Instances are great, the only time in mmorpg's were I feel like in a hero is in an instance and towns actually become bustling areas to meet and communicate and trade, I'd agree that the world feels a little less natural at times but nothing shatters the real feeling and the illusion that your a hero by seeing bots running around, or seeing respawns constantly, with an instanced world areas can be layed out to make it more challenging and fun. You can easily meet anybody, if you have friends in real life who want to come play and your on a full server then what happens? My dream mmo is almost entirely instanced and populated by thousands of non heroic npc's, who react to your deeds, like in fabel, you do good and the game world changes, seeing people jumping like goofy rabbits really makes roleplaying a hero difficult. Seeing another group kill the exact same dude that you killed a minute earlier does more to make the world feel gamey than an instance ever can.
There are So many options for good fantasy mmo's with persistent worlds, we all know this like every mmo it will be the same exact game, kill, loot, organise inventory, organise skills, get stuff, get mire powerfull to kill more powerful bad dudes, sell stuff, mine, sew etc allmost all make you feel very lame, han solo never looted greedo and rarely changed gear, a heros deeds define how the world views him, as far as I'm concerned instanced or persistent it doesn't really matter, it'll just be another port of d&d pen and paper on the computer, we gotta have something different where the game rewards role playing and doesn't punish it. The last of my concers is weather the world is persistent of instanced.
Games like you describe are a lot of fun, but they're Co-Op and single player games, not MMORPG's.
I was captivated by the Elder Scrolls video until they touted this game-breaker as if its a good thing. They basically just admitted the game will be heavily sharded/instanced all in one server. What this means is you will have a world much like Star Trek Online, Age of Conan, TOR and other flop MMO's that makes you and other players invisible to each other even when you're standing in the same Inn/house/landscape until you click a little button that swaps you into another version of that zone.
I really hate this retarded direction ALL MMO's are taking now. There's nothing MMO about them, just cheaper server architecture to ease the workload in return for a weaker player experience and community. Then you have games like Planetside 2, an MMOFPS that happily allows thousands of players to be connected simultaneously in one server zone. Maybe i'm just an old-schooler who enjoyed the days of SWG, EVE and WOW when everything you were experiencing was being experienced by other players too. You never missed a thing. Now it's all about minimizing waiting for 'mobs' to spawn and creating a streamlined fast-track experience for players which completely detracts from the real MMO experience of community, patience and dedication.
We're moving into the future of gaming but game development appears to be going backwards. Instead of creating BIGGER worlds with MORE quests and MORE ways to level, they are creating SMALLER worlds and INSTANCING them to sh*t instead. I just don't get it. There's no boldness in developing any more, only shortcuts and unoriginal 'creativity'. I would have thought of all developers the Elder Scrolls team would be brave and bold with their development but it looks like i was wrong.
I despise instancing!
LISTEN ALL, Basically this is a very very good thing, you know how many of my friends on GW2 could not join my server? yo uknow what happened on SWTOR when masses stopped playing? dead low pop servers, you know this direction of single servers is the way forward in a massive leap, when you have 1 servers everyone can play together unrestricted, when peopel quit aftr 2 months the server is still populated and feels the same because we are all on 1 server and 1 community, planetside 2 only holds a few hundred people per continent, hence the ques and so on.
The fact is you want single servers for what? no valid reason at all. with 1 server when you meet a guy at work who playt the game there sno of dam we on seperate servers, i gota pay £18 to join you lets not bother, its cool lets play together.
EvE Online is 1 server and do peopel complain about 50,000 people logged on at once?
SWTOR before they used basicallymega servers were dead and long ques and boring.
Single servers are the only way forward for mmo's to keep the community alive, the population healthy and friends together.
I would like a fantasy MMO that has a single server like EVE... the only instancing EVE has is the missions and that's like going on a dungeon run in WoW, basically.. but no group finder, make your own group by >gasp< talking to people. And I like the PVP too, generally I don't like open PVP 'cause it's a gank fest, but EVE isn't.. you choose how much riak you want to put yourself in by where you play, and the greater the risk the greater the reward. I enjoy being able to log in at 4am US time and having people around to talk to in local. Even in WoW on a high pop server it wasa pain in the ass to find people to play with at that time 'cause they divided the players up into RL geographic regions so much.
Originally posted by FistyMayhem I would like a fantasy MMO that has a single server like EVE... the only instancing EVE has is the missions and that's like going on a dungeon run in WoW, basically.. but no group finder, make your own group by >gasp< talking to people. And I like the PVP too, generally I don't like open PVP 'cause it's a gank fest, but EVE isn't.. you choose how much riak you want to put yourself in by where you play, and the greater the risk the greater the reward. I enjoy being able to log in at 4am US time and having people around to talk to in local. Even in WoW on a high pop server it wasa pain in the ass to find people to play with at that time 'cause they divided the players up into RL geographic regions so much.
Thats another point i forgot to say in my post, 1 server = servers are always active and populated no matter what time you play, i play games alot living in UK till around 4am, most eu servers are totally dead by 1am so this massivly helps everyone.
Comments
Games like you describe are a lot of fun, but they're Co-Op and single player games, not MMORPG's.
LISTEN ALL, Basically this is a very very good thing, you know how many of my friends on GW2 could not join my server? yo uknow what happened on SWTOR when masses stopped playing? dead low pop servers, you know this direction of single servers is the way forward in a massive leap, when you have 1 servers everyone can play together unrestricted, when peopel quit aftr 2 months the server is still populated and feels the same because we are all on 1 server and 1 community, planetside 2 only holds a few hundred people per continent, hence the ques and so on.
The fact is you want single servers for what? no valid reason at all. with 1 server when you meet a guy at work who playt the game there sno of dam we on seperate servers, i gota pay £18 to join you lets not bother, its cool lets play together.
EvE Online is 1 server and do peopel complain about 50,000 people logged on at once?
SWTOR before they used basicallymega servers were dead and long ques and boring.
Single servers are the only way forward for mmo's to keep the community alive, the population healthy and friends together.
Thats another point i forgot to say in my post, 1 server = servers are always active and populated no matter what time you play, i play games alot living in UK till around 4am, most eu servers are totally dead by 1am so this massivly helps everyone.