The Daily Grind: And I never never never do a thing about the weather...

The more weather effects the better as it adds to immersion. MMO's without weather make me a sad panda.

Yes, but to a reasonable extend.

reading a virtual forecast before venturing to a "raid" would be a bit odd, likewise, if weather did influence the players performance, it could be considered too random.

I believe if an MMO would get serious weather in the game mechanism, then it should be at least partially based around weather change.

I think weather is terribly underused in most games, it should be dynamic and changing, floods and buildup of snow would be fantastic to see, you go to a place one day and it's a valley with a river, but severe rain starts and water rises for days, you go back and suddenly it's more like a murky lake or something, the native creatures have fled the area.

Or perhaps a mountain pass being blocked by thick snow, making walking impossible, and high winds make flying through it impossible too, so players must take an alternative route past the bad weather, maybe if you get stuck in the cold somewhere for too long your abilities take a hit as your avatar's body succumbs to the cold. Some players with better gear might hide around waiting in the trees, looking for unsuspecting passing players, weakened by the severe weather. They ambush them and kill them or steal some items or something.

Weather could be far better used to make more dynamic environments.

As long as it doesn't make me have to leave my home for three months, cost me a good job, and generally make my life unpleasant like Hurricane Katrina did.

Otherwise, sure. Bring on the simulated weather!

One of the things that disappointed me most about Wrath of the Lich King's zones was that they were all clear, sunny places - in particular Dragonblight.

Dragonblight during warcraft 3 was a permanent snowstorm, with 15-meter visibility at most - then suddenly in WoW, you can see half the zone depending on draw distance. I was hoping for something interesting, at least some SHRED of howling gale, or overnight snowdrift....but instead the zone just looked pristine.

Out of what I've played so far, SWG has the best weather effects that do slightly affect gameplay. During a heavy dust storm on Tatooine, or a heavy thunder & rain storm on Dantooine, this weather is so thick that it reduces your visibility to just a few meters in front of you. Sure, you've still got your radar map, mini-map, etc to navigate, but just that drop from being able to see as far as the game would render to only being able to see what you're nearby, gives a much more immersive feel and could (psychologically, not necessarily game mechanically) alter the way you navigate unfamiliar territory.

And for generally everyday weather, the SWG model is a standard I wish more games would live up to. Even in Aion, when it does "rain", you only know because your character's idle animation pulls out a big leaf to stand under, or if you turn on the graphic setting, you see little drops of rain hitting the ground. It's barely rain and it's barely immersion.

But as for serious weather, the rare kind that can bring disaster with it, yes, I think there could be many ways this could be implemented and bring with them changes to gameplay, but I think one important factor if they are implemented is for them to come with warning systems. For example, a blizzard that covers an area in so much snow it's impassible for a few hours of game-time until it melts would be interesting, but as the normal snow effect builds up to this storm, the players would get warned by their faction, or nearby NPCs to get to the nearest town, lest their toons become buried and insta-deathed by the snow. Or for a severe windstorm, if as the wind picks it basically starts ticking of health like DOT, and growing steadily stronger until they find shelter (in a cave or a town, etc).

And thinking more, I think actually CoV could be considered to have a bit of a weather system like this (I don't play too often so don't know all the details) in those wandering Rikti attacks. As the Rikti moved from zone to zone, an in-game public broadcast would announce that they've been seen moving into a zone. And then when they attack a zone, they drop additional mobs, making the normal environment more difficult.

So yes, random & rare severe weather that comes with warnings (or noticeable signs such as your health starts slowly ticking off, etc) and in-game consequences for not heeding those warnings could be a very interesting dynamic to gameplay; but at this point games barely even give immersive enough "standard" weather.

The greatest weather effects that I have ever witnessed in a game were from Medievia, a MUD I played extensively in high school. Hurricanes? Sure. Tornados? You betcha. There's nothing like being in the middle of a trade caravan that runs afoul of a twister that launches your body across the map.

Realistic weather would be quite attractive for me, in an MMO. To the extent that I'd readily risk being blown around from sharp winds, or having blurred vision because of torrential rain.

Realism is attractive for me. This doesn't merely mean the weather, but it's meant generally.

