General Discussion

First off, don't give me that BS about how instancing is a must for servers. 1997 UO had a massive, seamless world supporting just as many players as current MMOs. Yeah, nineteen ninety fucking seven.

Now, developers have realized a short-cut that we're all too stupid to fight against....instancing. This short-cut has ruined what would have been great MMOs.

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Age of Conan: Hyped to hell then dumbed down for the Xbox 360. The worst, however, is that fact that every zone has multiple copies, on multiple servers. Way to break up a massively multiplayer game, right? Why have servers then? If every zone is broken up, why have separate servers? It makes no sense. Epic siege battles? Laff. Instancing ruined this game.

Pirates of the Burning Sea: This game could have been amazing. Imagine sailing the seas and docking at ports for trade, or conquering if wanted. Explore the many islands of the Caribbean? Sorry. The reality is that you enjoy one big loading screen of small environments. Everything is instanced. Missions, sea battles, ports.... All separated by loading screens. You cant walk around islands, your boat... anything.

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It's sad when games plummet and the devs sit and pick their noses wondering what went wrong.

Originally posted by Netzoko

First off, don't give me that BS about how instancing is a must for servers. 1997 UO had a massive, seamless world supporting just as many players as current MMOs. Yeah, nineteen ninety fucking seven.

Now, developers have realized a short-cut that we're all too stupid to fight against....instancing. This short-cut has ruined what would have been great MMOs.

_____________________

Age of Conan: Hyped to hell then dumbed down for the Xbox 360. The worst, however, is that fact that every zone has multiple copies, on multiple servers. Way to break up a massively multiplayer game, right? Why have servers then? If every zone is broken up, why have separate servers? It makes no sense. Epic siege battles? Laff. Instancing ruined this game.

Pirates of the Burning Sea: This game could have been amazing. Imagine sailing the seas and docking at ports for trade, or conquering if wanted. Explore the many islands of the Caribbean? Sorry. The reality is that you enjoy one big loading screen of small environments. Everything is instanced. Missions, sea battles, ports.... All separated by loading screens. You cant walk around islands, your boat... anything.

 

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It's sad when games plummet and the devs sit and pick their noses wondering what went wrong.

Did you ever think that the graphics of UO didn't put as much of a stress on the '97 technology as compared to games today? Granted those computers were less powerful but are the computers today exponentially more powerful compared to what is needed to render everything?

I dont think it's so black and white. All instances suck, all open world is good.

WAR is doing both. You want some open world RvR? It's there, and it's going to be rather time consuming if you want to get organized and do it, and it make take a few hours of gameplay.

You just want to fight right now, play for an hour, and then log off? Que up for a scenario.

Originally posted by Sovrath

Originally posted by Netzoko

First off, don't give me that BS about how instancing is a must for servers. 1997 UO had a massive, seamless world supporting just as many players as current MMOs. Yeah, nineteen ninety fucking seven.

Now, developers have realized a short-cut that we're all too stupid to fight against....instancing. This short-cut has ruined what would have been great MMOs.

_____________________

Age of Conan: Hyped to hell then dumbed down for the Xbox 360. The worst, however, is that fact that every zone has multiple copies, on multiple servers. Way to break up a massively multiplayer game, right? Why have servers then? If every zone is broken up, why have separate servers? It makes no sense. Epic siege battles? Laff. Instancing ruined this game.

Pirates of the Burning Sea: This game could have been amazing. Imagine sailing the seas and docking at ports for trade, or conquering if wanted. Explore the many islands of the Caribbean? Sorry. The reality is that you enjoy one big loading screen of small environments. Everything is instanced. Missions, sea battles, ports.... All separated by loading screens. You cant walk around islands, your boat... anything.

 

_____________________

 

It's sad when games plummet and the devs sit and pick their noses wondering what went wrong.

 

Did you ever think that the graphics of UO didn't put as much of a stress on the '97 technology as compared to games today? Granted those computers were less powerful but are the computers today exponentially more powerful compared to what is needed to render everything?

