Would you play a mostly instanced MMORPG?

[Gourmandise]

DDO is pretty fun

[DiscoGhost]

its not really an mmo then, its a phased multiplayer game?

[RoninaThorstone]

its not really an mmo then, its a phased multiplayer game?

Oh jeez.

We've got a Clinton!

[Graeham]

If it was as in-depth and as satisfying as the original Guild Wars? Sure!

[Fencers]

Hell yes. I feel discretely instanced play spaces is the superior and more flexible design for an MMO. Game have done it to fantastic effect: Guild Wars 1 and 2, Vindictus, Dungeons & Dragons Online, Neverwinter, The Secret World, Age of Conan, Raiderz, PSO 1 and 2, etc.

Also linear leveling schemes are very dull to me. So no leveling would make a fully instanced game a double bonus for me.

[kail]

I've enjoyed games like that. But I prefer the open, persistant world where my actions can affect others and visa versa.

EvE Online does an excellent job with this. I understand the need for instanced areas, but I don't want to play a simple dungeon simulator where they might as well set up a lobby that resembles older FPS games. It doesn't feel MMO to me.

[Deleted]

GW1 and GW2 are both heavily instanced. There is no "open world" in the sense that there's no loading screens between regions. I actually don't even mind the loading screens, and I feel that the instancing can help keep things like world bosses and events from being overwhelmed by sheer numbers. If GW2 was truly open world, much of the content would be a total mess.

[kail]

GW1 and GW2 are both heavily instanced. There is no "open world" in the sense that there's no loading screens between regions. I actually don't even mind the loading screens, and I feel that the instancing can help keep things like world bosses and events from being overwhelmed by sheer numbers. If GW2 was truly open world, much of the content would be a total mess.

GW2 does have its instances but it isn't as heavy as other MMOs or GW1. WvWvW is large as hell and supports a huge amount of players. When an event goes on in a region, anyone in that server can access it. Fractuals and storyline events are the big use of instances.

[Deleted]

GW2 does have its instances but it isn't as heavy as other MMOs or GW1. WvWvW is large as hell and supports a huge amount of players. When an event goes on in a region, anyone in that server can access it. Fractuals and storyline events are the big use of instances.

You're thinking of instances in the "separate from the world" sense.

Every zone in GW2 is instanced. Not everyone on a server can access a specific instance of any given zone; if a World boss is spawning in a different zone to the one I'm in, I'm not guaranteed to load in with people from my server. I might end up in a completely empty one, or one with people from other servers, as it tries to keep the population balanced for the event. If there are too many people, it will generate a new copy (or instance) of the zone and ask you to volunteer or be randomly sent. You can also freely hop between copies of the same zone by grouping with someone not in your current instance and joining theirs. So yes, GW2 is heavily instanced because it uses neither phasing, nor will it support an unlimited amount of people loading into a zone.

[Pony Soldier]

Most likely not. I'd get bored very quickly with nothing but instanced content to do. In MMOs I expect to see a vast world to explore and quest in, not sit in a single town and press a button to put me in a queue.

"Oh but you already do that in WoW!". No, I don't. Maybe you do but I'm always doing something out in the world rather than being stuck in a main city or my garrison queuing for dungeons or raids.

[Addict]

Guild Wars 1 was pretty popular.

This. Gw1 had a good working model for it.

[cFortyfive]

No I wouldn't bought several of those but never sticked around in any because all of them were pretty bad.

[RoninaThorstone]

No I wouldn't bought several of those but never sticked around in any because all of them were pretty bad.

Vindictus came out 2009, still around and coming out with new classes and content every few months.
Warframe came out 2012, still around and coming out with content and new classes every few WEEKS.
Neverwinter came out 2013, still around and coming out with content and classes every few months as well as expanding to consoles.

I would say that they stick around and are growing in popularity.

I suspect this is because online sand box games are filling the niche for explorer type MMO players whereas the online instanced games are filling the niche for dungeoneer type MMO players.

Games which attempt to meet both player bases needs tend to fill limited to both populations,

IE: Some world of warcraft players feel that there's not enough to do in the open world (explorer types) whereas others feel that Blizzard isn't generating enough instanced content (dungeoneer types).

[Lumineus]

It's not just about data sent to and from the server. It's about memory and cpu cycle requirements on the servers.

And this is why many smaller instances are easier, not harder, to deal with than a single large one. Player interactions are an n^p exponential calculation. Five players can interact in 25 different ways, at least 20 of which must be handled by the server. 500 players can interact with each other up to 250000 ways simultaneously. The memory overhead of establishing 100 instances is trivial by comparison. One megabyte worth of pointers will give you 131072 addressable spaces in a 64-bit scheme.

[D3athsting]

This is why i hate games like tsw and swtor to a lesser extent, instacing is against the philosophy of mmos (MM stand for massively multiplayer), zone phasing (like in wotlk) is good and makes the player feel like "he's doing something" to change the world and gives some sense of accomplishment, on the other hand instanced single player areas only contribute the kill the massively and multiplayer aspects of the game giving birth tho the that awkward game genre i call single-player mmorpg.

[thatmikeguy]

Bliz can do that by making normals and heroics somewhat easier at the same time taking out master looter. This would help LFG and help more people get past LFR. What's more important, the difference in difficulty between LFR and normal, or the next two for 95% of players.

Content accessibility for many more people.