To start I'd like to tell folks the difference between instances and zones as to many people seem to either have them confused or simply don't know the difference. If you know the difference, skip the next paragraph. ;)

Zones are enclosed spaces in a game that require loading to cross. Most single player games, especially shooters, are zoned. You complete an area and then load to the next. That is a zone. In MMOGs the popular thing is to do an open world and this has various benefits and detriments but that isn't the focus of this thread. An Instance on the other hand is a copy of an area, from a zone to a quest location. These require loading and are often dungeons that only you or your group participate in. As well many modern MMOGs instance their zones. Champions Online does such, when you enter a new zone you choose the instance to join. Each instance can only hold so many people before a new instance is formed to hold more.

Ok now thats out of the way, on to the topic of the thread;

A lot of people are worried it appears that TSW will be heavily instanced. Personally I don't mind instancing if it's done right. But a lot of folks absolutely hate it, whether it's a team instance dungeon or instanced areas ala the example above. One of the bigger reasons people worry about this in TSW is because the game uses an updated version of the Age of Conan engine (which is the massively overhauled Anarchy Online engine) and AoC uses both zone instancing and personal instancing.

Let me just say, stay thy fears people. :) In an interview on ZAM.com, Funcoms Creative Director and lead of The Secret World, Ragnar Tornquest, states how much he dislikes instancing and plans to use it only sparingly in TSW. :)

"ZAM: Based on some of the gameplay footage, it looked like you could go into this modern day world. Since this is based on our Earth, you've got to have some game zones. Will there be zoning? Instancing? How big is the game world going to be, and how open is it going to be, versus how instanced?

Ragnar: I'm not a fan of instancing at all. That really sort of bugs me all the time, but some people don't care at all. We're going to avoid instances as much as possible. Instancing is something that you sometimes have to do to protect newbies - especially at launch. Our playfields are very large. We want to avoid loading screens. For example, going from London to New England isn't going to be like clicking a map and seeing a red dot go from one place to another, that's not what it's going to be like. It's going to be seamless. There's going to be very little loading, and hopefully it's going to be instantaneous. We want you to be able to move in a way that fits the mythology of the game, that actually makes sense. It's not going to be like "what the hell? Why am I in New England right now? I was just in London!" It's going to actually make sense. I can't explain why it's going to make sense, but it will make sense. There might be some instancing. We're going to have instances and places like dungeons, or something we'll call dungeons, and those will be more team based experiences. Those will be instanced. The open world stuff we're going to try to avoid instancing as much as possible. We want to make sure that you feel like you're in a living, open world, and you're traveling around that and exploring it. Like I said, our playing fields are large and they are epic and it's going to feel that way, yet you're going to be able to travel seamlessly. Lots of promises, but we'll see. I just don't like instancing, so we'll try to avoid those."

So good news for the 'I hate instancing' crowd. :)

Oh, the entire interview can be found here;

www.zam.com/story.html

Excellent post, thanks for the info and the link. Thats a relief, especially when RT outright said the word "seamless." Definitely adds to immersion and to the overall enjoyability of the game as a whole. I'm likin it

Hope he can deliver on the Seamless world and little instancing, i'll be bummed otherwise, but i won't hate him if they can't do it.

This is good, but at the same time, I'm sitting here trying to wrap my head around how this will work.

Yeah, they want to make it open world, but its based in the real world. I don't think there's a way for them to make a digital version of the world, so that leads me to believe there will be at least some limitations.

I'm going to assume that most of the game's zones are major cities, and from the concept art, possibly jungles and forests.

Seamless travel from New England to London? I'm pretty sure that's not possible. Are we going to sit on a plane for 6 hours, or on a ship for a week?

I don't really like Instanced Zones but I have no issue with instanced dungeons and stuff.

It's good to see the game will try to be seemless but with todays graphics and not everyone running a top of the line PC I can understand if a couple things are instanced to cut lag.

To me, the biggest distinction between the two is that instances are non-persistent.  When everyone leaves the instance, it ceases to exist.  Also, I don't really see the word "zone" as a antonym for "instance" since you can have instanced zones like in Guild Wars.