 

Actually, it probably put MORE stress on it. Really basic video cards, no dual core processors, dial up connection? People had both frame rate and latency issues back in Ultima, but there was no instancing and it was fantastic.

As for games ruined by instancing? Dark Age of Camelot. It never had instances in the begining. There was zoning into dungeons and cities, as per usual, but no instancing. Then the fourth expansion came out and introduced instanced dungeons that gave you bonus exp and better items. What groups there were left in the game dissapeared cause everyone went to these randomly generated and boring dungeons. It was terrible.

People who get their panties in a bunch over instancing always give me a good laugh.  There's good and bad features for instancing, and there's good and bad features for non-instancing.  The goal of the developer should be to develop the right balance between the two.  It is my opinion that the days of completely seemless and non-instanced worlds are gone because that type of structure is obsolete.  Very few people feel like sitting there for hours or days waiting to tag a mob, and that is the primary failing of the non-instance system.

Let's take SWG for example.  There was an open world boss mob on corellia I believe, in a bunker that was medium sized and a few levels under ground.  One day I was looking for some fresh content and decided it would be neat to go visit this poi and kill the mob.  I got there and the entire bunker was cleared.  So I stepped away for a few minutes to do something else and let the mobs respawn.  I came back 20-30 minutes later and the mobs were still cleared and there were others waiting there to clear the respawns.  OK, so for the average player, this mode of gameplay is simply not fun in any way shape or form.  I wasted a good 20-30 minutes just getting to the darn spot, and then can't even kill a mob.  That mode of gameplay is without a shadow of a doubt not condusive to a good player experience. 

So in this example, instancing would be a great method of allowing players to experience content.  Of course, you shouldn't be able to farm the boss over and over, so compromises can be reached where you could say run the private instance once every three days and the rest of the time you need to compete with everyone else.  Nothing should be black and white here, so I hope I make it clear that I'm not all for all instanced dungeons all the time.  Just as I'm not for non-instanced dungeons all the time.  Like I said, there's negatives to instancing as well.

I like open world dungeons. You get to run into other players in the dungeon, which makes the world seem alive, and players can help each otehr, like rez a party that is wiped, and you can recruit new party members in the dungeon, without leaving an instance.

On the other hand, I want the boss mob instanced, so I don't have to camp it or wait in line to kill it.

People avoided dungeons like the plague for the most part pre trammel because of pansy pkers.  Fast forward to post trammel and the dungeons were so over crowded people were fighting over every spawn.  So your example is completely flawed.

I liked AoC instances which kept population in areas under control vs WoW mini raids instances.

Edit: nevermind

Originally posted by zaxxon23

People who get their panties in a bunch over instancing always give me a good laugh.  There's good and bad features for instancing, and there's good and bad features for non-instancing.  The goal of the developer should be to develop the right balance between the two.  It is my opinion that the days of completely seemless and non-instanced worlds are gone because that type of structure is obsolete.  Very few people feel like sitting there for hours or days waiting to tag a mob, and that is the primary failing of the non-instance system.

 

Its the job of the designers to make a game where "tagging a mob" isn't absolutely neccessary to the point that there are lines of people waiting for one mob. Vanguard had a good system going before they cut it (due to the fact that they released early and couldn't finish it, yeah we know the story) where as your group moved through a dungeon, certain things, like killing a random mob, would drop a key, that would open a side passage in the dungeon, not instanced, but still seperate, and made a private encounter of sorts without forcing you into your own little world.

I actually MISS seeing people in dungeons. Its how some of the best groups are formed. I used to wander around there by myself, get in over my head, try to run out, and some group would save my life, or if I died, some friendly cleric would come from somewhere else in the dungeon and rez me. We'd then team up, and push deeper, collecting vagabonds as we go.

Seamless worlds aren't obsolete, they just take more work, and the big name developers  these days just want to make quick WoW clones and get as much money as possible without putting any real heart into the game.