Originally posted by Lydon I was just wondering...why do people keep mentioning loading screens being long and tedious? In Guild Wars it takes around 5 seconds to switch from one area to another. When entering a WoW instance its the same for me too...
How many loading screens do you see in life as you go from work to home? Or you go from the the kitchen to the rest room? Dungeons and loading screens I think most people can deal with but outside of that instance loading in the rest of the game world can become very annoying.
Games I've played/tried out:WAR, LOTRO, Tabula Rasa, AoC, EQ1, EQ2, WoW, Vangaurd, FFXI, D&DO, Lineage 2, Saga Of Ryzom, EvE Online, DAoC, Guild Wars,Star Wars Galaxies, Hell Gate London, Auto Assault, Grando Espada ( AKA SoTNW ), Archlord, CoV/H, Star Trek Online, APB, Champions Online, FFXIV, Rift Online, GW2.
Instanced games always seem to kill it for me, it just feels like a lazy, easier way to make a MMO, most likely because I was spoilt by games like UO,SWG and Planetside.
If I want instanced RPG I can play lots of single player games that have it. I play MMO's for immersion and the sense to being in another world.
Some people like instanced games, thats cool, but I can't help but feel developers are going backwards with their style of how to make a MMO.
How many loading screens do you see in life as you go from work to home? Or you go from the the kitchen to the rest room? Dungeons and loading screens I think most people can deal with but outside of that instance loading in the rest of the game world can become very annoying.
I'm specifically talking about people complaining about loading screens between areas. As I said, my experience so far has come to the point of me not noticing them anymore.
For those of u who said that instance take care of mod camper, well doesn't really, it help alittle, For example in Age of Conan, if huge number of people doing the same quest like kill 30 of this then all 16 of the instance of the place is full, now instead of having faster respawns, you have to jump through all 16 of the instance trying to find a few mod to kill to add up to 30, instance jumping is very annoying.
alone of the annoying instance jumping comes the beloved loading screen (-_-)
as it was said before, instancing take the first M out of "MMORPGs , which is massive". Many games now focus on soloing, like WOW and AoC, that take the second M out of "MMORPGs , which is multiplayer ." Now we are left with ORPG. which is the same as offline RPG.
Sure call me "the stick in the mud old schoolers"-Siobabble. but some of these game should change their game genre title from MMORGPs to ORPG or Just RPG.
Just because million of people started their mmorpg adventure in WOW doesn't mean it the best or bases of what a mmorpg is.
as it was said before, instancing take the first M out of "MMORPGs , which is massive". Many games now focus on soloing, like WOW and AoC, that take the second M out of "MMORPGs , which is multiplayer ." Now we are left with ORPG. which is the same as offline RPG.
Rofl I love that one.
Although I don't think WoW is focused on soloing.
MMO played (paid): AION DragonRaja Dungeons & Dragons Online Lineage Lineage 2 Tibia Ultima Online Warhammer Online World of Warcraft
MMO tried: Atlantica Online Darkfall Dead Frontier Dungeon Runners EverQuest Lord of the Rings Online Monster Hunter Frontier Online Ragnarok Online Requiem Runes of Magic Runescape The 4th Coming
as it was said before, instancing take the first M out of "MMORPGs , which is massive". Many games now focus on soloing, like WOW and AoC, that take the second M out of "MMORPGs , which is multiplayer ." Now we are left with ORPG. which is the same as offline RPG.
Rofl I love that one.
Although I don't think WoW is focused on soloing.
Dunno about "focused", but as a newbie WoW player I'm finding very little reason to get a group and, on the occasions when I want to group up, I'm finding it difficult to get a group. That's WoW, the "seamless" (barring all the mountains and impassable forest and weird city pass-throughs and so forth) world with only a handful of pre-level-70, pre-raid instances.
I compare this to City of Heroes, which has massive amounts of instances and zones everywhere. Sure, I didn't see a lot of people standing around beating up people on the street; most of my passive encounters with other players was seeing someone fly by or loitering at the Consignment House or a trainer. And yet I teamed up constantly, rarely with the same group twice. The reasons? The game made it very worthwhile to team, with reactive instances playing a very large role in that, and it provided extremely good teaming tools (search interface, Sidekicking/Exemplaring, and so forth).
