[quoteNow I do agree with you that with the current game design of <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/div.gif" alt="" /> no one wants to go to-and-fro between worlds with every time a minimum of 5 seconds or more to continue playing.
If each act is self contained and with a random quest generator running that could keep you busy for 8 hours, then 5 or even 10 seconds after 8 hours should never hurt, and in fact it is for your good health to stop playing every two hours at most and stretch your jerky-stiff muscles. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/biggrin.gif" alt="" />[/quote]
My point is that a whole world (say, the Rivertown map) would not fit in memory. You could store the entire map layout, but you could only load the media for the creatures around you. Most machines would not be able to store the media for the healers, the orcs, the trolls, the undead, the villagers, the poor people, the knights, the animals, the spiders, the dwarves, and the elves simultaniously, not to mention the data for every single interactable item on the map. The characters are stored on the hard drive and the items in swap-memory. If the characters were stored on the disc, there would be a significant loading time between Aleroth and the forest and the farmlands and the Cursed Abbey and Stormfist Castle and the Dwarven Hills and the Orc Plains...
Jerky gameplay has been an eternal thorn in gamers sides. I was
very impressed with the way that
MDK2 and
Dungeon Seige handled this. You could not detect loading times in either of those games.
But finally, it can all be answered with the miricle of options. As long as
RiftRunner has the option of Minimum, Typical, and Full installs, everyone will be happy (except those with a P2 who can't play the game).
