Remember that other upcoming MMO? Last class in WAR revealed.

[lamaros]

None of them "did OK."

Everyone bitched and moaned about it there also.

Everyone bitches and moans about everything. The fact people bitch and moan is not an arugument of itself.

WoW had some troubles at first, but once they fixed the system (spawns related to number of people in a zone/area) it is far and away the system I prefer. Even before then it wasn't a huge problem.

I played WoW at release and quit shortly after level 60. I hated many parts of the game, but if I had to choose between instancing less or instancing more than WoW I would go for less every time. Diablo with graphical chatrooms is not for me.

[Venkman]

I think their outdoor instancing is entirely technically-based, for the same reason EQ2 went that direction late in beta too.

The other types of instancing though could be handled better though, because those are design choices.

[Murgos]

Either near instant respawns or obscene camps.  Either option pretty much sucks.

Sorry, I'm not buying that.  EQ, UO, LOTRO, SWG, and WoW seemed to do ok. 

I'm not talking about dungeon or boss instances, I'm talking about outdoor grinding zone instances.  None of those games had them.

You are fucking insane.  EQ had camps in the middle of outdoor zones that took days to get something to spawn and were the cause of uber griefing, bickering and whining to make AoC look like polite discussion at a dinner party.

UO had spawn areas where they were either camped and you better move on or (before the split) you fought for it.  Again uber griefing.

LOTRO I can't comment on.  SWG, when I played had nothing to camp and no point to killing anything at all, ever, other than pure grinding, great solution.  WoW simply upped the spawn rate and made any out-of-an instance 'required' mob simply worthless for anything other than if you had to get that specific quest item, it works but since there is no rare-item dropping outdoor world mob at all it's not even the same discussion.

[HaemishM]

Either near instant respawns or obscene camps.  Either option pretty much sucks.

Sorry, I'm not buying that.  EQ, UO, LOTRO, SWG, and WoW seemed to do ok. 

I'm not talking about dungeon or boss instances, I'm talking about outdoor grinding zone instances.  None of those games had them.

You are fucking insane.  EQ had camps in the middle of outdoor zones that took days to get something to spawn and were the cause of uber griefing, bickering and whining to make AoC look like polite discussion at a dinner party.

Yeah, this. From low level to high, camps were problematic EVERYWHERE in EQ. Fuck, there were many times under level 15 at a kobold camp out in the ass-end of nowwhere on Faydwer, there were camping and kill-stealing issues. Shit, the term kill-stealing was BORN in EQ1 AFAIK because of these issues. They only lessened when the population spread out, but if you were in one of the popular outdoor zones, trying to camp for those scraps of experience, you were as likely to be involved in a kill-stealing instance as you were to level.

[Typhon]

And then kill-stealing begat NPC-training, another EQ first! (probably an EQ only, because if I'm recalling correctly, DAOC had already figured out that this was bad)

[Brogarn]

Ya, there were no trains in DAoC. Minus the melee train in RvR, anyways. 

[Fraeg]

And then kill-stealing begat NPC-training, another EQ first! (probably an EQ only, because if I'm recalling correctly, DAOC had already figured out that this was bad)

Well there was the ever classic train mobs into someone afk pbaoe lvling fun

[Murgos]

Actually, training a stream of Giants to the Oasis beach (or any zone line) and then FD'ing was quite amusing but I digress.

[Triforcer]

Either near instant respawns or obscene camps.  Either option pretty much sucks.

Sorry, I'm not buying that.  EQ, UO, LOTRO, SWG, and WoW seemed to do ok. 

I'm not talking about dungeon or boss instances, I'm talking about outdoor grinding zone instances.  None of those games had them.

You are fucking insane.  EQ had camps in the middle of outdoor zones that took days to get something to spawn and were the cause of uber griefing, bickering and whining to make AoC look like polite discussion at a dinner party.

UO had spawn areas where they were either camped and you better move on or (before the split) you fought for it.  Again uber griefing.

LOTRO I can't comment on.  SWG, when I played had nothing to camp and no point to killing anything at all, ever, other than pure grinding, great solution.  WoW simply upped the spawn rate and made any out-of-an instance 'required' mob simply worthless for anything other than if you had to get that specific quest item, it works but since there is no rare-item dropping outdoor world mob at all it's not even the same discussion.

I still don't get the point here.  Leaving aside EQ for the moment, WoW's approach works.  I think its hilarious that AoC fanbois are now saying "NONINSTANCED ZONES ARE UNPOSSIBLE!" when the most successful example in the genre (and other AAA mmos, like LOTRO) clearly demonstrate otherwise.  I repeat, what about AoC retroactively altered the laws of MMO physics?

And no rare-dropping outdoor mobs in WoW?  Wtf are you smoking?  Silver mobs?  Remember the Tidal Charm camp, pre-BC?