When it comes to "massive" and "multiplayer" I find the ability to randomly run across some guy in a non-instanced world to be far, far less important than the incentive and ability to interact.
Yeah, waiting in line to kill a specific named mob that spawns ever 30 minutes while group a is waiting to get a drop is real immersive.
2) Griefers.
Spawn camping to keep players from getting a drop. Yeah, that's real fun.
3) 60 people in a dungeon designed for 10.
Oh yeah, more fun.
4) Train.
The worst word in an open MMO. Some r-tard pulls something his group can't handle and off they run. They bring every mob they happen upon on thier way to the zone or dungeon exit. Everyone who is in line with the train tends to die, unless they're lucky enough to escape.
Instances are both good and bad. It's the way things are developing.
Over instancing is bad, unless the game is designed and marketed that way.
There needs to be a reasonable balance of open and instanced dungeons.
That's WoW, the "seamless" (barring all the mountains and impassable forest and weird city pass-throughs and so forth)
Wrong game. You're thinking of another. Impassable forests? Weird city pass-throughs? Mountains... yeah, at least till you get a flying mount or take a flight path and then those are passable too. What are you talkin' about?
I disagree with the "it breaks immersion" rubbish. That's just either a crappy game design or your choice of moaning over something.
The one thing Guild Wars had going for it despite being instance heavy that a lot of other MMO's fail to pick up is an "immersive" story. The whole instancing situation there allows the player to be take centre stage and be the hero without giving you the impression of "oh well nine thousand people around me are doing the exact same thing" (Yes I understand they ARE but for all intents and purposes you're not constantly reminded of it.)
Additionally, it does allow for time-specific situations to be occuring. For example the fugitive escorts over the Shiverpeaks in the original game was linked to your quest log. If you hadn't completed the respective quest, the fugitive lines would be harrassed by centaurs.On completion of the quest though, each time you re-zone you get the fugitives trickling through without being harrassed anymore (since you took them out) this is near enough impossible to do in an open world. Indeed sometimes while an open world is handy for the various benefits it brings, one of those that it usually fails on is bringing an immersive storyline or role for your character. City of Heroes for example always has you feeling as if you're a backwater hero rather than a SUPER-hero... but yeah that's my view
Instances are just more useful in pvp situations and poor game design for pve type games.
So games like gw, definitely benefit from using tons of instances. Where as games like Vanguard would suffer for it, as its trying to promote a persistent world and have a healthy economy.
I personally am not a big fan of instances, but when I pvp I do prefer instance type pvp, like battlegrounds and realm vs realm type combat etc.
The instancing in GW works great for what the game is. Instancing for most MMO's however totally breaks the game up and when combined with games geared for the solo/casual player basically creates a single player game that thousands of people are playing simultaneously instead of a multiplayer game.
AoC is a great example of that in my opinion. At level 50 I had only grouped or even felt the slightest need to group about 6 or 7 times. It was difficult to get a group because the vast majority of people are in the single player portion of the game and dont want to take the time to group at just that moment. Most groups only last about an hour tops and the interaction between group members is typically very low with at least half the people just along for the ride to complete one or two quests before going back to solo mode. I even joined half a dozen different guilds with about the same result. I got more interaction from the few random groups that I joined than from even the guilds I joined.
While this playstyle is great for some I am sure, its definately not for me.
I think that not all here are clear as to the difference between zones and instances. "Instances" are multiple instances (lol) of the same zone. Zoning is just the loading between areas. I apologize for those who knew this, but it seems like it's getting confused.
Whether you hate zoning general or you hate having multiple instances of the same zone, I feel that it is going to be used more and more in upcoming titles. If for no other reason then performance. I hear everyone talking about the "immersion" factor, but come on, isn't that ruined the first time you see the name "ipeefreely" or "wheresthebeef" or “tampoontheimpaler”? I met a guy the other day named “fagatron”. I sure there were plenty of people running about in the ol days named fagatron.
Why can't instancing and immersion live hand and hand should be the question. I don't have an issue with it. Can't you feel immersed in an instance? I do.
