REZOUND

Aventurine's Tasos on instancing in the MMO genre.
Tasos, Associate Producer of Darkfall Online, put in his two cents on instances in MMO's.

"On instances let me just say, we never had them, we don't have them, and we might never have them. They don't agree with our philosphy for a massively multiplayer game. ... We want player interaction to be at the major possible level and we don't want to limit it by instancing. Instancing is really not in our DNA...We don't want to take away from that. We don't like the instances, and if we ever do go to any form of instancing, it will be to improve our user experience, and not because they are more convenient to us. Because usually instance are used for technical reasons, for convenience of the developer."

I have to agree here. I really wish these newer titles would do away with all the instancing. The idea that you're safe in your own separate mini-world seems less immersive to me. Most times, once you have completed said instance, you leave and return to the rest of the world with just about nothing to reflect upon the rest of the game world. For me, knowing that so many players are all killing that same epic dungeon or raid boss at the same time tends to take away from that one game-world experience.

Of course there will always be arguments based on an individual's personal play-style. I just happen to agree with where Tasos is coming from in regards to instancing as well as it's convenience for the developers.