I LOVE the instancing!

[Majoru Oakheart]

Basically, MMOs should be able to self-police all things that aren't actual hacks. It's good to have some villainous snots who steal kills, because then the good guys can track them down and thwack 'em. You need to make sure that people can't just log-off to run away, so have their bodies remain when they log-off. Most people will go to an inn to sleep, and inns will offer protection. But you should be able to get around those protections.

These games coddle weak folk too much. It is a tough balance to make sure the long-time players don't scare off newbies, but that shouldn't be too hard in a large world.

Unfortunately, given I'm sort of a MMORPG mechanics buff, I can tell you that the problem with self-policing systems is that if you allow anyone to kill anyone and say "well, the players will work it out on their own" you will find about twice as many people out there to make other people's lives miserable than people who are policing.

Not only that, but since MMORPGs aren't real life, you can't have "guards" on duty 24 hours a day. If someone kills you for no apparent reason, the best you can do is tell your friends to look out for him/her. Also, with the low death penalties required in order to make the rest of the game fun, most "griefers" don't care if they are killed by you. They'll wander away to another part of the game and not worry about it.

Basically, imagine a version of real life where everyone on the streets was carrying around weapons, and (due to the level system inherent in most MMORPGs) some were so much better at using the weapons than everyone else that 90% of the people on the streets couldn't even hurt them. So, most people walk past, doing anything that the person asks them to because they know they can't be stopped. Now, there are still police, but there are maybe 1 for every 1000 people. Most of them are worse than the "bad people" running around. So, they can't stop criminals from commiting crime. Even if they kill the criminals, they come back to life and continue to commit crimes. Or they simply vanish from the world and turn into someone else who commits crimes or waits until the police leave.

It becomes really stupid, really quickly. Which is why I prefer games without PvP.

As for instancing, I agree, I love it. I really do like GW a lot, it is just too short and the classes can solo way too easily, so there are no reasons to create groups.

As for those people who hate instancing, keep in mind that Dungeons and Dragons Online will resemble GW more than any other RPG. Stormhold will be the only city and all areas will be instanced outside of it(although, they imply there will be some "shared" instances, similar to GW). It will definitely be a game of "search in town for party members, gather a quest, exit the city directly to the quest instance and dungeon crawl your way to the objective at the end. Then return back to town to sell loot and buy new magic items." Those who don't like instances won't like it.