Hello, fellow MMOers! As you may very well know already from reading the title, I am curious why there's been this noticeable hatred towards instances in MMOs in the forum: Are instances really that horrible? Take the quintessential instance-heavy game, Guild Wars. Recently, I got back into it and am loving it again. I remember last time that I quit partly due to the game being too team-based but also partly because it was too instanced. Then I went and tried a bunch of free (and crappy) MMOs, as well as gems like LOTRO and WOW (I'm still playing WOW a bit on the side). I finally realized what I'd been missing with GW and came back full-circle. The point is that, at least to me, seamless environments shared by everyone, while very typical and "appropriate" to MMOs, don't really give that big of an advantage. I mean, partying up with people works just as well in GW as in WOW, and I can't really imagine having a party of more than 8 and getting any extra survivability out of it (unless of course you're talking about end-game, which is just one facet of the MMO experience). Of course, there are the massive PvP events, which are more straight-forward and open-ended in non-instanced MMOs; but then again, GW has one of the most intricate PvP systems to date! Here's what I think: A game like GW with extensive instancing gives players the choice between single player mode (like in Oblivion and other off-line RPGs) and team play with other players. Albeit an illusion (since I still need an internet connection for it), single player mode is at times more favorable than inescapable immersion. The bottom line is that, with such instancing as in GW, there is choice. For all of you instance-haters out there: Please explain to me your position! Thanks.
I personally think it depends what MMORPG you first played. If you're used to the seamless environment, playing guildwars would just be dull, but if you don't mind the instanced areas, seamless would maybe feel too open ended.
I like a mix between the two,
regular non instanced maps, then dungeons that are instanced, much like WoW.
I personally think it depends what MMORPG you first played. If you're used to the seamless environment, playing guildwars would just be dull, but if you don't mind the instanced areas, seamless would maybe feel too open ended.
I like a mix between the two, regular non instanced maps, then dungeons that are instanced, much like WoW.
GW's system is no problem at all. Just don't call it an MMO.
That's WoW, the "seamless" (barring all the mountains and impassable forest and weird city pass-throughs and so forth)
Wrong game. You're thinking of another. Impassable forests? Weird city pass-throughs? Mountains... yeah, at least till you get a flying mount or take a flight path and then those are passable too. What are you talkin' about?
Tangential to the main point, but:
I'm talking about the 'bottlenecks' when you're traveling on the ground and have the ability to interact with the environment (unlike, say, taking a flight path). WoW does a good job of masking them, such as the dogleg at the Org gate, the lift to go down to Thousand Needles, those gates between sections of Silvermoon, and so forth. They create these barriers to help with zone transitions while the game loads up data.
Compare this to SWG where, one you're on a planet, you have very few barriers to travel. You pick a direction and go -- on foot, on a landspeeder, whatever. That's open-world travel (which caused (causes?) problems when you came to an invisible-but-still-there 'seam', but anyhow...)
It's a minor point, but I just find WoW a lot less "open, zoneless world" than a lot of people. Less loading screens, but there's still very fixed paths from point A to B.
EDIT: ...and yet it's still a more open world with far less instances than City of Heroes, despite the fact I massively multiplayed in City of Heroes far more than in WoW. Which was my point.
Because, instances are (in most cases) just a pathetic attempt at reacreating the single player RPG experience. Sorry, but single player RPGs are much, much, MUCH better at scripted encounters than any MMO will ever be.
The other issue is that, yes, instances divide the game world and the community. It's not really very massive if you're constantly pushing players into little, secluded worlds. What you end up with (at the extreme end) is an empty game world, where nearly all of the players are off in some instance.
Also, I can't agree with the idea that you need instances to solve all of the old problems. Spawn camping? Don't design your game around killing some stupid named mob that just respawns when ever it's killed. Thats just weak.
WoW's old lands (Azeroth) are filled with bottlenecks but Outland (the expansion zone) isn't. Not once you have a flying mount anyway. With the flying mount you're free to go anywhere you want pretty much.
That is not to say that WoW is completely open. But it is more open than Age of Conan or City of Heroes/Villains. The thing is that having an open world, as opposed to an instanced one, does not guarantee a better game but it does enhance the experience by making the game more immersive.
