EQ2 Streaming Client Goodies

If you’ve been following the EQ2 Streaming Client announcement thread, you’ll know that Rothgar is very excited about this new feature coming to EQ2. Remember, this is an optional client which will allow players to jump into EQ2 in as little as 5 minutes rather than waiting for a 5-10 hour download.

So far, the streaming client delivers the most basic experience. It delivers content to the screen as fast as possible, sometimes before the game is even really ready for it. As soon as there is enough data to draw a zone, the zone appears. However this may mean other players, armor sets, enemies, etc. may all still need to be loaded before the character can safely move around. For example, players arriving at the Character Select screen start out with no appearance until the data is loaded.

The first grand step has been taken, now it’s time for the next step — Adjustments. First is setting some minimal limits before a zone will load. Then setting certain things to have priority to preload at certain times.

Here’s Rothgar‘s update:

We’re actually already working on this.  I’ll go ahead and fill you in on the things we are still trying to do in the next few weeks.

• The patcher will continue to download assets before you hit the “Play” button so if you walk away from the computer it will continue working.  The assets it downloads will be a prioritized list starting with character select assets, then starting zone assets.
• We will force download of the default character/race during the zoning into character select.  This way you don’t start character select with a missing model.
• During the race-selection part of character select we will fetch the other races in the background
• During the class-selection part of character select we will fetch the other class assets in the background
• While you’re in a starting zone we will prefetch assets to destination zones.

We should have another update going to test server today with a feature intended for slower connections.  Aggro mobs will render as a “red ghost” if they can’t be drawn within a certain amount of time and we’re still waiting on their textures to download.  The goal is to let you see the mobs that would attack you as soon as possible if you’re on a really slow connection.

Thanks for all the great feedback so far!  Please keep it coming.