Atlantica Online speeds up download with new Lite client
by Eliot Lefebvre 
Nov 7th 2009 at 8:00PM
Filed under: Fantasy, Launches, News items, Free-to-play, Atlantica Online
Atlantica Online just celebrated its first year in the US, but the free-to-play game apparently had another trick up its sleeve -- namely, allowing players interested in the game a chance to get in and start playing even faster. After all, it can be obnoxious to download a client and wait for it to patch through updates when you just want to dive in and get to playing. Ndoors Interactive has just launched the game's lite client, a way for a smaller initial download to let you start playing the game as fast as possible.
The new client's trick is to only frontload the first twenty levels of play while downloading the rest via background processes. This allows new players to log in and start playing their character faster, but it can cause issues for existing players who might be at a higher level (and the press release specifically suggests avoiding the lite client if that's the case). For everyone who hasn't started the game, it's an interesting way to make the startup more accessible and significantly faster. Consider taking a look over the weekend, and possibly getting in on some of the one year celebration goodies Atlantica Online has to offer.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Dblade said on 10:06PM 11-07-2009
D&D online also does this, but it really depends on the size of the client overall. Anything more than 2 gig is a seriously long download, even if you can play part of the game. I wish they would also have sample CDs where they sell their gamecards, or offer a boxed version.
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Skypp said on 1:12AM 11-08-2009
Turbine does this with LOTRO as well as D&D. Its a great idea, and a good way to get people into the trial faster. I know there are several MMO's with free trials that I go and look at an 8 gig download and think "in 7 days I probably will never touch this game again, I'm not gonna bother downloading EVERYTHING"