It also depends on how instancing is handled. I don't mind instancing in CoH much because of the way it's handled. You look on the main map, see where you want to go and head in that direction. Now AoC took instancing to a whole new level and the zones feel separate, there is no feeling of a "world". Because if you look on the main map and you want to go to a zone south of your location, the NPC who will take you there may be east, or north. Which makes no sense a lot of times.
All-in-all, instancing is fine if it's handled properly. The way instancing is done in AoC is a huge immersion breaker.
That's WoW, the "seamless" (barring all the mountains and impassable forest and weird city pass-throughs and so forth)
Wrong game. You're thinking of another. Impassable forests? Weird city pass-throughs? Mountains... yeah, at least till you get a flying mount or take a flight path and then those are passable too. What are you talkin' about?
I'm talking about the 'bottlenecks' when you're traveling on the ground and have the ability to interact with the environment (unlike, say, taking a flight path). WoW does a good job of masking them, such as the dogleg at the Org gate, the lift to go down to Thousand Needles, those gates between sections of Silvermoon, and so forth. They create these barriers to help with zone transitions while the game loads up data.
Well I don't really see what those things have to do with impassable forests, but assuming you are correct and they were put there to help with smooth transitions (which personally I think is a bit of a reach unless you have some kind of knowledge you would like to share, like maybe you were part of the design or development team), that was a bit of stroke of genius in my mind because until you brought it up, it had never even occurred to me that I was being duped. Silly me.
You live in a seamless open world for your contacts, your professions, your open world quests, the auction house, world PvP, open world raids in PVE rewards, ... and dozens of other options.
And then at night you go to the theater to watch a show or go to a football match and play or watch a game in a stadium.
But the rest is open world. You just choose what you want.
In games cut up with loading screens, loading zones and instances (copys) of zones.... there is no choice...
In Conan I felt like being closed up in a small room with each time a loading screen I opened up a door and with "friends" that were like "ghosts" talking to me without seeing them even IF I was in the same room with them.
That's WoW, the "seamless" (barring all the mountains and impassable forest and weird city pass-throughs and so forth)
Wrong game. You're thinking of another. Impassable forests? Weird city pass-throughs? Mountains... yeah, at least till you get a flying mount or take a flight path and then those are passable too. What are you talkin' about?
I'm talking about the 'bottlenecks' when you're traveling on the ground and have the ability to interact with the environment (unlike, say, taking a flight path). WoW does a good job of masking them, such as the dogleg at the Org gate, the lift to go down to Thousand Needles, those gates between sections of Silvermoon, and so forth. They create these barriers to help with zone transitions while the game loads up data.
Well I don't really see what those things have to do with impassable forests, but assuming you are correct and they were put there to help with smooth transitions (which personally I think is a bit of a reach unless you have some kind of knowledge you would like to share, like maybe you were part of the design or development team), that was a bit of stroke of genius in my mind because until you brought it up, it had never even occurred to me that I was being duped. Silly me.
Wow has NO impassible forests. Ridicolous. I think TBC is the most open ended world - without loading screens in OUTLAND- you can think of.
It's a avery nice programming job and second place goes to LOTRO, but they still use the 2D/3D model at the edges of the world. But they also did it in a very polished and believable world. They lacked the full 3D personal flying mounts, but it was a very good programming effort.
That's WoW, the "seamless" (barring all the mountains and impassable forest and weird city pass-throughs and so forth)
Wrong game. You're thinking of another. Impassable forests? Weird city pass-throughs? Mountains... yeah, at least till you get a flying mount or take a flight path and then those are passable too. What are you talkin' about?
I'm talking about the 'bottlenecks' when you're traveling on the ground and have the ability to interact with the environment (unlike, say, taking a flight path). WoW does a good job of masking them, such as the dogleg at the Org gate, the lift to go down to Thousand Needles, those gates between sections of Silvermoon, and so forth. They create these barriers to help with zone transitions while the game loads up data.
Well I don't really see what those things have to do with impassable forests, but assuming you are correct and they were put there to help with smooth transitions (which personally I think is a bit of a reach unless you have some kind of knowledge you would like to share, like maybe you were part of the design or development team), that was a bit of stroke of genius in my mind because until you brought it up, it had never even occurred to me that I was being duped. Silly me.
