My proposal for Raiding guilds and GMs of P1999

[Alawen Everywhere]

I think the only way to handle a non-instanced world for a modern MMO is to have an insanely huge, non-sequential environment that's too big for any one person to ever fully explore or even think about. I think it's also important to keep transportation slow--no high speed vehicles, no teleportation.

Instances seem like the easy way out because the right way to do it takes a lot of designers for a long time and no one likes to make that kind of investment.

[rioisk]

Originally Posted by Alawen Everywhere [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

I think the only way to handle a non-instanced world for a modern MMO is to have an insanely huge, non-sequential environment that's too big for any one person to ever fully explore or even think about. I think it's also important to keep transportation slow--no high speed vehicles, no teleportation.

Instances seem like the easy way out because the right way to do it takes a lot of designers for a long time and no one likes to make that kind of investment.

I agree. Make every zone the size of West Karana and remove all forms of teleports. Then when a boss mob spawns you have to travel like an hour to reach it. That's true mobilization.

[Alawen Everywhere]

Originally Posted by rioisk [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

I agree. Make every zone the size of West Karana and remove all forms of teleports. Then when a boss mob spawns you have to travel like an hour to reach it. That's true mobilization.

I'd envision something more like a guild moves together to a new area. Travel time to the new area might be several hours or a big migration could even be days or weeks fighting and on the move. Travel would be hard--lost supplies, heavy fighting. No running past masses of mobs to the zone line. If you want to move through enemy territory, you have to fight.

When they set up camp in a new location, they explore the area in groups, establishing supplies for necessary resources and searching until they find something raid-worthy. Learning that particular boss might take them many attempts over days or weeks and even learning to supply themselves in their new area will be new discovery.

After the boss dies, they have no idea what else he could have dropped or when he might appear again, if ever. They might stick around and establish some kind of stronghold in that area, or load up their wagons (maybe literal?) and move on again.