Your thoughts on instancing and zones?

[Tropics]

I was wondering what the majoritty of MMORPG players think about recent games and the way they use these mechanics?

The reason I ask is because after playing AOC for a fair while now one of the major peeves I have with the game is the way they built the zone architecture, having people basically click on a boat or a boatmaster in order to get to a new major area of the world. This is really killing the feeling of a real continuous world for me in AOC.

In WOW the entire outdoor world was non-zoned and non-instanced but for the boat trips across the major ocean. The only use of instancing and a zone was in the dungeons. This lead to a real feeling of a large continuous world for me, you could run from STV to the Arathi Highlands and it was all one large continuous continent.

With EQ the zones helped to curb this type of feeling abit but nevertheless I still felt the trip from Akanon to Erudin was one continuous trip in a real spatial sense.

Now with AOC, I just dont get that. With the clicking on a boat and just magically being at the new area, you are not quite sure where that area is in relation to where you have just been. The world feels not like a continous area, but instead a collection of discontinuous and not spatially realted at all zones. There are the areas where you must click on a gate, and this gives you a relation ain to what EQ did, but with WOW's system of making the outdoor worlds totally zoneless and a trip through that gate not even requiring a click and a load AOC has fallen well short in even these areas.

I guess what I am saying is with regards to the outdoor world in a MMORPG of the future I cannot handle instancing or even zones anymore. The feel of a world when you make it zoneless such as the outdoor world in WOW and even EQ1 just gave so much emmersion with the feeling of spatial relations between areas, and AOC is missing this 100% and I cannot ignore it while I play.

What do you all feel about this?

[Zehn - Vhex]

WoW vs. EQ thread in 3...2...

Oh, and because someone will accuse me of being a douche for not contributing despite having posted on this topic before in multiple threads:

1) The merits of instancing are many and obvious.
2) Zoning may or may not be a technical limitation. The goal is to not need it. It's rarely a design choice.
3) Over-instancing can be bad (hi2u DnDO) but no instancing is worse in many cases depending on game genre.

Really isn't much more to it. You can make the argument that EQ thrived and survived a dearth of content thanks to the non-instancing of it's two prime dungeons and it promoted a sense of inter-dependency. On the other hand you can argue that having to deal with these retards meant that you had a tighter community based on a mutual disgust and hatred.

Which is what it will boil down to. Anecdotal experience about that one time in EQ when you met and were really good buddies with thanks to non-instancing and just as anecdotal experience about how not having to put up with a cleric who refused to bank his platinum and thus was pretty much perma-rooted in place endeared you to WoW for forever more.

Though yes, the boats in AoC made me angry. zehn smash!

[Ninajrr]

Time-based lockout instanced dungeons and enormous public dungeons. Wtf, both? This is madness!

Other than that, no instances. AoC overworld sux.

[Steamrice]

AoC did it wrong on so many levels. They've got instanced zones with several instances of that zone of that outdoor area. Then random dungeons are public instances and some are private instances. Instance this and instance that blah blah. Really kills the immersion of seeing many players around.

But I guess that's the trade off between heavy graphics that can only handle so much vs light stylized graphics that can handle many altogether.

[column]

At this point ,who gives a shit anymore.

[Tropics]

Originally Posted by Zehn - Vhex

WoW vs. EQ thread in 3...2...

In the case of the actual topic of this thread I would say they are almost equal. The WOW non-zoned world with instanced dungeons vs the zoned world including dungeons of EQ. EQ felt more spatially continuous with regards to moving from Innothule to Guk compared to WOW's transition from STV to ZG, while WOW feels more spatially continuous when moving from Tanaris to Ungoro Crater then EQ did when moving from the BB Mountains to Dagnor's Cauldron.

EQ and WOW both did decent in this area. AOC, EQ2, not so much.

[Araxen]

I like the way WoW does it the best. It has a nice balance between instanced and non-instanced. The only thing I wish they would add is social dungeons that are pretty huge in landscape like lguk, seb, solb was.

[RiskyChris]

The thing that bothers me about WoW zones is the perfectly organized mountains that surround every zone. It's bugged me since the alpha leak.

[Tropics]

Originally Posted by column

At this point ,who gives a shit anymore.

I mostly posted this thread in hopes that any future person designing a MMORPG might take the 2 cents from it and learn what not to do in a MMORPG in regards to world architecture.

You know, those who don't learn from the past are doomed to eat KD Mac, or something like that...

[Ninajrr]

Originally Posted by RiskyChris

The thing that bothers me about WoW zones is the perfectly organized mountains that surround every zone. It's bugged me since the alpha leak.

Makes exploring a bit too newbie friendly, eh?

[Maleficence]

Originally Posted by Araxen

I like the way WoW does it the best. It has a nice balance between instanced and non-instanced. The only thing I wish they would add is social dungeons that are pretty huge in landscape like lguk, seb, solb was.

I agree. About the only thing I miss in WoW are what you've termed social dungeons. It would be great if there could be a way to allow for greater social interaction outside of the cities and trade centers.

[Zehn - Vhex]

Originally Posted by Ninajrr

Makes exploring a bit too newbie friendly, eh?

On the other hand, -fuck- zoning back and forth between east/west commons about 8 times because you forget which way you were facing. 8(

[Jait]

^Shit like that could've been solved with an optional dialogue box.

As for the OP. I like both instances and static zones. My first post on noows was asking why we couldn't have both. An instance like Lguk with the same loot but scaled down (fbss -5% haste), but no waiting. Now years later we do have some of the best of both worlds, so I'm done complaining about it.

It's in good hands.

[Incognitogamer]

Instancing is a funny thing. It is a necessary evil in WoW, because there are way to many god damn people per server for there to be social dungeons ala seb/guk/solb style. They'd be over run constantly, as soon as a single mob spawned it would just be a "spam instants to try to tag the mob first"-fest. And nameds would be down indefinitely. Plus it wouldn't work in wow like it did in EQ because there are no AA in wow (a sad fact I might add, AA were a great invention for mmo's imo.) At least in EQ you got AA exp as well as chance for loots.

I always get freaked out when I switch from playing a game that uses instancing to playing a game that doesn't, like I'll be walking around with a group or whatever in a dungeon then we stumble upon other people and I always silently panic and I'm thinking "how did they get into our instance!?"

[Steamrice]

Originally Posted by Zehn - Vhex

On the other hand, -fuck- zoning back and forth between east/west commons about 8 times because you forget which way you were facing. 8(

That definitely hit the spot for reminiscing old times.