Wow has NO impassible forests. Ridicolous. I think TBC is the most open ended world - without loading screens in OUTLAND- you can think of.
It's a avery nice programming job and second place goes to LOTRO, but they still use the 2D/3D model at the edges of the world. But they also did it in a very polished and believable world. They lacked the full 3D personal flying mounts, but it was a very good programming effort.
To be fair though, LotRO is restricted by Lord of the Rings Lore, regarding flying mounts.
WoW did an amazing job on zoning and instancing. You're only regulated to private instances for you and your group, raid, and BGs. Everything else is non-instanced. WoW's zoning is amazing too. It uses zoning when you need to cross continents or planets, which makes sense.
Anyway, everything has pretty much been said in this thread, and the majority oppose heavy instancing and zoning. :P
Because, instances are (in most cases) just a pathetic attempt at reacreating the single player RPG experience. Sorry, but single player RPGs are much, much, MUCH better at scripted encounters than any MMO will ever be. The other issue is that, yes, instances divide the game world and the community. It's not really very massive if you're constantly pushing players into little, secluded worlds. What you end up with (at the extreme end) is an empty game world, where nearly all of the players are off in some instance. Also, I can't agree with the idea that you need instances to solve all of the old problems. Spawn camping? Don't design your game around killing some stupid named mob that just respawns when ever it's killed. Thats just weak.
Exactly. The notion that instancing is required to solve camping or killstilling is retarded. There are many mechanics and designs that would eliminate those issues without instancing.
Comments
How many loading screens do you see in life as you go from work to home? Or you go from the the kitchen to the rest room? Dungeons and loading screens I think most people can deal with but outside of that instance loading in the rest of the game world can become very annoying.
Games I've played/tried out:WAR, LOTRO, Tabula Rasa, AoC, EQ1, EQ2, WoW, Vangaurd, FFXI, D&DO, Lineage 2, Saga Of Ryzom, EvE Online, DAoC, Guild Wars,Star Wars Galaxies, Hell Gate London, Auto Assault, Grando Espada ( AKA SoTNW ), Archlord, CoV/H, Star Trek Online, APB, Champions Online, FFXIV, Rift Online, GW2.
Game(s) I Am Currently Playing:
GW2 (+LoL and BF3)
Instanced games always seem to kill it for me, it just feels like a lazy, easier way to make a MMO, most likely because I was spoilt by games like UO,SWG and Planetside.
If I want instanced RPG I can play lots of single player games that have it. I play MMO's for immersion and the sense to being in another world.
Some people like instanced games, thats cool, but I can't help but feel developers are going backwards with their style of how to make a MMO.
I'm specifically talking about people complaining about loading screens between areas. As I said, my experience so far has come to the point of me not noticing them anymore.
For those of u who said that instance take care of mod camper, well doesn't really, it help alittle, For example in Age of Conan, if huge number of people doing the same quest like kill 30 of this then all 16 of the instance of the place is full, now instead of having faster respawns, you have to jump through all 16 of the instance trying to find a few mod to kill to add up to 30, instance jumping is very annoying.
alone of the annoying instance jumping comes the beloved loading screen (-_-)
as it was said before, instancing take the first M out of "MMORPGs , which is massive". Many games now focus on soloing, like WOW and AoC, that take the second M out of "MMORPGs , which is multiplayer ." Now we are left with ORPG. which is the same as offline RPG.
Sure call me "the stick in the mud old schoolers"-Siobabble. but some of these game should change their game genre title from MMORGPs to ORPG or Just RPG.
Just because million of people started their mmorpg adventure in WOW doesn't mean it the best or bases of what a mmorpg is.
Rofl I love that one.
Although I don't think WoW is focused on soloing.
MMO played (paid):
AION
DragonRaja
Dungeons & Dragons Online
Lineage
Lineage 2
Tibia
Ultima Online
Warhammer Online
World of Warcraft
MMO tried:
Atlantica Online
Darkfall
Dead Frontier
Dungeon Runners
EverQuest
Lord of the Rings Online
Monster Hunter Frontier Online
Ragnarok Online
Requiem
Runes of Magic
Runescape
The 4th Coming
and some other Chinese/Korean or beta MMOs
Rofl I love that one.
