Instance dungeon

Template:Refimprove In massively multiplayer online games, an instance is a special area, typically a dungeon, that generates a new copy of the location for each group, or for certain amount of players, that enters the area. Instancing, the general term for the use of this technique, addresses several problems encountered by players in the shared spaces of virtual worlds. It is not widely known when instances were first used in this genre, however The Realm Online (1996) is sometimes credited as introducing the concept.

Design considerations

The problem can be stated as follows: every player wants to be "The Hero", slay "The Monster", rescue "The Princess", and obtain "The Magic Sword". When there are thousands of players all playing the same game, clearly not everyone can be the hero. The problem of everyone wanting to kill the same monster and gain the best treasure became obvious in the game EverQuest, where several groups of players would compete and sometimes harass each other in the same dungeon, in order to get to the monsters dropping valuable items. The creation of instances largely solves this set of problems, leaving only travelling to and from the dungeon as a potential risk in player versus player environments.

Stated another way, instances can be used to reduce the competition over resources within the game. Excessive competition in these spaces leads to several undesirable behaviors such as kill stealing, spawn camping, and ninja looting as players do whatever they can to acquire the limited rewards. Instancing preserves the gaming experience, since some gaming scenarios do not work if the player is continually surrounded by other players, as in a multiplayer setting. Instance dungeons may contain stronger than usual mobs and rare, sought-after equipment. They also may include level restrictions and/or restrict the number of players allowed in each instance to balance gameplay. Several games use instancing to scale the mobs to the players' levels, and/or the number of players present.

Despite its advantages, instancing in MMOGs has been criticized. Brad McQuaid, lead designer of EverQuest and Vanguard: Saga of Heroes (both of which did not feature instancing at launch), wrote an essay in 2005 arguing that instances can negatively affect the game's community, virtual economy, churn rate, and other factors. In response to this article, Raph Koster added that instancing should be limited to situations in which the creation of a "pocket zone" makes sense within the context of the fictional universe — such as the holodeck in the Star Trek franchise. One reviewer described the extensive use of instancing in Age of Conan as "[destroying] the sense of expansiveness an MMORPG should have".

Technical considerations

Having players participate in instances tends to spread out populations of players, instead of concentrating them, which may reduce or level the workload for both the server and client by limiting the number of potential interactions between players and objects. Because the player characters in the instance do not need to be updated on all the information going on outside the instance, and vice versa for the characters outside the instance, there is an overall decrease in demands on the network, with the net result being less lag for the players. This also reduces the demands on each player's computer, as the number of objects to be processed can be more easily limited by the game's developer. The developer can better reason about the worst case performance requirements in an instance because they do not have to consider scenarios such as hundreds of players descending on any location at any time.

Usage

History

Perhaps the first virtual world to use instances was the MMORPG The Realm Online, launched in 1996. Combat in this game was extensively instanced, with every battle taking place in a special room outside of the open world.

List of games

Games that have been known to use instancing include:

• Aetolia, The Midnight Age
• Age of Conan
• Anarchy Online
• Asheron's Call 2
• Auto Assault
• Borderlands
• City of Heroes/City of Villains
• Dark Age of Camelot
• Dungeon Runners
• Dungeons & Dragons Online: Stormreach
• Earth Eternal
• Emil Chronicle Online
• EverQuest (instances added with the Lost Dungeons of Norrath expansion)
• EverQuest II
• Final Fantasy XI (instances added with the Treasures of Aht Urhgan expansion)
• Granado Espada
• Guild Wars
• Kal Online
• Kingdom of Loathing
• La Tale
• The Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar
• Mabinogi
• MapleStory (instances added with v.60)
• Myst Online: Uru Live
• Phantasy Star Online
• The Realm Online
• RuneScape
• Seal Online
• Star Trek: Online
• Star Wars Galaxies
• Tabula Rasa
• Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning
• World of Warcraft

In Guild Wars, Town/Outpost areas are created on demand, with a new "district" of that town being created for every 100 players in it; players can move between these at will. Players can play with players across the globe, as in EVE Online, along with the advantages in load scaling and resources of a traditional multiple server model for ArenaNet, the developers.

Vanguard: Saga of Heroes does not use instance dungeons. However, it is envisioned that, through the Advanced Encounter System (AES), certain "boss" NPCs can be triggered when a group enters an area; this NPC would then be "tagged" to that group, meaning no other players could attack or interact with it. AES was not implemented in the commercial release of Vanguard, but the developer is reportedly working on it and plan to release it in a future patch.Template:Update after

In RuneScape, instances are used mostly in quests, so that other players cannot interfere with the player who is doing the quest, such as battling boss NPC's or having to accomplish a special task. They are also used in certain 'minigames'. However, most monsters not related to quests are not instanced, so players often have to compete with each other to get the reward from killing them.

See also

• Game server (or "shard")
• Persistent world