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Brad McQuaid On Instancing
heartless_ writes "The man behind Everquest and now Vanguard:Saga of Heroes has responded to a Gamergod.com article about chasing that old loving feeling from MMORPGs of the past. He goes off on a long dissertation on Instancing in Massively Multiplayer Roleplaying Games. From the articles 'Let's start with the old school: perhaps the designers are big time original D&D players (or at least AD&D - that's what I played - hey I'm not that old). D&D wasn't massively multiplayer - it was you, your group, and the DM. No one would argue that setup created some great times, great experiences, and great memories. I sure have them. And if that is what you think back on mostly, what you cherish, what you are trying to re-create, then having multiple groups around is a problem.'"
I've managed to play a good bit of three games that take completely different approaches to using instances: Asheron's Call (no instances, last I checked), World of Warcraft (only large dungeons are instanced), and Guild Wars (everything outside of towns/outposts is instanced). Asheron's Call, at its height, had many crowded dungeons and people waiting in line for spawns, though this always gave you a chance to meet others. Guild Wars, on the other hand, feels empty, though you will always find that creature waiting for you.
I think that Blizzard's done it best, where you can still randomly run into another player in the middle of nowhere (which can be fun for explorers like myself), but you don't have to wait for a boss to respawn at the end of that long dungeon.
Why pay $15/mo for an mmorpg when you spend large amounts of time in instances? Minimally Multiplayer rpgs let me play alone and with a small group of friends over the internets; isn't the monthly fee supposed to be in part to support server infrastructure that does things you couldn't just do with one computer and a non-dedicated server?