Rad- said:
Amazing. I can run this on my laptop then I bet (T4400 dual core, 4650 radeon, 4 gigs of memory). I don't even mind if it's just low-medium level, as long as I can get a smooth PVP experience.
If you look at the in-game shots you can clearly see that everything is fairly low poly. Hair, textures, and models in general is very rough looking. Perhaps 2007-2008ish looking. Much less visual flair than say Age of Conan(2008).
But that's the great thing - GW2 still looks amazing due to amazing art design, and a fluid and robust animation system. It has the nicest melee combat I have seen in an RPG... for well... ever.
GW1 was a game that was more dependant on CPU power than the GPU. It had something to do with their graphics technology - Basically all animations/textures/skins, was on the players side and apparently didn't have to be rendered. Behind it was just boxes and squares and circle shapes in the world.
Since it was only these monotone things being sent from the servers to players(packages sent) it allowed for very little lag:
http://pc.ign.com/articles/534/534454p1.html
This streaming technology was revolutionary. It allowed;
- Anet to launch GW on the same day in Asia(Korea), US and Europe without any server hitches
- To have one shared realm. It means that it's one gigantic server that has mini servers pop up so no overcrowding or lag would come in the games more than 100 player persistent outposts/towns (social hubs, trade etc). it means that there were no two people called vigilant walrus. it meant that the koreans didnt have some obscure alternative version of the game. no they were in the same realm, pitted against the other continents for control in pvp grudges.
- To patch the game without taking the game offline. On a WoW patch day(once a week) the game is unavailable for play for 5-6 hours). They could do bug fixes, and balancing while you were playing the game.
Furthermore once your account had absorbed your cd-key that came with the game, you could install the game from the website with a streaming client - a couple of hundred kb of data, streaming into a 32 mb client - and then as you played the game, the game would just download the rest of the game as you played. amazing.
Here is a fantastic Greg Kasavin old school Gamespot review of the original Guild Wars:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sVers2hny44
This game is f**king awesome and it will pwn your asshole if you solo, and if you group in hard mode. It's actually a really challenge and it asks something of players unlike most RPGs. It's emphasis is on other things.
buy and play this game. going through the three campaigns and EOTN can easily take you many many many hundreds of hours, simply on collecting the skills.