[MUD-Dev] Instancing (was: MMORPG Cancellations...)

[Koster, Raph]

Byron Ellacott wrote:
> Koster, Raph wrote:

>> interference from third parties. Instancing is merely two birds
>> with one stone--it first segments off the experience so that
>> greater narrative power can be brought to bear and players cannot
>> be interfered with; and it secondly segments off the experience
>> so that it is impossible for it to have any impact whatsoever on
>> the larger world.

> Please correct me if I'm taking your mention of instancing here
> out of context, but a general theme I've seen from your posts
> recently suggests that you see instancing as primarily being a
> world effect.  That is, instancing is a means of separating a
> space from the rest of the world, so that it does not effect the
> rest of the world.

Segmenting off the experience is central to instancing, obviously.

> On the other hand, I always considered instancing a way of
> providing a greater sense to players that their actions were more
> important.

That is what I meant by saying. "it first segments off the
experience so that greater narrative power can be brought to bear
and players cannot be interfered with."

> When you have an instanced dungeon, you know that you (and your
> party) are the heroes or villains, you're the important actors.
> Without instancing, you instead have to compete with other parties
> to be the important actors in a setting.

That is correct, but the reason why I emphasize narrative power
there is because also by definition, what you do in the instanced
area is also completely irrelevant to the larger world. It makes the
players feel like the center of attention (and they are) but it also
eliminates the possibility of their actions actually BEING
important.

Mind you, we rarely make players' actions important anyway, even
when we have the world to work with. ;)

> This becomes particularly important when content is slowly
> injected into a game over time, because each new piece of content
> will be greatly desirable, yet sadly finite in availability.  How
> else do you solve the problem of ten parties of players wanting to
> interact with a segment of world that can only handle one or two
> parties?

Well, I think instancing works fine for that sort of static content
that is not intended to be impactful to the world state. But I see
the future of the medium as being impacting the world state, so...
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