Quote:
Originally Posted by August
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I don't understand why you think that having 'instances' causes your entire gameplay is non-instanced.
As to my focus, it's anything but narrow. You cannot limit an MMO launch to 5k people. The amount of uptake and then submission relapse is huge on new releases. If you start with 5k people per server, it may end up with only 1k active people. Increase this cap but don't increase the game world, and people are constantly fighting over resources (quest mobs, drops, camps) and people quit out of frustration. There is a very fine balance between world size and population that I feel the majority of people don't put into consideration.
And please stop bringing up WoW in its current incarnation. I don't like it and I don't participate it, and I'm not advocating that system at all if you read what I write.
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I don't understand your first sentence, but if you're trying to say that my perspective is that instances are evil and that there should be absolutely zero of them, that's not correct.
And of course I didn't mean that servers should be limited to exactly 5k people on release, it was just a number that I threw out there to show that server population can be controlled as a means to promote un-instanced content. Obviously, more people will be playing in the first few weeks than over the life of the game, but that's the same for any MMO. You shouldn't build your entire game to try to work around the fact that the low level zones will be a disaster for a month or two. That's part of the process. Once the levels begin to bell curve out, population will stabilize.
Build your servers with an ideal peak population that fits the size of your open world. The first week or two will be nuts, and every server will feel like Orc Hill or the Newbie Log would feel if P99 wiped and rerolled tomorrow. After a while, it would settle. Yes, some people would quit because they get frustrated with the early overcrowding, but that's just part of the process.
Some instances would be fine, but you'd have to limit them. I personally enjoyed the LDoN instances because they encouraged repeat runs for progress and had some element of randomness to them. The format promoted grouping with the same people and developing a system of progression through each dungeon type. That's the type of instancing that works FOR the community of the game without taking a huge chunk out of the competition element, and that's the type of stuff I'm talking about.