I've noticed people having a concern with regards to loading screens, and how they "break immersion". Not a lot of explanation is given, however, as to what exactly the problem is. I was hoping some people could explain why they feel loading screens are a problem.
In WOW, there's loading screens between continents, there's loading screens when I hearth, when I use a mage portal, when I use one of the Org/SW zone portals, when I join a BG, when I do Tol Barad, when I go to do my dailies, join a dungeon, etc etc. It's hard to go 15 minutes in WOW without a loading screen sometimes. I never thought of them as "breaking immersion" or "taking me out of the game", however. But those are the reasons most people give for being against loading screens, and was wondering if people could elaborate some more on how they feel about this.
For the record, Guild Wars 2 will have loading screens between major zones. In a dev talk, I think, it was mentioned that you could go and run in a straight line for up to 15 minutes as you crossed through a zone, before hitting a loading screen . It's my understanding that this is done so that you don't have lag and server issues -- like in Wintergrasp, or during a city/leader raid. I assume that means each zone is on its own server/computer... thus avoiding things like Wintergrasp crashing all of Northrend, or raising server-lag to 1000+ms levels during big events. Personally, I think it's worth the trade-off, but some people don't seem to think so.
Opinions are welcome!