[tazelbain]

Tri, CoH has a blind where enemies become invisable.  Its gives a simular effect without the fustration of your whole screen going black.  I have, a couple times now, ran down a hall thinking it was empty only to discover I was blind and was neck deep in Arachnos troops.

[Margalis]

Here is what doesn't work:

Mobs that respawn slowly and drop awesome tradeable gear at low frequency.

The problem is that changing that formula is nearly always a drop in immersion or fun-factor in some way. 100% drops take out the addictive gambling nature and fast respawns feels like an assembly-line approach. Dropping shitty gear makes the mob pointless, and making all worthwhile drops bind-on-pickup eliminates much of the point of trading.

I do agree that zoning instances in a poor approach. In FFXI how they have tried to deal with overworld high-value targets is maked them forced-spawn via some conditions. So you gather up the appropriate items, bring them to the right spot and the mob appears and is claimed automatically. Although I don't think they appear walking around on the overworld until you pop them, which kind of sucks.

[Triforcer]

Tri, CoH has a blind where enemies become invisable.  Its gives a simular effect without the fustration of your whole screen going black.  I have, a couple times now, ran down a hall thinking it was empty only to discover I was blind and was neck deep in Arachnos troops.

Wrong website, friend    But thanks for the response. 

[Murgos]

I still don't get the point here.  Leaving aside EQ for the moment, WoW's approach works.  I think its hilarious that AoC fanbois are now saying "NONINSTANCED ZONES ARE UNPOSSIBLE!" when the most successful example in the genre (and other AAA mmos, like LOTRO) clearly demonstrate otherwise.  I repeat, what about AoC retroactively altered the laws of MMO physics?

And no rare-dropping outdoor mobs in WoW?  Wtf are you smoking?  Silver mobs?  Remember the Tidal Charm camp, pre-BC?

No, I blocked that out of my mind because I was absolutely bored to death by WoW.  You're not discussing positives and negatives of implementations or that there might be flaws with any particular system you're just blathering on about what YOU liked.  Great, party on dude, that doesn't make it the only, and certainly not the best, option.

[Lantyssa]

Mobs that respawn slowly and drop awesome tradeable gear at low frequency.

This was somewhat rectified with yesterday's patch.  Several of us were getting a blue drops from insigificant mobs.  I had one.  Someone got something from a normal chest (at level 14 no less).  Someone else had two or three.  Others were making comments, so we weren't alone.

[Murgos]

This was somewhat rectified with yesterday's patch.  Several of us were getting a blue drops from insigificant mobs.  I had one.  Someone got something from a normal chest (at level 14 no less).  Someone else had two or three.  Others were making comments, so we weren't alone.

Yeah, I had two blue drops from random mobs in the space of about an hour while questing.  The first one was a complete surprise but when the second Jeweled Chest dropped I got a little excited, now if they could flesh out the loot a little more I could almost go Diablo II on them.

Seriously showers of loot falling out of the sky on a kill, with exciting sound effects, what's so hard about that?

[Triforcer]

To briefly interrupt the anti/pro AoC trolling that I, admittedly, initiated, WAR is hiring customer service people . . . to start in August.

http://herald.warhammeronline.com/warherald/NewsArticle.war?id=142

Our first real clue?  There is still no buzz about release date on the....ahem....site that everyone not in beta visits. 

[Rondaror]

All this instancing wahhhh wahhh has gotta give a damn good counter to the solution of collision detection aside from making all players as gaseous substance ala WoW, there's just no way you can hope to integrate collision detection and non-instancing together. It'll be a fuckin problem when a bunch of retards decided to block a gate to a town by standing in a line on PVE server.

Don't see the problem. Collision Detection for enemies only.....problem solved.....

That would be incredibly dumb in a PvP game.

I was talking about a PvE area or PvE dungeons....

"It'll be a fuckin problem when a bunch of retards decided to block a gate to a town by standing in a line on PVE server. "

[Lakov_Sanite]

All this instancing wahhhh wahhh has gotta give a damn good counter to the solution of collision detection aside from making all players as gaseous substance ala WoW, there's just no way you can hope to integrate collision detection and non-instancing together. It'll be a fuckin problem when a bunch of retards decided to block a gate to a town by standing in a line on PVE server.

Don't see the problem. Collision Detection for enemies only.....problem solved.....

That would be incredibly dumb in a PvP game.

I was talking about a PvE area or PvE dungeons....

"It'll be a fuckin problem when a bunch of retards decided to block a gate to a town by standing in a line on PVE server. "

Stop the presses, im going to praise AoC here. One thing they added recently was an ability to all classes called 'crouch' it allows you to move through other character and avoid collision detection though it gives you a movement penalty and you take more damage. To me that's really the perfect soultion, bam, now you can add collision detection to all games without people exploiting it.

[Bungee]

BTW:

New Newsletter with more info on PvE Instances, Guilds and ..........

The Guild Beta !!!

Yay!

Also:
This guy really makes me wanna play Dwarfs instead of a gobbo...