Garrett Fuller: Good Morning Gamers! I know all of you are red-eyed from your Friday night grinds, but it's Saturday and Frank and I have another debate for all to discuss: should MMORPGs continue using instances for PvE content or should they keep the world open to all players? I believe that the more instances a game has, the more it hurts the community!

In Ultima Online players could band together and enter a dungeon or enter go it alone, knowing people inside could give them a hand if they ran into trouble. Online world type content is a major draw for MMORPGs. People enjoy meeting random players and exploring new areas together.

The whole ‘Looking For Group’ concept in WarCraft takes players away from banding together for their online faction or community. Darkness Falls in Dark Age of Camelot was the best example of allowing a community to band together. Once Midgard took over (my former realm), players all over the realm rushed to clear the Hibernians or Albion out. Then players could enter and either solo or form groups to explore this dungeon. It was wide open and not limited.

Instanced dungeons keep players away from the multi-player part of online games. You join games to be part of a world, a growing community, if the game is designed correctly then players in a certain faction (Horde in Warcraft for example) should work together. Many MMORPGs have guilds for players to work together, but why not encourage those guilds to work together too?

The 40-man raid system in WoW is a perfect example of limiting content for players instead of opening the zone up for the whole community. Instancing in a small form can be okay, but the large and most important areas of a world should be open to all.

Frank Mignone: Instances have become a real trademark of the modern MMORPGs. Like all things, new features tend to evolve in hopes that they improve the product, although the effectiveness of those changes vary by opinion. In the case of instances, I think they're a step in the right direction.

How many times have you and your group of guildmates entered a very difficult dungeon, fought tooth and nail to the very end, only to find a line of other groups waiting for their turn to kill the boss monster? My exciting evening of adventure with my friends, upon reaching its climactic end turns into a trip to Disneyworld with the kids? I even get to wait in lines! Worse than that is that when you get to your turn, quite often you’re ganked by a camping Zerg waiting to kill anyone who actually bothered to play the dungeon to the end (anyone who plays MxO really knows what I am talking about).

The instance allows the group to enjoy playing as a group, without distraction. Sometimes two merging groups work well together when they converge on a specific dungeon. But let’s be honest, most of the time it starts out 'Dude! We were here first!' and simply escalates well beyond the kindergarten standard of people being immature. That's fun how? I know a lot of people in WoW who have joined guilds for no other purpose then to be able to participate in instances they cannot enter as a solo'er. They meet new friends and start participating in activities in and out of the instance with groups. You say its killing group play? I think it's one of the only new features in the modern MMO that is actually encouraging it.