The topic of pro and contra instanciation has probably been diskussed to death but yet heres another blog about the topic:
After playing warhammer online for around 10days now i fell in love with szenario pvp. i never was into online fps shooters like team fortress or unreal but in warhammer, even tough i find there could be more variety, i really love to play them. for people not familiar with war its usually taking 7-14 people from each realm (side) and let them fight an opponent team the same number.
all this happens in a closed area, an instance
heres the benefits of instanciation:
- fair matches can be guaranteed by letting the server pick
- even more complex matching mechanism could be implemented to even out not only numbers but also classes and levels
- hardly any lag issues due to limiting the numbers of participants and having a confined game space
- no afk/ waiting for class. players only wait for the instance/match to happen then jump into it. they can just go their normal mmo life (pve/questing/world pvp..) while waiting for the match to start
this is a good use of instancing but only a start imho
id like to see even more instanciation in war(hammer) like games
heres the improvements id like to see implemented:
- recruit people from all servers for the instance
- instanciate open world pvp/ sieges
- make more complex matching algorithms to ensure more even fights
- maybe even instanciate the public quests
now the usual argument against instanciation is that it breaks the immersion/ the feeling of a seemless world.
but it never is a world in the first place:
if you can run from one end to the other on foot thrue the whole country in one day, how can it be a world ?
in the world of warhammer their should be 100th of border keeps along a vast border. the realm should have population in the millions not in the 1000th.
now a server probably cant handle 1milion players so i suggest that the servers are like patched up parts of the realms where the player lives in and spends his/her every day live of keeping their village save and training for war.
yet when they hear the call of war i doubt it breaks immersion that they could go to their local recruiting officer to be shipped of to war on a distant battlefield (the instance) to return later to their local life
