

Oldoak
05-10-2004, 06:06 PM
Answers:

To Baptismo: I am only reporting what some players have posted. AE doesn't state what specific problems they have identified. One player, however, has posted some very compelling images that show a scene of tazoon in latice from - like the lines that the walls are painted on...and ALL of those lines are visible in the image. It is possible something more is going on there, but no one knows for sure because AE generally takes the stance of not getting into specifics until after they have fixed something.

Aly: The card you have would probably run the game quite well, in all places save Tazoon where everyone is a bit slow. Even I get FPS of about 30 in the wilderness which is a LOT slower than it should be, but as I understand it the human brain cannot perceive lag or gaps at 30 fps or above. Anything beyond 30 is kind of cake in a sense.

They did release a major optimization of combat, which was more of a playability issue for some, but I rarely had trouble with that before and it is even better now.

Mostly what I notice is taht I will ocassionally see lag spikes while playing that make me stutter for a few moments and then it goes back to normal.

It does get better every week it seems, and I hardly notice any performance issues. I am tempted to remove the lag-o-meter from my screen because truthfully if I didn't see it all the time I probably wouldn't be aware of any issues most days.

Aly
05-11-2004, 11:18 AM
A lot of games are offering options now to lock FPS at 30 to provide a smoother, consistent gameplay. Halo does that and it's great. *sighs* I should stop reading these posts though, I'm not going to be able to get into Horizons for at least a month or two.

B_Delacroix
05-11-2004, 01:33 PM
30 fps is optimal for the reason oldoak says. Now with graphic cards able to hit 30 fps, you can use more of your time slices for other things like AI and data maintenance. 30 is what you aim for. 24 is film speed.