It touches everything in the game from which elementals spawn to weather patterns to nighttime where some zones were completely different (fear the skeletons!) and which fish you caught depending on the time of day or the phase of the moon.

There are even timers online so you can attempt to time your crafting for maximum effect though still to this day it’s “unconfirmed” whether it makes a difference or not.

I don’t like WoW’s way of doing it tying it into the server time clock but vastly sped up is no good either.

what I’d like to see is a 25 hour in game clock so that every day you log in it’s 1 hour earlier, whether that has any “real” in game consequences or not.

I wish more games made more difference to the night/day quest lines and feel of the zones. I still regret my PC back in the days of EQ would have worked better. I didn’t last long unfortunately. /regrets

But, for those that aren’t grinding as fast as possible to endgame content, I love the feel of zones and enjoy that ‘danger’ that a new zone or night can bring. Crafting that involves only night blooming plants or animals that can only be captured in the day – a big yes here!

I was reading something yesterday about a guy that uses Questhelper in WoW, so never reads the quests nor listens to the NPC dialog. I thought how sad, its such a fun rich world. As every MMO is in its own way.

It’s true about the sunsets & sunrises – they’re so beautiful. More screenies of those from every game than not!

Great article!

Every time I start to grip that nights in WoW aren’t dark enough, I remember that, and find myself grateful for all that wonderful ambient moonlight.

Kithicor Woods, however…oh man. I remember when the changes went in to translate the place into a 50+ zone at night. Doing raids on some of the high-level mobs in the pitch blackness was fun, on the other hand, it was less fun being a level 15 trying to cross from the halfling town into the Western Commonlands and running the wall at dusk, praying the dead wouldn’t spawn before I got there…

I think it is just that we are used to earth days and time, Sarah.

What really isn’t fine at this point in MMOG history is when developers try to use darkness to withhold information from the player that really is actually available to the client (like terrain always is), just artificially withheld. Such a mechanic basically screams: mod (legal or otherwise).

Longasc touched on weather. I’d like to see seasons, at least in some zones. Wouldn’t it be fun to watch the leaves change, watch winter set in…

The problem would be in-game holidays, of course. Hard to do a “Yule” holiday in a game with seasons when it’s summer in-game and Dec. 25th out. Well, I guess that’d feel fine to folks in Australia.

And I’d like to see the fauna change with seasons, too. But then quests and everything else would have to change. A Kill 10 Bears quest might be a real PITA in mid-winter when the bears are all hidden away, hibernating.

Aion: Two hours real time is 24 hours Aion time. 1 real minute = 12 Aion minutes. So basically, you have 60 minutes day and 60 minutes night. But the nights are very bright, it never became really dark in most areas.
Aion changes within seconds from day to night with a very fast animation.

LOTRO: The night is definitely night, very dark. This is annoying at times, but also changes the mood of an area much more than the bright nights of Aion.
The night is often very long, I guess longer than one hour or was it just my perception, I wished it would become day very often.
LOTRO seems to have a 1-2 steps between day and night where the light increases or decreases, but also quick transitions between the phases.

-> How long does a day/night take in LOTRO?

WoW: has already been mentioned by “Rem” and you.

I am a supporter of day/night cycles. Though you are right, darkness can be annoying!
I am just not sure which of the mentioned day/night models I prefer.

I am also a supporter of seasons and weather in mmos!

I’m very much a fan of time of day being important in the game, just as it is for Pokemon, as you stated. I don’t think ALL things in game design should be designed for ALL people. If some people can’t be bothered or simply can’t play at night … oh well? One of these days, on a weekend, if they really want to experience it, they’ll log in at night, or wait around til night comes. Just don’t do that with anything that would prohibit natural progression in the game. Extra stuff is ok.

When EQ was first released and the infrared vision was there and sonic vision actually worked and infravision worked as well, the world was amazing, even at night. Sure not every race had a method to see in the dark, but by the time you got to the commonlands you had a perfectly easy way to get a lightstone: kill wisps. In EQ you couldn’t kill them unless you had a magical weapon!

Anywho, I love games that go that extra mile. And I agree, Spinks: some of my best screenies come at sunrise / sunset with max settings and bloom turned on. EQ2 is VERY pretty.

I haven’t played much lately. Rumor is they’ve added a torch slot? Or is that still forthcoming?

*Heads off to log in to check*