Although I don't think WoW is focused on soloing.
Dunno about "focused", but as a newbie WoW player I'm finding very little reason to get a group and, on the occasions when I want to group up, I'm finding it difficult to get a group. That's WoW, the "seamless" (barring all the mountains and impassable forest and weird city pass-throughs and so forth) world with only a handful of pre-level-70, pre-raid instances.
I compare this to City of Heroes, which has massive amounts of instances and zones everywhere. Sure, I didn't see a lot of people standing around beating up people on the street; most of my passive encounters with other players was seeing someone fly by or loitering at the Consignment House or a trainer. And yet I teamed up constantly, rarely with the same group twice. The reasons? The game made it very worthwhile to team, with reactive instances playing a very large role in that, and it provided extremely good teaming tools (search interface, Sidekicking/Exemplaring, and so forth).
When it comes to "massive" and "multiplayer" I find the ability to randomly run across some guy in a non-instanced world to be far, far less important than the incentive and ability to interact.
Well, instances are the fault of the players.
Why?
1) Spawn camping waiting lines.
Yeah, waiting in line to kill a specific named mob that spawns ever 30 minutes while group a is waiting to get a drop is real immersive.
2) Griefers.
Spawn camping to keep players from getting a drop. Yeah, that's real fun.
3) 60 people in a dungeon designed for 10.
Oh yeah, more fun.
4) Train.
The worst word in an open MMO. Some r-tard pulls something his group can't handle and off they run. They bring every mob they happen upon on thier way to the zone or dungeon exit. Everyone who is in line with the train tends to die, unless they're lucky enough to escape.
Instances are both good and bad. It's the way things are developing.
Over instancing is bad, unless the game is designed and marketed that way.
There needs to be a reasonable balance of open and instanced dungeons.
Aw well.
D&D Home Page - What Class Are You? - Build A Character - D&D Compendium
Wrong game. You're thinking of another. Impassable forests? Weird city pass-throughs? Mountains... yeah, at least till you get a flying mount or take a flight path and then those are passable too. What are you talkin' about?
I disagree with the "it breaks immersion" rubbish. That's just either a crappy game design or your choice of moaning over something.
The one thing Guild Wars had going for it despite being instance heavy that a lot of other MMO's fail to pick up is an "immersive" story. The whole instancing situation there allows the player to be take centre stage and be the hero without giving you the impression of "oh well nine thousand people around me are doing the exact same thing" (Yes I understand they ARE but for all intents and purposes you're not constantly reminded of it.)
Additionally, it does allow for time-specific situations to be occuring. For example the fugitive escorts over the Shiverpeaks in the original game was linked to your quest log. If you hadn't completed the respective quest, the fugitive lines would be harrassed by centaurs.On completion of the quest though, each time you re-zone you get the fugitives trickling through without being harrassed anymore (since you took them out) this is near enough impossible to do in an open world. Indeed sometimes while an open world is handy for the various benefits it brings, one of those that it usually fails on is bringing an immersive storyline or role for your character. City of Heroes for example always has you feeling as if you're a backwater hero rather than a SUPER-hero... but yeah that's my view
Instances or Zones?,.. they are different.
I see ppl talking about instances, but are really zones.
with regards to seamless world, .. thats zones!!.
and to me there is nothing wrong with zones, all it is, is a line you cross, then a quick load screen,and your
into the next area.
Instances kill immersion, and community. zones are fine.
Does anyone know how to make a mmoRPG anymore?
Instances are just more useful in pvp situations and poor game design for pve type games.
So games like gw, definitely benefit from using tons of instances. Where as games like Vanguard would suffer for it, as its trying to promote a persistent world and have a healthy economy.
I personally am not a big fan of instances, but when I pvp I do prefer instance type pvp, like battlegrounds and realm vs realm type combat etc.
GW's system is no problem at all. Just don't call it an MMO.
The instancing in GW works great for what the game is. Instancing for most MMO's however totally breaks the game up and when combined with games geared for the solo/casual player basically creates a single player game that thousands of people are playing simultaneously instead of a multiplayer game.
