A post from Richard Bartle, the creator of the original MUD.
Posted: Sat Sep 23, 2006 3:57 am
I particularly enjoyed his perspective on two of the most emotive topics in virtual world building: permanent death and instancing.
Perma-death is not for me. I avoid games with such a feature because I enjoy fine-tuning both my character and my own game-play for that particular game. I like to do this without pressure and I found I thoroughly enjoy learning how to play and subsequently fine-tune my character for team-play with other people in an MMO. That's very enjoyable for me.
On the other hand, instancing is something I can be in favour of... However, I think that instancing should be used sparingly and only implemented where there is a clear need to do so. Instancing with lockout timers does not work for me and will dissuade me from going into that instance. I think SOE got the level of instancing right but the lockout timers wrong whereas DDO dropped the ball entirely.
A thirty minute lockout is acceptable to me, whereas anything longer is unreasonable and does not account for people's real life commitments nor adult play. Ultimately I'd rather not see any instancing because I enjoy finding out what does happen when you share an area with other players.
Just mho.