kbdiggity: I have heard that all buildings in the entire game will be instanced. I understand instancing buildings that need to have a time progression for the storyline. I also understand instancing places where a large amount of people causes lagging (banks, auction houses.) What is the purpose of instances on all the other buildings? Won't places like Minas Tirith have tons of instances causing players to have sit through hundreds of loading screens? Aren't you worried that thousands of loading screens will cause players to quit the game?

Chris Foster: Not all interiors will be instanced. They may involve brief “teleports” to and from the interior spaces – as seen and used successfully in the shop interiors in City of Heroes, for reference – but these are still public spaces. Among other things, separating our building interiors allows us to distribute the load of a major city across multiple servers. This will be done carefully, however, as crossing servers in this way takes a little time, and therefore must be used carefully. Trust that most interiors will be very quick to enter and exit.


kbdiggity: How will instancing for a time-progressed building/dungeon work when you are in groups? Commonly in other games, higher level players help their lower level friends/guildies do quests. Will this not be possible if we have completed the time progressing quests, or will we simply go back in time by entering instances with the low levels? Because if we aren't going to be able to help the low levels, then they will have to sit and wait for other low levels to come along. If we can help them, then we are likely to run into characters doing something out of order in the storyline.

CF: This is a big concern for us. Generally speaking, or goal is to give “play with your friends” a higher priority than “never contradict the player’s personal storyline and time line.” The idea is – and experiences we had in Asheron’s Call support this approach – that while a single player should be directed by the game in a sensible, story-appropriate direction, players will happily suspend disbelief and disrupt their own flow through the story in order to play with their friends. Past experience demonstrates that the ability to be social does not diminish the experience of playing through the story on your character’s personal terms. The specific rules for aiding others are still being determined, but there will be functionality to support such activity.