AoC is a great example of that in my opinion. At level 50 I had only grouped or even felt the slightest need to group about 6 or 7 times. It was difficult to get a group because the vast majority of people are in the single player portion of the game and dont want to take the time to group at just that moment. Most groups only last about an hour tops and the interaction between group members is typically very low with at least half the people just along for the ride to complete one or two quests before going back to solo mode. I even joined half a dozen different guilds with about the same result. I got more interaction from the few random groups that I joined than from even the guilds I joined.
While this playstyle is great for some I am sure, its definately not for me.
I think that not all here are clear as to the difference between zones and instances. "Instances" are multiple instances (lol) of the same zone. Zoning is just the loading between areas. I apologize for those who knew this, but it seems like it's getting confused.
I personally think it depends what MMORPG you first played. If you're used to the seamless environment, playing guildwars would just be dull, but if you don't mind the instanced areas, seamless would maybe feel too open ended.
I like a mix between the two,
regular non instanced maps, then dungeons that are instanced, much like WoW.
----------------
Hello!
GW's system is no problem at all. Just don't call it an MMO.
Wrong game. You're thinking of another. Impassable forests? Weird city pass-throughs? Mountains... yeah, at least till you get a flying mount or take a flight path and then those are passable too. What are you talkin' about?
Tangential to the main point, but:
I'm talking about the 'bottlenecks' when you're traveling on the ground and have the ability to interact with the environment (unlike, say, taking a flight path). WoW does a good job of masking them, such as the dogleg at the Org gate, the lift to go down to Thousand Needles, those gates between sections of Silvermoon, and so forth. They create these barriers to help with zone transitions while the game loads up data.
Compare this to SWG where, one you're on a planet, you have very few barriers to travel. You pick a direction and go -- on foot, on a landspeeder, whatever. That's open-world travel (which caused (causes?) problems when you came to an invisible-but-still-there 'seam', but anyhow...)
It's a minor point, but I just find WoW a lot less "open, zoneless world" than a lot of people. Less loading screens, but there's still very fixed paths from point A to B.
EDIT: ...and yet it's still a more open world with far less instances than City of Heroes, despite the fact I massively multiplayed in City of Heroes far more than in WoW. Which was my point.
Because, instances are (in most cases) just a pathetic attempt at reacreating the single player RPG experience. Sorry, but single player RPGs are much, much, MUCH better at scripted encounters than any MMO will ever be.
The other issue is that, yes, instances divide the game world and the community. It's not really very massive if you're constantly pushing players into little, secluded worlds. What you end up with (at the extreme end) is an empty game world, where nearly all of the players are off in some instance.
Also, I can't agree with the idea that you need instances to solve all of the old problems. Spawn camping? Don't design your game around killing some stupid named mob that just respawns when ever it's killed. Thats just weak.
WoW's old lands (Azeroth) are filled with bottlenecks but Outland (the expansion zone) isn't. Not once you have a flying mount anyway. With the flying mount you're free to go anywhere you want pretty much.
That is not to say that WoW is completely open. But it is more open than Age of Conan or City of Heroes/Villains. The thing is that having an open world, as opposed to an instanced one, does not guarantee a better game but it does enhance the experience by making the game more immersive.
It also depends on how instancing is handled. I don't mind instancing in CoH much because of the way it's handled. You look on the main map, see where you want to go and head in that direction. Now AoC took instancing to a whole new level and the zones feel separate, there is no feeling of a "world". Because if you look on the main map and you want to go to a zone south of your location, the NPC who will take you there may be east, or north. Which makes no sense a lot of times.
All-in-all, instancing is fine if it's handled properly. The way instancing is done in AoC is a huge immersion breaker.
Wrong game. You're thinking of another. Impassable forests? Weird city pass-throughs? Mountains... yeah, at least till you get a flying mount or take a flight path and then those are passable too. What are you talkin' about?
I'm talking about the 'bottlenecks' when you're traveling on the ground and have the ability to interact with the environment (unlike, say, taking a flight path). WoW does a good job of masking them, such as the dogleg at the Org gate, the lift to go down to Thousand Needles, those gates between sections of Silvermoon, and so forth. They create these barriers to help with zone transitions while the game loads up data.
