Instancing: harmful or helpful?
MMORPG.com has started a weekly debate feature, and the current topic is instancing. How does instancing PvE areas impact the community of a game like World of Warcraft?
Instancing has its pros and cons; on the plus side, instancing (especially at lower levels) can help you find competent players to adventure with, and help you develop your own play style. Rather than worry about competing with other groups for the boss kill, and wasting time, instances let you efficiently handle a difficult PvE task. Instances are often billed as a major selling point of games thanks to this lack of competition.
However, when it gets to the endgame, instances either alienate players who don't have the time or guild support to play through 40-man raids, or they swallow players who are doomed to repeat the same experiences again and again on a comparatively small scale. Twenty or forty players, compared to a realm's population, have very little impact on the world--and the instance resets, leaving the world the same as it was before you entered through the portal.
World events, such as the recent Ahn'Qiraj gate opening, manage to involve a huge number of people all working towards a common storyline. That's where the "massive" in "massively multiplayer online game" really starts to hit home. Unfortunately, as we've seen, game server infrastructure (and dealing with player behaviour) can't always stand up to this onslaught. Is there a midpoint? Quests that permanently impact the game but require a large number of players to contribute? An actual war, with hundreds of Horde and Alliance players clashing for blood and glory?
Having played through many instance dungeons, I have met many competent--and not so competent--players, but the "community" spirit certainly doesn't seem present when there are only five of you struggling through some scripted NPC attacks. When there are thousands of you all working for a common goal--when your raptor flesh farming gets interrupted by a troll who also had the same idea--then you start feeling like part of a community, and not just yet another faceless night elf.
