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Well, you don't have to believe EVERYTHING...
nexen
Member Posts: 55
Oh, you died? Don't worry, in this world, death is temporary: you must wander the lands as a ghost for a while, but if you're able to find your old body, magical forces will enable you to re-enter it and come back to life. No permanent damage done, and no existential disillusion! It's all very well explained, you see. What's that? You want to chase someone into that cave, the one with the swirling airy entrance? You can't, I'm afraid. He'll be in his own private instance. Yeah, you see, the server clones the cave multiple times for every player or group that wants to enter, so you don't get in each others way. Erm, I mean, the magical forces.. they cause a, um, a splice in the ether.. and.. er.....
Full article here
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-nexen-
Comments
Exactly why I've always hated instances (not zones).
Immortal? EVE? They have clones in eve..So when you die, your new clone takes over :O
Edit:
nice read o.o I dont really mind instances but the in game representation of that is that YOU are the hero who kills X boss. sooo of course this would be equating it to a bunch of people playing the same single player game. You killed arthas, they killed arthas, she killed arthas, etc etc.
This is a big problem unless say...Bosses were as abundant as the players such as in dynasty warriors where you kill the lieut and he runs away to fight another day or killing a bunch of nameless strong people who are part of a giant army o.o I dont understand why they dont let bosses n stuff run away though...
''/\/\'' Posted using Iphone bunni
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**This bunny was cloned from bunnies belonging to Gobla and is part of the Quizzical Fanclub and the The Marvelously Meowhead Fan Club**
Yeah, they arn't technically immortal, but at least in all the lore, pod pilots are referred to as being immortals (even sometimes as demigods).
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-nexen-
totally off-top but how am I an "apprentice member" when I've been here for 7 years and have the same number of posts as an elite member whos been here for a few months?
I mean, I get it - it's based only on recent posts, but you'd think the system would be a bit better if it was half-and-half, yknow?
:mmorpg.com boggle:
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-nexen-
You gotta grind your forum rep =P.
If you are willing to accept that a mob will respawn after you killed it then why would you suddenly have an issue with instances? A dungeon instance is just a scaled up version of the basic mechanic of a mob respawning. Every MMORPG is based on very unrealistic mechanics and it's silly to nitpick one are for being unrealistic but be willing to suspend your disbelief for another one based on the same principles.
What the author is saying is not that we as players suspend disbelief for some unrealistic mechanics and not others, but rather that developers try to justify some unrealistic mechanics and don't make any attempt at all to justify others. For example, it's very rare to have a game where you die and respawn with no explanation at all. Invariably, you return to where your soul is bound, or you were too badly injured so you retreated to a safe spot to recover. Oddly, EQ is a counter-example: I don't recall ever finding an explanation for why you reappeared after dying.
The author has a good point and I sympathize with them to some degree, but I don't believe that an important mechanic or design choice should be excluded for lack of a sensible in-universe justification. Just because the feature isn't (or can't be) explained away by the game's lore doesn't mean that the game would be better off without it.
Absolutely, I don't think in-game justification of mechanics is compulsory, it's just that there seems to be a certain lethargy about making lore around specific mechanics (instances, and like also mentioned - mobs respawning).
For example it wouldn't be much to introduce battlegrounds as some kind of magical practice plane with no repurcussions, one that players are able to visit from anywhere in the world using some kind of magic. Hardly the most intricate explanation but still better than "join queue" "your battleground instance is ready". The latter is what you'd find in a normal online game "connecting to server..." - when crafting a persistant virtual world developers should at least try to cover up those mechanical seams.
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-nexen-
I've always had a problem with instances, and how they destroy many aspects of MMORPGs that I consider important. But the way developers chuck them into games with absolutely no concern for continuity, and that players have just come to accept their functional but inexplicable nature, really hints at how badly the MMO genre needs a good fucking shake about.
This guy is my hero now.
An honest review of SW:TOR 6/10 (Danny Wojcicki)
Instances make sense.
For example I will use World of Warcraft,.
In WoW, the game world Azeroth, ISNT UP TO SCALE LORE WISE. So what this means is that, there would never be a way to have gameplay elements that equal to lore. The Population that a server can hold, doesnt even match that of the population lore wise of a single Alliance mini faction like Stromgrade.
Instances come in as an example of this "player scaling"
In vanilla WoW the cap was 40 players, for mechanical reasons. But lore wise, there would have likely been 3-5 people for each adventurer in the instance. 40*3= a lot more when scaled with lore.
But getting those type numbers in a raid dungeon, would be crazy. So Instances split these larger groups down.
As for Arthas fight,,, this was clearly explained in the lore, why we fight him with smaller numbers.
Lore wise, Tirion didnt want a army to fight arthas, because that would risk them turning into undead themself and attacking the force against arthas.
Also in WoW, Death is explained as well. Players in WoW, dont die unless they are in a BG/Rez at grave yard. there is a reason why we have 1hp in ghost mode.
Also lore wise, people can get rez, while other times, people cant get rez. So death has never truly been the end of it all.
Philosophy of MMO Game Design