Misconceptions on Instancing

Brad posted a bit of a manifesto about instancing, in which he basically claims that instancing != MMO != Vangard. Lum fires back with some salient points. I’m only going to talk briefly about why Brad’s points are incorrect, and instead spend most of...

I remember him saying almost exactly that Pirotess. Its almost like a 'wait in line' scenario, since you cant go on until the group in front either fails, leaves or succeeds and moves on. Hopefully it will be done so that you dont really feel like you are 'waiting in line' and that it is just a natural movement.

Sounds ok but will reserve judgement till I see it in action. It seems to me it needs good manners on players part, to go in, kill the boss, then go away, letting another group have their turn, or you could hang about getting in their way and play trains. Maybe my problem is that I have never played EQ so dont know Brad as well as some or that I am still smarting from the actions of some crass players in WoW.

As far as I have understud how it AES works is a simple line system...

a quest consists on parts A, B, C and D.

First group starts of doing part A. Now noone can start part A until the group has advanced to the part B. Then another group can begin the A part...

so at any time there can be a max of 4 people/groups doing that quest.

And pretty sure it will be made so people can't get to parts they aren't part of. So the group doing B part, will be alone at it. (A form of instancing, except there can never be more than one instance, and then it can't really be called instancing can it?).

interesting, so twelve groups on the same quest enter a dungeon? 11 are in a queue? but there is no restriction on where they can go or do in the dungeon while waiting to start the next part of the quest, only that they cannot attack the quest boss untill the current group with the active quest have moved on.
It is quite possible that although unable to attack the quest boss they could still heal or on a PvP server attack the group fighting the boss.

My understanding is that Sigil are hoping the shere size and range of available content will mean there are never more than one or two parties attempting the same quest at the same time.

I think the developers allready got that in mind, and how to prevent it. Severel ways to do that.

keep it in a locked of area, so to open a door you have to be on the quest, and noone on the other side. Or "lock" the fight to prevent assistance.

But I haven't found any information so far on how they plan to do that, though I am most certain they will have it figured out before launch. It's not like it's hard to see the problems, and it's ramifications. problem is rather on deciding what way is best to prevent it.

I am not at all sure they do want to prevent it. Brad has stated that racing for content between groups is part of the fun. I cant see a sign saying "Form orderly Queue here for Ogre quest" outside a doorway. After all a zone that only your group can enter and play in is called an "instance" Having just a single instance available would be the worst possible option.

Although we wont be able to steal another groups boss I think the restrictions stop there.

Since I don't really have any hard facts on how things are going to be, my speculations are relative to my own oppinions and ideas. That said, I don't belive it's different zones, it's not the "click here to go to zone A, to kill mob Q" kind of quest. It's still in same zone, fits much better with this whole seemless world thing they got going. I really hope they make a "single zone" world. where you don't have to go to door Z to go to zone B. The whole "go past the invisible line, and all mobs disapear" thing has allways annoyed me.

I'm pretty sure they won't prevent mob steeling and such, but let the players themself set up "The rules", however I'm pretty sure I've read that they will make certain big quest boss mobs "locked" in the way I stated earlier.

And a single instance that only one group can enter, yes thats a bad thing, but that wasn't really what I tried to say. I were only talking about my own possible ideas on how this problem could be solved. and they were in the same zone, but with areas that was locked of(possibly by a door).

About instancing as a whole, I certainly belive they can be of value to lessen the stress on servers, or the contence for content, but pretty much other than that I think it should be kept to a minimum. To me there is little difference between instancing just to let everyone do it at will, and making a "spawn boss mob B" button.