What kind of PC would you say the average MMORPGer has?

[Gurck]

It's been my experience that MMORPG players tend to be less tech-savvy, less willing to spend money on their PC (whether buying new, building or upgrading) and in general have slower & less capable PCs than say, the average ATer... I'm wondering what are peoples' thoughts on specifically what the average among players might be, video card in particular? Onboard? GF2ish or equivalent? GF4? 5x00/9x00?

What inspires this question is that during yesterday's downtime I played me some Far Cry and was wow'ed (no pun intended) all over again by the phenomenal image quality in comparison to what I've been playing most lately, WoW. Not that WoW looks bad, it doesn't - but we all know how great FC looks. Graphics aren't the only thing that matters of course, but I think an MMOG that looked like FC would be a lot more fun & immersive for me.

Interesting little side note, WoW seems far more CPU-dependant than FC; I can play FC with all the eye candy maxed (v.high settings) and 4aa/8af in 10x7 (and no higher) on my 9800 pro, while I see very little fps difference in WoW between 10x7, 12x10 and even 16x12. I have a p4b (533 fsb) at 2.67mhz, which I know is limiting me.

 

[skace]

MMORPGs are notorious for eating through memory. Basically FC has its models and thats that. An MMORPG has all the races / classes / equipment combinations that it has to load on the fly everytime someone enters a city or lands at a flight path. An MMORPG that ran like FC would run significantly worse for unavoidable reasons.

 

[BlueWeasel]

I agree with you, Gurck. The average MMORPG player probably doesn't have as fast a system as an average FPS player. Up until the release of WOW and EQ2, you didn't really need to have the best video card and system to play the popular MMORPG's.

And since most die-hard MMORPG players stick with the same game for months (or even years), there is really no motivation for them to upgrade to the latest hardware.

 

[Gurck]

Originally posted by: skace
MMORPGs are notorious for eating through memory. Basically FC has its models and thats that. An MMORPG has all the races / classes / equipment combinations that it has to load on the fly everytime someone enters a city or lands at a flight path. An MMORPG that ran like FC would run significantly worse for unavoidable reasons.

That's a great point, I guess I didn't really consider it from a technical standpoint.

 

[Vampirrella]

i think its nice that many mmorpg games usually take less of a system to run on, so that those of us that want to bot a few other chars along side our main chars can do so with ease from say a 1.2ghz slow laptop for example

 

[Concillian]

I never played Far Cry, aside from the demo, but Comparing to Battlefield Vietnam, I am able to play WoW pretty solid at 1 res higher than I was able to Play BFV.

BFV I ran 1280x at 4xAA 8xAF
WoW I run at 1600x at 0xAA AF slider maxed (I assume 16xAF)

As far as CPU, I saw no perceivable difference between running my CPU (S754 1.8 GHz A64) at 220 HTT (1.98 GHz) and 265 HTT (2.38 GHz). Maybe just running at 1600x1200 the video card is the primary bottleneck? That seems to be what Anand indicates in his WoW performance article:

Intel is remarkably competitive here; while they normally get completely demolished by AMD in gaming performance, the margins are much closer this time around. At higher resolutions, the AMD-Intel gap would effectively disappear between most competitors.

But yeah, MMORPGs are appealing to a much larger audience than your average FPS game, so the requirements are kept fairly low.

 

[BigPoppa]

Not to mention, a raid (18+ semi-unique people) in the far cry engine would kill your frame rate. EQ2 at balanced on my 6600GT and Sempron 3100+ runs pretty damn smooth, that is until I get into the city areas. Should look excellent at VHQ or ExtremeQ with next gen hardware.

 

[Dacalo]

I have a 2 year old computer, and whenever I enter an instance after another player, I appear first majority of times.

P4 2.66 Ghz
1GB Ram
Radeon 9700 Pro

Seems like a lot of MMRPG players are less tech savvy for sure.

 

[everman]

I wouldn't say that they're less willing to spend more money on hardware, at least not the addicted ones. Once you have a game that you really love, spending money to make it better is easy.

 

[apoppin]

i have no idea of the HWof MMORPG players . . . .there was zero gfx improvement for KotOR > KotOR II . . . of course that is RPG . . . but same "thing: . . . . the gfx in RPG suck compared to FPS. . . clearly there is a "lot more going on" in a RPG . . . i guess we'll have to wait for multi-core CPUs/GPUs to take full advantage of the AI and physics engines the next gen of games will demand

 

[Malak]

I could play just about any game made in the last... 5 years... and be wowed after playing WoW. If there is one MMO uglier, it is Freeworld, just for lack of detail in it's ugliness.

 

[cKGunslinger]

Originally posted by: malak
I could play just about any game made in the last... 5 years... and be wowed after playing WoW. If there is one MMO uglier, it is Freeworld, just for lack of detail in it's ugliness.

Uhh.. after watching my brother play FFXI and my neighbor play EQ2, I'd have to say that WoW almost breathtakingly beautiful..

 

[Rip the Jacker]

GF4 MX / 1-2 GHZ Athlon/Intel

 

[BigPoppa]

Originally posted by: cKGunslinger

Originally posted by: malak
I could play just about any game made in the last... 5 years... and be wowed after playing WoW. If there is one MMO uglier, it is Freeworld, just for lack of detail in it's ugliness.

Uhh.. after watching my brother play FFXI and my neighbor play EQ2, I'd have to say that WoW almost breathtakingly beautiful..

Wow has excellent art, crappy graphic engine.
EQ2 has excellent graphic engine, crappy art.
FFXI is a middle ground between the two. Even better is that it was designed for the PS2 and looks as good as it does on my PC.

 

[Dman877]

I bet most mmp players use dell/hp etc boxes and typically, prebuilt systems have a big cpu so they can spam the 3.0 GHZ wowza!! in the adds. Then they usually have 512mb ram and a gf4 mx. My guess for the most common mmp players system today would be a P4 2.4 - 2.8 ghz, 512mb ram, gf4 mx/5200.

 

[Gurck]

Originally posted by: BigPoppa
Wow has excellent art, crappy graphic engine.
EQ2 has excellent graphic engine, crappy art.
FFXI is a middle ground between the two. Even better is that it was designed for the PS2 and looks as good as it does on my PC.

I know what you're saying, but the WoW engine is far from crappy - it's very efficient, just tuned to the average PC - which is subpar as far as most of us are concerned. EQ2's on the other hand is a buggy model of inefficiency. It may be capable of better image quality, but it makes awful use of resources.