I have no real problem with instancing. Sometimes it´s nice to head to a "safe" area and just bash some skulls without much other worries. Sounds from that interview that they have a plan with instances and that´s a good thing. Well used instances can strengthen the gaming experience and allows the story to be driven much more clearly to either solo or group players.
 

No, I want no instances. I want to run in a seamless persistent world from Paris to Madrid in 5 minutes, and then swim to New York in another 10. I want New York to have five skyscrapers, two shops and one tavern. Because as everybody knows, seamless nonsense and absurd scaling representations are more immersive than a loading screen now and then.

Originally posted by Thillian

No, I want no instances. I want to run in a seamless persistent world from Paris to Madrid in 5 minutes, and then swim to New York in another 10. I want New York to have five skyscrapers, two shops and one tavern. Because as everybody knows, seamless nonsense and absurd scaling representations are more immersive than a loading screen now and then.

Well I might be wrong here but "seamless" doesn´t really have to mean one huge open zone. It´s more about if you notice it loading or not. You can have a large amount of "zones" that loads up while you travel thus making it seem like it´s seamless.

Only time can tell what this will be like though.

I am just hoping it's not set up like AoC. One minute your in a zone with snow cap mountains and then zone through a door and in a rocky valley. Didn't make sense.

Loved playing AoC, loved the character models, loved the atmosphere, hated the map zones.

Making the game as open as possible, while instancing important team based quests, and dungeons would, IMO help a lot.

 completely agree.  imo thats what killed AoC

Originally posted by Fion

 

 

"ZAM: Based on some of the gameplay footage, it looked like you could go into this modern day world. Since this is based on our Earth, you've got to have some game zones. Will there be zoning? Instancing? How big is the game world going to be, and how open is it going to be, versus how instanced?

Ragnar: I'm not a fan of instancing at all. That really sort of bugs me all the time, but some people don't care at all. We're going to avoid instances as much as possible. Instancing is something that you sometimes have to do to protect newbies - especially at launch.

Ok Great, but...

There might be some instancing. We're going to have instances and places like dungeons, or something we'll call dungeons, and those will be more team based experiences. Those will be instanced. The open world stuff we're going to try to avoid instancing as much as possible. We want to make sure that you feel like you're in a living, open world, and you're traveling around that and exploring it. Like I said, our playing fields are large and they are epic and it's going to feel that way, yet you're going to be able to travel seamlessly. Lots of promises, but we'll see. I just don't like instancing, so we'll try to avoid those."

Not that I care, but there  is  still GOING to be instancing. Part of the issue that some players have is that other players are hidden away in instances. And what they feel that does for separating the community.

So "he hates instances", he will avoid them if possible, but "he will have instances for dungeons".

For all those that hate instances may i direct you to this video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MNQ5V740LDY&feature=related

Perfect info. I thank you.

My expectations are now even higher for this game.

No instancing = Win

I hope they don't make same misstake again... but I'm not supriced if they do. They have been working on this for some years, so there is a risk they used same kind of brains on this one like AoC...

 While I believe it is way too hard to provide an interesting theme park experience without instancing (you see sandbox games with ZERO instancing, but you never see a theme park fully "uninstanced"), it's good to hear that. Why is it hard? You can't provide epic encounter experiences as required in theme parks for the phat lewt that EVERYONE is interested in and qualified for as long as they reached level X (while say, in a sandbox game not many will have the combat skills to fight it as they are in other professions, not to mention combat over it might be part of the intended experience especially if it is a full or partial loot-game, another often intended realism of sandbox games) without getting into a lot of issues that make instancing the easy choice to pick.

In the long run it may mean nothing as higher-ups demand more instancing to save more bandwidth, but it's still good to hear what a developer wishes for their game.

