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Thoughts of MO?
stryker134
Member Posts: 31
My main question is ...will it be instanced?
Comments
From one of the stickies in the forums:
any instancing?
Depends on what you mean by instancing. I can't give you a full answer yet, but we certainly don't plan on any "instances" where you enter and can't be followed by any friend or foe.
I'm sorry, but it's really too early to tell how we will handle instances/zones. A lot of work is going on here at the moment. But I want to give you at least some idea of what we're dealing with:
When for example entering a city or a cave, a short loading time (and zone-splitting) gives us the opportunity to create really unique content for that zone, both visually and gameplay-wise. It could be specific buildings, creatures, mechanics and so on. This would benefits both PvP and PvE. However, if there are zones the transition must be handled very carefully as to not ruin the everyday PvP. Border-ganking is one of those issues. Another issue is of course that loading time (even as little as say 20 seconds) tends to spoil the feeling of a seamless world. We are of course trying our best to avoid them.
I personally feel that instancing is totally ok when it can be motivated in the game. To give you an example, Arena Fatalis, the large gladiator court in the capital city of Tindrem, will most likely be an instance. In role-playing terms, the arena will simply be "full" when enough people participate and/or spectate. I simply don't think it's necessary for a player to find out that it is "full" by walking in and watch it lag, and possibly spoil the ongoing fights.
However, more info on this later.
instance or zone?
instancing is multiple copies of the same area to deal with load; zoning is one single 'reality' for all players in that area.
MO will be using the latter for sure, dunno about instancing though (and probably neither do the devs yet).
I hope they will avoid multiple zone copies of public zones at all costs. That was the main reason I got fed up with AoC and GW since it implicates all kinds of superficial mechanics to be able to switch between them, it prevents you from chasing that enemy that just killed you since he might have switched instance and since it tends to transform the world into a puzzle of zones, or a maze, rather then having the look and feel of a truly open and vast environment.
In general is a huge hit to people's immersion. Having dungeons instanced isn't a problem with me, though. But instancing the world's public zones with multiple copies is about the worst sin you can commit in mmo development .
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As I read the dev quote from above reply, if they do have instances....it will be for specific functions....his example, " arenas" ....and will be a single instance that will have a population limit that will close the instance when it is reached.
They are considering this for lag control and as I posted on their forum, if they are going to implement that they should put in in a town or other "safe"...."safer" area, where you are much less likely to have pvp traps or players trying to use it as an escape point. I understand trying to control the lag, if they can work around the exploits of this type of zone, and limit it to that kind of thing, I'd think it might be a good idea.
They dont want to have any instances.
That would be fine with me, but the instances in area's where only a certain number will fit idea came from a dev post, not us
What I have heard ... they are going to avoid it as much as possible.
Most Unreal3 engine games have zones. (aka loading screens moving from one territory to another) but they claim they wont do instances.
Let me clear it up. Instances are many versions of the same zone. When people zone in to a zone they can end up in different instances. Only those in same instance can see eachother.
MO will use seamless loading of "zones" as in WoW, but they will avoid instances as much as possible. Most likely not using them at all.
As long as the only things that are instanced are arenas, then it's fine. One massive seamless zone would be awesome.