You might be thinking of Final Fantasy. WoW is real-time, but it uses "tab targeting" for its attacks. This means you don't actually aim anything, but instead you select a "target", and as long as you're within a certain radius of that target (your attack's range) all of your attacks will hit no matter which way you are facing and, with few exceptions, no matter what may happen to be between you and your target. The difference for a shooter is that you actually aim and fire your weapons. When you do this it emits either a projectile (creatively known as "projectile weapons") or a virtual ray (known as "hitscan weapons"). This projectile/ray travels either in a straight line or according to its projectile physics until it either hits something, or reaches the end of its range, if it has one. Many games have projectiles with no hard range cap and simply rely on physics to limit your effective range. In this case "something" does not necessarily have to be your opponent, but can be anything the game considers solid. This means that random clutter in between you and your opponent can block the shot: this is known as "cover". One big reason that shooters tend to have much shorter TTKs than tab-target games is because manually-aimed weapons are not guaranteed to hit, especially if there's a lot of "cover" getting in the way. Thus your survivability is primarily determined by your ability to avoid taking hits in the first place, rather than simply how many hits your face can absorb.
You dont swing with your sword in real time, you just right click on a target, there is a moment delay, and then your character swings at certain seconds intervals, its basically a continued animation loop, and the damage isnt done in real time as in something like the Elder Scrolls where you click and your character swings once, and then you have to click again if you want to swing again; THAT IS REAL TIME, NOT that WoW-ish continued animation loop where HP are subtracted over time
Actually that's just automatic attacking. It'd be the same as if you taped down your left mouse button. The reason that turns up in tab-targeting games and not manual-aim games like shooters or TES is that timing your swing actually matters when your sword needs to physically pass through the enemy in order to hit. In a tab-target game like WoW, your sword will still do damage as long as you're within the attack's radius even if the sword doesn't even come close to them (though a good coding team will work with a good art team to make sure it *usually* does anyway to avoid making it too obvious). Thus timing doesn't matter, so you can just tape down the left mouse button (autoattack) to do continuous damage.
Exactly, point of contact doesnt matter, only the general diameter of the target zone does. It's basically like attacking a sphere, this is the point i've been trying to make
its not totally relevant but I'd be surprised if such things as auto-attack, auto face opponent, next tab targeting etc is a personal choice in many of these games, accessed through the option/settings screens...you could always have turned them off if youd wanted a different form of game play lol but yes, those things arnt in EC as the Devs concept stands
If you're going with that argument then every shooter is also turn based as rates of fire can be broken down to DPS as easily as WoW style ticks.
Well I'm glad we worked out that... but that's not turned based But what about in WoW when you turn off auto attack? Or play a caster? Still can't compare because you don't need a 'skillshot' due to auto aiming mechanics? Well what about Asheron's Call or Wildstar where 'skillshots' existed etc. These are all just styles of play in the MMO genre. I still stick to my original point... that the RPG element for games has gone so far down hill (thanks Diablo) where any game that has even the slightest bit of stat allocation or ranking up of skill points will count as an RPG, and EC is really still fairly safe being called an MMORPG.