- Age: Your characters could start out as youths, and mature as they level.
- Wounds: Having arrows remain sticking in your armor until you remove them, having bloodstains on your helmet or dirt on your boots when you walk through some swamp would add to the realism.
- Physics: Walking through stomach-deep water should be way more difficult and slow; water is not the same as air, after all. Walking over a scorching-hot patch of lava should ruin your boots, or should cost your life if you remain too long. Jumping from large heights should crush some bones at least.
- Armor: Well, actually... this might be controversial ;) Female armor often shows too much. Having a bare leg or bare stomach doesn´t add to your protection, does it? One slash and you're severely harmed. This is as unrealistic as it gets.

If I would have half an hour more, I'm sure I would be able to make this list quite long. There's a lot that could be made more realistic in MMOs. I'm happy for many unrealistic things however: no sleep necessary, no eating necessary (in most MMOs at least), no 50% income tax, no empty Coca Cola bottles and cigarette packages littering the landscape, no pregnancy and childbirth, no jobs with rude bosses paying you way too little for what you're worth, etc. pp. I'm really happy MMOs are not THAT realistic =P

I definitely think it would be great if weather had more of an effect. Seasonal droughts could kill crops, opening up new quests. Lakes could recede, revealing new caves. Floods could drive monsters closer to civilization. Heavy snows could block paths. Storms could damage towns, driving NPC prices higher. Crafters could kick in to help rebuild the town, and all players could help battle monsters that may have moved in the meantime.

FFXI probably had the best weather system. Weather patterns affected what monsters appeared, your crafting success, gardening, and general spell effectiveness.

Pretty much every MMO these days suffers from an excess of status quo. Those that do have dynamic systems usually limit them to a specific place or periodic event. When weather does exist, it consists of sound effects, or sparse drops of water that often go unnoticed.

The worlds in most MMOs feel like wandering through a wax museum or something... everything is stable, static... every critter is in its exact place. Even when you DO something, like killing that guy over there, he'll just fade back into existence in 3 minutes anyway.

Now, I know there are exceptions to this, and personally, I find those exceptions to be some of the most memorable parts of any game. The giant wandering supervillains of CoH, the Eye of Sauron in LotRO, earthquakes in AoC really breath some life into their worlds.

So weather, as a good, basic system for making a world feel more dynamic is a glaring omission. Heavy rain storms should curtain vision, have impact on combat (ever shot arrows in a downpour, or tried to fight knee-deep in mud?) and generally be something worth taking cover from for a few minutes.

There's so much more that could be done, though. Crossing that ice mountain pass? You do realize that temperatures plummet at night. Hunting critters on a beach? Perhaps high tide is not the best time to do that. The possibilities are endless. In a fantasy game, it even adds the possibilities of local weather control to the magic system. If dense fog is a problem, perhaps a spell to clear a radius around the caster is a valuable thing.

As long as dynamic systems are implemented with a light touch... weather should add interest and life to the world, not turn it into The Weather Game, after all... then it would serve as a really good innovation.

Weather looks awesome, but I'm not sure I like it affecting gameplay...MMOs are random enough as is.
Dominion will bring procedurally generated weather to EVE planets, that's more than enough weather for me in my favourite game :)

SWG during beta had one of the more impressive weather effects I've seen in any game. Being on Naboo or Rori you would hear low rumbles of thunder 30-40 minutes before it reached where you were. As time went on, the thunder would get louder and more frequent and eventually it would start to rain light at first then into a heavy downpour. It was really impressive and felt like a real storm was coming. The same happened with Tatooine and it's dust storms, they would start off with wind gusts here and there, then casually build up into a violent dust storm you couldn't see 10 feet in front of you, which lead to running into waiting NPC's if you weren't more careful.

I don't know if something broke near the end of beta and they just never got around to fixing it (highly likely considering SOE), or if they sacrificed the effects for a quick cure to fix some of the lag problems, but something changed between Beta 3 and Launch and those effects weren't as impressive post launch. They still were better then most games offered, but just not as good as beta.

Let's be realistic on this realism: There's a point where realism hurts the fun factor.

I agree that I would LOVE for weather to be a game-changer, especially in very random circumstances. I think it would be especially fun in PvP where one side might have an advantage and then the "tide" is turned by the weather.

But if you slow my walk speed during a quest because of heavy snow or have me walking off of a cliff because of heavy fog during a mineral expedition then you're gonna probably lose me. I can see myself logging out til it passes.

