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[qwertyuiopas]

No, since a player has to load the hightmap when they join, or visit a new area. WoW just downloads them in advance since they will never change, even the trees are premade. Grass is always grass until a dev changes it, and then it changes for everyone in the update.

Wurm, on the other hand, allows PLAYERS to change the world, although slowly.

[Rhodan]

Ummm... You did read what I wrote, right?  I said "if" WoW would try to do what Wurm does.  Obviously it would need some severe code adjustments in places.  WoW currently stores the height map on the player's PC, and alters it once in a while by downloading a new patch or installing an expansion.  The height map itself never gets loaded from the server during play.  That's the only difference, Wurm just loads changes to the height map onto the player's pc constantly.  Such changes are really small, since it's just some coordinates and a height value for each change in the grid, which is just a bunch of numbers. And Wurm has a pretty spaced-out grid.  Implementing this would not create massive lag or slowdowns for WoW, just lots of users complaining about getting stuck.

Players changing the world really isn't that big of a deal coding-wise.  Massive gameplay impact, sure, but other than that it's just a bit more data sent back and forth.

Grass and trees?  Same thing.  It would be incredibly easy even to give WoW players a tool to add a tree to any place on the map they like, once they change the map to be editable.  Hardly any extra server lag or bandwidth usage.   It's a gameplay thing.  WoW is meant to be a game where people chop each other up, not chop trees down.  With a story to make grinding less boring.

[Sowelu]

Heck, ATITD lets GMs change the height of the landscape.  All editing is live, so when a GM is finishing a nifty place up in beta, you can stand there and watch as the ground moves around.

Players aren't allowed to, but the tech is there and quite functional.

[qwertyuiopas]

The funny thing is that even WoW is not 3D. In fact, wurm is more 3D than WoW, since(although I never saw it myself) they probably do ALL of the 3D stuff other than the base terrain(and maybe even that) as static models. In that sense, wurm has a second 2D map that ties into the main one flawlessly, and over time bridges and 2 story houses will be added, allowing for 3D model based stuff like WoW.

Additionally, the server sends the data on all trees and terrain as you join(or at the very least, the ones that changed), and must send out the same data to all active players withing range when something changes, as well as sending entire unexplored areas...

WoW also splits the world across countless servers, while wurm only has 4, and each is HUGE compared to WoW's.

And even then, wurm's servers are not nearly as powerful.

[Rhodan]

If Wurm were to get WoW's graphics (including the client that renders them), it'd run just as smoothly as it does now.  There would be hardly any additional server strain at all, except perhaps because the map grid would have to be a bit tighter to look equally smooth.
There would be a lot of new players, though, so they'd still need extra/better servers.

If WoW were to get Wurm's gameplay, the additional code would strain the servers a bit more, but they would probably still work in a reasonable fashion.  The amount of players quitting because they don't like the new WoW would probably make up for that.

Thing is, I don't think letting the players build their own towns and terraform the world works that well in a fantasy or medieval setting.  Being able to build stuff is neat, but you'd never really get actual functioning towns for long.  People quit, get distracted, are offline at the wrong hours and so on.
I think a tribal setting would be more suited for a game like this, where abandoned villages get  devoured by the wilderness quickly and the pace of building is a lot higher.  Or a system where players can design their guildhall/fortress or something, but the world itself is handcrafted.

[Sowelu]

Yeah, persistent stuff frequently fails because of the simple reality that each PC only exists in the world for about ten hours out of every week on average, and sometimes disappears entirely for weeks at a time...BUT, they still want to keep right on playing when they get back like nothing ever happened!

[Rilder]

Wurm servers lag with 400 people playing at once.

Wurm serves aren't something grand.

No, 400 is about right for a single server.  Eve online gets laggy as hell with 400+ in a single system (system = server most of the time)

[Morlark]

WoW also splits the world across countless servers, while wurm only has 4, and each is HUGE compared to WoW's.

It's not "countless" servers, it's 5 per realm. There is no way you can claim that counting each of WoW's separate realms to the one single Wurm realm is a valid comparison. If Wurm had 11 million players, it would have countless realms too. Also, I'm not sure I'd agree about Wurm being huge compared to WoW. I don't know the exact measurements of each, but even if Wurm is bigger, they are still quite comparable. WoW just feels smaller because they have faster modes of transport.

[Micro102]

but you can build, drop, change, forage, plant trees...each of those tiles has to be coded to be ready to make objects appear and calculate slope and terrain type and in some cases, restrictions based on village rules and the inside of houses to see if its possible or not. WoW doesnt have to worry about that as you cant use the land for anything other then walking on.

thats a big difference. and i dont see why you think its so easy for them to make wurm like that. dont you think if it was possible they would have done it? how much would being 3D multiply Wurms awsomeness by?

and WoW is 3D. thats why you can jump and go into 3rd person

[Sowelu]

and WoW is 3D. thats why you can jump and go into 3rd person

That makes Baby John Carmack cry. 

Anyway, WoW had many experienced, expensive developers working on making its client awesome.  Throwing people and experience at a problem like that gets you really awesome results!

[Rhodan]

Are you serious?  Do you actually expect us to believe you took game development courses and then write stuff like that?