Well I don't really see what those things have to do with impassable forests, but assuming you are correct and they were put there to help with smooth transitions (which personally I think is a bit of a reach unless you have some kind of knowledge you would like to share, like maybe you were part of the design or development team), that was a bit of stroke of genius in my mind because until you brought it up, it had never even occurred to me that I was being duped. Silly me.
Like always the best games offer "a" choice.
You live in a seamless open world for your contacts, your professions, your open world quests, the auction house, world PvP, open world raids in PVE rewards, ... and dozens of other options.
And then at night you go to the theater to watch a show or go to a football match and play or watch a game in a stadium.
But the rest is open world. You just choose what you want.
In games cut up with loading screens, loading zones and instances (copys) of zones.... there is no choice...
In Conan I felt like being closed up in a small room with each time a loading screen I opened up a door and with "friends" that were like "ghosts" talking to me without seeing them even IF I was in the same room with them.
Immersive ??? Not in a million years.
Wrong game. You're thinking of another. Impassable forests? Weird city pass-throughs? Mountains... yeah, at least till you get a flying mount or take a flight path and then those are passable too. What are you talkin' about?
I'm talking about the 'bottlenecks' when you're traveling on the ground and have the ability to interact with the environment (unlike, say, taking a flight path). WoW does a good job of masking them, such as the dogleg at the Org gate, the lift to go down to Thousand Needles, those gates between sections of Silvermoon, and so forth. They create these barriers to help with zone transitions while the game loads up data.
Well I don't really see what those things have to do with impassable forests, but assuming you are correct and they were put there to help with smooth transitions (which personally I think is a bit of a reach unless you have some kind of knowledge you would like to share, like maybe you were part of the design or development team), that was a bit of stroke of genius in my mind because until you brought it up, it had never even occurred to me that I was being duped. Silly me.
Wow has NO impassible forests. Ridicolous. I think TBC is the most open ended world - without loading screens in OUTLAND- you can think of.
It's a avery nice programming job and second place goes to LOTRO, but they still use the 2D/3D model at the edges of the world. But they also did it in a very polished and believable world. They lacked the full 3D personal flying mounts, but it was a very good programming effort.
Instances are sorely needed in F2P games, especially due to campers, and folks can't get to fight the beast(s) for their loot/epics.
When a guy or group hogs the goods, you actually want instance gaming.
.:| Kevyne@Shandris - Armory |:. - When WoW was #1 - .:| I AM A HOLY PALADIN - Guild Theme |:.
Wrong game. You're thinking of another. Impassable forests? Weird city pass-throughs? Mountains... yeah, at least till you get a flying mount or take a flight path and then those are passable too. What are you talkin' about?
I'm talking about the 'bottlenecks' when you're traveling on the ground and have the ability to interact with the environment (unlike, say, taking a flight path). WoW does a good job of masking them, such as the dogleg at the Org gate, the lift to go down to Thousand Needles, those gates between sections of Silvermoon, and so forth. They create these barriers to help with zone transitions while the game loads up data.
Well I don't really see what those things have to do with impassable forests, but assuming you are correct and they were put there to help with smooth transitions (which personally I think is a bit of a reach unless you have some kind of knowledge you would like to share, like maybe you were part of the design or development team), that was a bit of stroke of genius in my mind because until you brought it up, it had never even occurred to me that I was being duped. Silly me.
Wow has NO impassible forests. Ridicolous. I think TBC is the most open ended world - without loading screens in OUTLAND- you can think of.
It's a avery nice programming job and second place goes to LOTRO, but they still use the 2D/3D model at the edges of the world. But they also did it in a very polished and believable world. They lacked the full 3D personal flying mounts, but it was a very good programming effort.
To be fair though, LotRO is restricted by Lord of the Rings Lore, regarding flying mounts.
WoW did an amazing job on zoning and instancing. You're only regulated to private instances for you and your group, raid, and BGs. Everything else is non-instanced. WoW's zoning is amazing too. It uses zoning when you need to cross continents or planets, which makes sense.
Anyway, everything has pretty much been said in this thread, and the majority oppose heavy instancing and zoning. :P
Exactly. The notion that instancing is required to solve camping or killstilling is retarded. There are many mechanics and designs that would eliminate those issues without instancing.