View Full Version : Instanced Zoned World like Age of Conan and Warhammer?
How is Guild Wars 2 different from other MMOs?
While Guild Wars 2 adds a persistent world, it retains the unique nature of the original game including a strong narrative, extensive instanced gameplay, an anti-grind design philosophy, and strong support for competitive play.
I wonder if the World would be free to roam like World of Warcraft does it, or will it be a Instanced Zoned World like Age of Conan and Warhammer are doing.
I would much rather have the Free to roam type world zones because it makes you feel like you're part of a bigger world.
We know there will be separate servers/realms/worlds or whatever they will call them and a possibility to travel between them. But we can't tell if they will want to separate the servers even further, the sucky AoC-way. As they're continuing a Solo Online RPG model with GW2, they may not make it a real persistant world but separate it dynamically into instances so a single player will never meet too many players on his way. Just like in AoC...
'almost' like a MMO feeling... then you click and switch instance...
It says persistent world. After that it mentions the extensive instanced gameplay and strong narrative, which to me hints at instances being used for story-related missions like we have now. Aside from that it will mainly be persistent in which you can encounter other players.
At least, that's the idea I get from the way the sentence is structured.
Zoned: Traveling from one area to another require a loading screen.
Instanced: Multiple copies of the same area exists on the server.
It's better to separate the two when discussing this. Personally I don't really mind zoning, as long as the "world map" doesn't disappear. In AoC it isn't, you can only "map travel" between the 3 major areas, and there's only one path to traverse all areas. So you remember map sequences, not directions. On the other hand, in a game like RO, the areas are zoned like crazy (imagine putting a grid on a map), but you still have to remember the general direction of where things are, and there are more than one path. It allows you more freedom to explore.. (in a way...), and keeps the world map in your head.
As for instancing, as long as the mechanic for searching for other players (like LFG, trade, etc) remains server wide, it doesn't bother me.
I tend to think you will have free-roaming areas to be explored and traversed between major story / plot events and then instanced "mission" and "dungeon" type areas to further the storyline of the game.
If having non-zoned means not being able to freely map travel, I hope not.
Powered by vBulletin® Version 4.2.2 Copyright © 2014 vBulletin Solutions, Inc. All rights reserved.