WoW does have to worry about very similar stuff.  Players appearing and walking up slopes, monsters being placed and dropping a corpse, campfires being lit,... The ore veins and plants that appear in WoW are exactly the same system as foraging in Wurm, only with less skill checks and more spaced out, with a little 3D model to interact with instead of the tile itself.   WoW also takes into account city limits and all that jazz.  The biggest difference is that Wurm can change map height and city limits on the fly.  WoW could do that too, with some editing, but it doesn't because it's a different game.

Each tile in Wurm has not been separately coded to do all those things, that would be incredibly bad coding practice.  Slopes get calculated on the fly in any game, since pre-storing that data is never, ever worth it.  Terrain type only has to be calculated each time it is changed, then it gets stored.  It's probably just a number with the terrain type ID.

WoW is indeed 3D, but the height map the world is built on is not.  Mountains, plains and valleys are a simple grid with a height value at each coordinate.  You cannot create an overhang in WoW without slapping a 3D model onto it.  This is the case in many games such as Oblivion, Morrowind, Stranded, and any other game with outdoors terrain.

The reason Wurm is not fancy like WoW is because of the vast amounts of work that go into actually making the graphics, and the amount of work needed to make a client that can render the graphics.  It has nothing to do at all with Wurm's coding being too complex.

[Micro102]

i did not mention monsters and people walking up slopes or campfires because both games can do that. and the foraging/mining isnt the same. take away the landscape and the plants and ore remain. they are seperate. and i cant think of anything city limits does except open up a new chat.

going from 2D to 3D will crash the game. you would have to add physics, jumping, make everything have z-axis as well, and then there is going to be colliding problems because Wurm uses item models where as in WoW the only thing you see of an item is a picture.

[Yanlin]

going from 2D to 3D will crash the game. you would have to add physics, jumping, make everything have z-axis as well, and then there is going to be colliding problems because Wurm uses item models where as in WoW the only thing you see of an item is a picture.

Sorry to sound like a jerk, but do you even know what 3D is? It has nothing to do with physics, jumping or having a Z axis. (Yes. You can have 3D stuff without a Z axis.)

Physics: Can exist in 2D too. Has NOTHING to do with 3D. 3D physics just have an additional axis of movement. (The Y Axis.)

Jumping: Same as physics. In fact, part of physics.

Z axis: The Z axis is the axis pointing up and down. Y points forward and back, X points left and right. (This is over simplification. Roll with it.) Now to have 3D, stuff need to go on 3 dimensions. Normal 2D games have 2 dimensions. X and Z. (Or X and Y if you're a hardcore math whore. I consider it Z since it only goes left, right, up and down. But I could just as easily make the X a Y axis. Just depends how to place it. By the default (Read: CORRECT) placement of axis', X Y and Z are in constant locations like I described. Now in 3D, the Y axis is added. Not the Z. Suddenly objects can move on 3 planes. In fact, some 2D games have 3 dimensions. But this does not make the graphics 3D. It just makes the game 3D. Sim City 4 is a good example. The models are 3D. The game renders them in 3 dimensions. But the final image you see before you is 2D to save performance. It was made a long time ago. Give it a break. All the models are pre-rendered as 2D images from the rotation you're currently looking at. If you rotate the map, it rerenders them.

Now that was just about movement. An object can have a 3D model and be 3D in a 2D world. The first Sims is a good example. I don't know the details, but I'd assume something as such. The physical position of the sims on the screen was on an XY axis. Two of them actually. One for each floor. The transition between those floors was smooth. Or they could have just used a Z axis and ended their pain.

Hope this helps you build a convincing argument with relevant points.

[Rhodan]

i did not mention monsters and people walking up slopes or campfires because both games can do that. and the foraging/mining isnt the same. take away the landscape and the plants and ore remain. they are seperate. and i cant think of anything city limits does except open up a new chat.

going from 2D to 3D will crash the game. you would have to add physics, jumping, make everything have z-axis as well, and then there is going to be colliding problems because Wurm uses item models where as in WoW the only thing you see of an item is a picture.

... I'm completely stumped.  You're just doing this on purpose, are you?
WoW has 3D models all over the place, like houses and rocks, you can collide with.  That's no different at all from rendering items dropped on the floor. Wow just doesn't do that because it's a lot easier for the player to loot the monster itself, and it saves on 3D models which would make the game client (the bit you download or buy) too big.

You didn't mention slopes and compfires because both games can do that?  Bravo, because that's exactly what I wanted to point out.  Both games already do it, and the code they used to do it is the same kind of code needed for almost everything Wurm does, thereby proving that a Wurm with WoW graphics and an extra axis would work!

Wurm does not have jumping simply because players wouldn't be able to bypass player-built fences easily, which is important in Wurm.
City limits may not do much more than open up chat, but that's completely besides the point.  It's still code that checkes the player's location versus an area on the terrain.  Same code, same strain, different application.

Ores and plants?  Sure, WoW has them in separate models, but the code behind them isn't any different than in Wurm, Wurm just has it tied to the tile itself.  The fact that there's thousands more tiles in Wurm than plants and ore veins in WoW doesn't make any difference in code or strain at all.

Seriously, go do those game-development courses again, and learn that there is a huge difference between what you can see and the code behind it.

[qwertyuiopas]

...
In openGL, the Z axis points out of the screen, not the Y axis.
It does in DF, too(in a sense).