MMORPGs

[Hurlshort]

But in WoW people can come and go in combat zones without being in your group. In fact, most of the pick up groups I have done, I was out in a tough area and started working with someone else very naturally. I've met some great online pals this way. You can tell right away if someone is a decent player if you watch them fight for a few moments.

 

In DDO you have to form your group in the chat room like game world and then enter a dungeon together. That is great for the stability of Turbine's servers, but not for the game immersion.

[alanschu]

Why would instances be more stable?

[Cantousent]

I like City of Heroes so NYAAHHH!

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So do I.

[Hurlshort]

Why would instances be more stable?

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I'm not a genius about this stuff, but I believe instances are more stable because there are a lot less variables. You only have 5 people in a smaller area. A lot more can go wrong when you have 100 people in the same zone, particularly if you have combat going on. DDO avoids all that. It does lead to nicely scripted instances, though.

[Nick_i_am]

Then why do you keep posting on the MMORPG threads?

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Why am I posting an opinion about MMORPGs in a thead about MMORPGs?

 

I dunno lol

[Hurlshort]

The comment was aimed at Hades. I just didn't quote him, and we posted at almost the same time.

[alanschu]

Why would instances be more stable?

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I'm not a genius about this stuff, but I believe instances are more stable because there are a lot less variables. You only have 5 people in a smaller area. A lot more can go wrong when you have 100 people in the same zone, particularly if you have combat going on. DDO avoids all that. It does lead to nicely scripted instances, though.

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I'm not so sure either. It could be just the opposite, as it's not like the server really has any less information to deal with. You could argue that it might have more, as in a non-instanced world there is one instance of a particular beast, but in an instanced world you need to create as many iterations of that creature as there are instances.

 

 

Though I'd be surprised if the creatures treated 100 PCs any differently than just 5. THere is certainly a lot more going on in the entire zone....though is it better to have 100 things happening in one zone, or 1 thing happening in 100 different zones (keep in mind that this 1 thing doesn't necessarily have to be the same thing....in each zone you could have 1 thing happening, and have each activity correspond to one of the 100 in the larger zone)?

[Hurlshort]

I remember the Guild Wars developers talking about the fact that they keep bandwidth and server troubles down with the instancing. WoW doesn't even have separate instances of 1 zone, like Ironforge 1 and 2. EQ2 is doing that with the more crowded zones, you'll have Boring Desert 1 and Boring Desert 2.

[alanschu]

It definitely helps with individuals. Orgrimmar was nicknamed Lagrimmar because it was so silly from our perspective. Latency times can be improved as well.

 

 

I think it can "help" bandwidth in that one server only needs to talk to a lesser number of people, and you can prioritize where your server is for your realm. In terms of overall bandwidth, I'm not sure it would make as much of a difference though.