Keep in mind I have no idea if TSW will be theme park or sandbox. 

op !for me open world means this!you can cram ton of player on the same map,it could be instanced it could be zoned i couldnt care less

what i do care is when i go on a map like wintergrasp and i only see 250 player when that map was made for minimum 500

in todays age of mmo i believe the minimum amount of player per map has to be 500 player

at that level it can be named massive even if it is instanced or zoned

i understand the fact game have to be instanced zoned or phazed(wich is all instancing in my book lol)

but when i say i hate instancing!im not entirelly acurate or truthfull with my self

what i really mean is i hate any game that cant cram a minimum of 500 player on any given map and then try to make us believe its a MASSIVE multiplayer .if its less then 500 per instance(or whatever you want to word it,zone,instance,phazing etc etc etc)

in my book its just a multiplayer game .number should be at 1000 player per instance but reality the technology we go without doing a major overhaul today is about 500 player per instance

500 player/instance ,or open world map,is the minimum there as to be to be considered massive anything less and its just a

multiplayer game.

THATS MY TWO CENT!

i do hope i did clear some misunderstanding on this very improtant subject since it might influence our futur game

Originally posted by Fion

To start I'd like to tell folks the difference between instances and zones as to many people seem to either have them confused or simply don't know the difference. If you know the difference, skip the next paragraph. ;)

Zones are enclosed spaces in a game that require loading to cross. Most single player games, especially shooters, are zoned. You complete an area and then load to the next. That is a zone. In MMOGs the popular thing is to do an open world and this has various benefits and detriments but that isn't the focus of this thread. An Instance on the other hand is a copy of an area, from a zone to a quest location. These require loading and are often dungeons that only you or your group participate in. As well many modern MMOGs instance their zones. Champions Online does such, when you enter a new zone you choose the instance to join. Each instance can only hold so many people before a new instance is formed to hold more.

 

Ok now thats out of the way, on to the topic of the thread;

 

A lot of people are worried it appears that TSW will be heavily instanced. Personally I don't mind instancing if it's done right. But a lot of folks absolutely hate it, whether it's a team instance dungeon or instanced areas ala the example above. One of the bigger reasons people worry about this in TSW is because the game uses an updated version of the Age of Conan engine (which is the massively overhauled Anarchy Online engine) and AoC uses both zone instancing and personal instancing.

Let me just say, stay thy fears people. :) In an interview on ZAM.com, Funcoms Creative Director and lead of The Secret World, Ragnar Tornquest, states how much he dislikes instancing and plans to use it only sparingly in TSW. :)

 

"ZAM: Based on some of the gameplay footage, it looked like you could go into this modern day world. Since this is based on our Earth, you've got to have some game zones. Will there be zoning? Instancing? How big is the game world going to be, and how open is it going to be, versus how instanced?

Ragnar: I'm not a fan of instancing at all. That really sort of bugs me all the time, but some people don't care at all. We're going to avoid instances as much as possible. Instancing is something that you sometimes have to do to protect newbies - especially at launch. Our playfields are very large. We want to avoid loading screens. For example, going from London to New England isn't going to be like clicking a map and seeing a red dot go from one place to another, that's not what it's going to be like. It's going to be seamless. There's going to be very little loading, and hopefully it's going to be instantaneous. We want you to be able to move in a way that fits the mythology of the game, that actually makes sense. It's not going to be like "what the hell? Why am I in New England right now? I was just in London!" It's going to actually make sense. I can't explain why it's going to make sense, but it will make sense. There might be some instancing. We're going to have instances and places like dungeons, or something we'll call dungeons, and those will be more team based experiences. Those will be instanced. The open world stuff we're going to try to avoid instancing as much as possible. We want to make sure that you feel like you're in a living, open world, and you're traveling around that and exploring it. Like I said, our playing fields are large and they are epic and it's going to feel that way, yet you're going to be able to travel seamlessly. Lots of promises, but we'll see. I just don't like instancing, so we'll try to avoid those."

 

So good news for the 'I hate instancing' crowd. :)

 

Oh, the entire interview can be found here;

www.zam.com/story.html

 

PROMISES!!! he literally says that they will avoid instancing in the open world. See highlighted red text above.  At this point in time most people won't have a high-end PC to play a MMO with such graphics and without instancing. I don't care about instancing, what I HATE is the damn waiting time :b