I prefer instancing because as I said before a instanced Zone allows me to experience PvE and PvP ruleset on the same server. Thats Excellent in my book.
That's some very bad design in my book.
The truth is, if AoC had a good pvp system there would be no need for separate servers. Look at Lineage 2 for 1 example. Even though L2 is one of the best pvp games, it's system was designed in such a way that it allows pve and pvp to cohabit nicely. Everyone is happy and it allows for more freedom and immersion in a non-zoned seamless world.
What did Funcom do with AoC? They based their pvp system around ganking (player wants pvp gear and points -> he moves to pve zones to gank low HP players as he thinks, even if he is wrong, that this will be the fastest way for him to get his gear). The AoC developers say that ganking allows for more pvp so they encourage it; even frustrating many pvp players but they don't seem to care if they are losing players, do they.
With AoC, Funcom have copied the 90% of the L2 pvp system; they wanted to change the last 10% and made a ganking game out of it.
Finally let me also underline a very annoying aspect of seamless worlds. Seamless world MMOs have very poor density of fun stations as in you have to run 15 min in a low detail boring world between every fun thing to do. MMO developers love this shit because they can just generate squaremiles after squaremiles of grass and by doing so having added hours of content. Think of the Barrens in WOW. Do you think it is a coincident that it takes like 15 min to run accross that shit... NO, it's by design, things are supposed to take long time. Is fun to run the Barrens, NO, we hate it.
Many of us play to be immersed in an mmorpg WORLD. Of course it takes some time to run accross a world.
You want to play a zoned and multi-layered instanced GAME, that's the difference.
If I want to play just a GAME I don't play mmorpgs, I play tetris, pacman, counter strike, or whatever.
You miss my point. we all know that there are limitations to how detailed a MMO world can be made, and by making the playzone bigger you take out content and details. In fact it is a lot of the time such that the center of the seamless world maps is nothing but a huge boring field of grass. As little detail as possible, BUT it take god damn 20 min to run across it. Grass running is not my idea of fun. This is something MMOers should be aware of, seamless world developers use that huge grass field all the time to suck player hours out of the players. That is not ok in my book. It's borderline boring
One example: Wow has shown, especially with its lastest expansions, that a world can be very detailed and seamless.
As for AoC, take a higher level swift horse and you will see how running through a zone will take only a couple minutes. These mini zones are making the world feel small and disconnected.
AoC has some great lore with stories, immersive world effects like weather, etc... Why put all of these immersive world effects in a game if you then break the feeling with mini zones ? They could just as well spend less time on these things and add more pve grind.
For your first body of text, you are off the ball completely. On a AoC server a high level player can not move to a low level zone and gank without consequences. On a PvE server it is just all together impossible because there is no PvP in the regular questing open world. People (wether high or low level) have to travel to the borderlands to PvP, meaning that noone will be exposed to PvP unless they want to. Then again you also have the various minigames that offer PvP but in separate Tiers so that people on more or less the same level will compete against eachother. The apprentice facilitates this even more. On a PvP server, there is PvP in all zones, but there are consequences for being a jackass. You get murderpoints and the society will punish people playing like jackasses. So it's not quite like what you describe. First of all players can choose PvE or PvP of which PvE is full controll over when you want to PvP. On PvP server you are more exposed, yes, but you are still protected by the consequence system.
I am currently still playing on the AoC PVE and PVP servers (and have been for months, taking some breaks here and there), so I know very well what I am talking about.
Yes I know the pvp on the pve servers is completely zoned off.
What I was saying is that with a GOOD pvp system, pve and pvp could be together on the same sever, no need to separate the servers. Funcom unfortunately implemented a system based around ganking, so this wasn't possible.
The consequence system is not protecting anything. There is some excessive ganking as the whole system is based on and encouraging it. Griefers don't care if you want to retaliate, they find their fun in annoying others and together with the other players they are farming players to get their gear - and low HP players allow for some faster kills (even if xp is lowered they don't care - it's still faster than dying against full HP players). So as long as they will see low HP bars for some easy kills they will find their fun in the game.
One way to improve this situation while keeping the system as it is would be to hide the health bars in pvp (other games like L2 have shown for years that doing this lowers the ganking). Low HP bars are magnets for gankers, remove this magnet and you remove a part of the problem (to do this they would also have to display the maximized fatality chances differently, like for example with some character status, buf icon or highlight the skill buttons when the fatality chances are maximized).
Until then, you will be running around with a HUGE "GANK ME" sign over your head.
Comments
You miss my point. we all know that there are limitations to how detailed a MMO world can be made, and by making the playzone bigger you take out content and details. In fact it is a lot of the time such that the center of the seamless world maps is nothing but a huge boring field of grass. As little detail as possible, BUT it take god damn 20 min to run across it. Grass running is not my idea of fun. This is something MMOers should be aware of, seamless world developers use that huge grass field all the time to suck player hours out of the players. That is not ok in my book. It's borderline boring
One example: Wow has shown, especially with its lastest expansions, that a world can be very detailed and seamless.
As for AoC, take a higher level swift horse and you will see how running through a zone will take only a couple minutes. These mini zones are making the world feel small and disconnected.
AoC has some great lore with stories, immersive world effects like weather, etc... Why put all of these immersive world effects in a game if you then break the feeling with mini zones ? They could just as well spend less time on these things and add more pve grind.
For your first body of text, you are off the ball completely. On a AoC server a high level player can not move to a low level zone and gank without consequences. On a PvE server it is just all together impossible because there is no PvP in the regular questing open world. People (wether high or low level) have to travel to the borderlands to PvP, meaning that noone will be exposed to PvP unless they want to. Then again you also have the various minigames that offer PvP but in separate Tiers so that people on more or less the same level will compete against eachother. The apprentice facilitates this even more. On a PvP server, there is PvP in all zones, but there are consequences for being a jackass. You get murderpoints and the society will punish people playing like jackasses. So it's not quite like what you describe. First of all players can choose PvE or PvP of which PvE is full controll over when you want to PvP. On PvP server you are more exposed, yes, but you are still protected by the consequence system.
I am currently still playing on the AoC PVE and PVP servers (and have been for months, taking some breaks here and there), so I know very well what I am talking about.
Yes I know the pvp on the pve servers is completely zoned off.
What I was saying is that with a GOOD pvp system, pve and pvp could be together on the same sever, no need to separate the servers. Funcom unfortunately implemented a system based around ganking, so this wasn't possible.
The consequence system is not protecting anything. There is some excessive ganking as the whole system is based on and encouraging it. Griefers don't care if you want to retaliate, they find their fun in annoying others and together with the other players they are farming players to get their gear - and low HP players allow for some faster kills (even if xp is lowered they don't care - it's still faster than dying against full HP players). So as long as they will see low HP bars for some easy kills they will find their fun in the game.
One way to improve this situation while keeping the system as it is would be to hide the health bars in pvp (other games like L2 have shown for years that doing this lowers the ganking). Low HP bars are magnets for gankers, remove this magnet and you remove a part of the problem (to do this they would also have to display the maximized fatality chances differently, like for example with some character status, buf icon or highlight the skill buttons when the fatality chances are maximized).
Until then, you will be running around with a HUGE "GANK ME" sign over your head.