Have weather effect combat: Great!
Have weather slow down routine tasks: NO!

Weather effects that mean something is a good idea but are far from simple to implement fairly... Take a blizzard for example (no pun intended :-)... a random blizzard in a snowy or mountainous zone would enhance the atmosphere but significantly reduce the players field of vision - suddenly running into random mobs or lurking pvpers is more likely, making the zone a little harder. Or the player could just go somewhere else and come back in 20 minutes when it has passed. That seems a 'fair' random factor.

However, the blizzard needs to look good to enhance the atmosphere, but not have a huge processing overhead such that a zone becomes an unplayable crawl for a player with an average rig. Being jumped and dying due to lack of vision that affects everyone is one thing, being jumped because your pc is running at 5 fps and their has the latest graphics card is another. The flip side is that the user should not be able turn off or turn down the weather effects to increase their fps and give them an advantage over someone that chooses to see the blizzard in all its particle based glory, otherwise over time, all the hardcore players would turn off the weather effects by default and they become meaningless.

But yes a well implemented weather system in a game would be a positive thing.

V

I'd like there to be three kinds of weather:

1) SEASONAL: I'd like each outdoor map to be developed in four flavors, changed out during the first server reboot of each season.

2) FREQUENT FOR-FLAVOR: Every so often, I'd like the weather to change in ways that change the appearance of the game, but not the game mechanics. For example, a light drizzle just shows a rain-falling effect, and NPCs walking on the street carry umbrellas. A summer "heat wave" switches the NPC models and animations to ones fanning themselves, or wearing shorts, or whatever. Even if the NPC models and behaviors don't change, even if all that changes is the skybox and some particle effects, it's worth doing to break up the sameness.

3) WEATHER EVENTS: Once a year or so, for about a week, I'd like there to be a game-wide disaster, to provide novel gameplay. For one week, have a hurricane, or a flood, or an earthquake, or a wild-fire season, or whatever, with whatever game-play effects are appropriate. It wouldn't be any more disruptive than current zone effects are, it would be a chance to play in new ways and maybe earn new rewards, and if you don't like it, it'll be gone in a couple of days or a week.

After seeing the absolute tear filled raging outcry after the last Zombie invasion event in WoW around the start of Wrath of the Lich King, I'd have to say, while I love events that change the status quo for a while, your average MMO player is going to soil their panties if they can't get to the auction house and do their dailies every day just like they did yesterday.

Weather affecting gameplay is a great idea, but would never work with the bunch of crybabies that make up the majority of MMO players.

One of the important things is to ensure that there are always options open to the player, preferably strategic ones to choose from as the weather changes. Nothing is more annoying than realizing the sun isn't out, or a storm has snowed people into town, or the stars aren't aligned properly, and having little choice but to wait around until it flips back to favorable settings. There has to be a balance between a little novelty and interesting events to adapt to, versus a constant influx of inconveniences and disasters. Knowing how most people react to change, it's far safer to veer towards the former.

Random, visual, weather effects would be great to see in mmos. Something that doesn't greatly affect the outcome of battle unless your target, be it a raid boss or lowly minion, is under the same "debuff".

One genre that this would be awesome in due to its realistic gameplay would be FPSes. I'm not sure if CoD or any other FPS games have implemented water drops appearing on your screen to hinder your sight (and a possible way to wipe it off with your sleeve). Or how about running slower in the snow? Maybe making targeting slightly harder if its windy?

Fantasy mmorpgs are exactly what they are called...fantasy. Bring on the weather, not the rng.

I recently started questing in the Forochel zone of LotRO and it was my first encounter with weather effects that affected gameplay mechanics. Snowstorms and wind can lower your resistance to cold damage and reduce visibility distance. Finding a fire or consuming certain cooked foods reduced or removed the effects of the cold.

I suppose that was more a theme for the zone than a random weather pattern, though. I mean, it isn't like you'll find a spring thaw there any time soon. Even so, it added an additional challenge to standard questing and I would not mind seeing more of it scattered about in games.

As for devastating weather patterns...maybe not. It is one thing to have to take into account a bit of extra chill or heat, quite another to be killed by a freak tornado because you were afk and did not get to the storm shelter in time. :)