Interesting piece here:
Gamergod: Brad McQuaid on Instancing! (via Slashdot)
Brad McQuaid (a.k.a ‘Aradune’) was one of the original minds behind the first Everquest, and is now, with Sigil Games, working on the forthcoming Vanguard: Saga of Heroes. The article is pretty much a game design white-paper, and quite heavy going, but focuses on the various pros and cons of Instancing, vs a wholly shared world. It’s a fairly fundamental choice of gameplay design, and the impression one gets from the article, is that on the whole, McQuaid seems quite cool to the idea of Instancing, particularly in the case of Vanguard, but he covers both sides of the coin quite well in the article.
The first time I came across Instancing would have been Anarchy Online’s mission terminals. At the time it seemed genius – a personalised mission area in which I could solo or take friends along, and in either case, work along at my own pace. Compared to the camping, kill-stealing and general distrust I found on the typical Everquest server, prior to that, it suited me well.
I will admit to being quite an online hermit in those days mind you, and Instances do tend to present the question, ‘Why be in an MMO at all?’, when an instance is little more than a peer-to-peer matchmaking game, with lobby. Personally though, I can not be expected to, and will never, know all 3000+ people on my server in World of Warcraft, so from a social perspective, does instancing already happen, merely through a kind of mental filtering?
It’s an interesting question, but seems to miss the point somewhat. Instances are mostly about recapturing the lost golden years of Pen and Paper Tabletop Gaming, and in that regard are probably nearer the mark than a totally open world, but I think the real problem with both models is more to do with the nature of anonymous pick-up group strangers. I doubt a D&D session with four random strangers off the street would go that well either.
Anyway, a good read if you have the time and patience to get through it all. (tip: copy and paste into Word or Wordpad to stop their site making your eyes bleed…)