Perception is a funny thing.

I’ve been a loud voice claiming that instancing isn’t the silver bullet that some designers claim it is. And I’ve felt pretty lonely.

Dan Rubenfield’s claim is that instancing is one of the most powerful tools in the toolbox, and that it currently isn’t being used very well. Reading from his post on the matter, he seems to think he’s in the minority on this, too.

I know, I know.. You’re thinking “But instancing ruin’s MMO’s. Just look at .(sic)”

Those games sucked because those games sucked. They fucked up multiple levels of development. It wasn’t the addition or segmentation of their world that made it less than inspiring, or less interesting than it should.

The ironic part is that I agree with where he’s going, if not the finer points. Still, one is left to wonder which games he was referring to. City of Heroes was an extraoridinarily tight little MMO. Instancing served it well most of the time, but was a tad overdone in my opinion. Guild Wars leveraged instancing heavily to provide many of the benefits he referred to in his post, but provided a world that didn’t feel like a world (which wasn’t enough to stop it from selling a million boxes or so).

And of course, despite the fact that WoW is touted as being an argument against instancing by some, most of WoW’s high level content is instanced. 30% of level 60 players raid per month, presumably in instances. I’ve stated before that I believe that instancing in WoW is used at about the appropriate degree. I still think that.

The real power of instancing is the controlled adventure. You can ensure that every variable in an adventure is in the control of the world designer. You don’t have to worry about another group running ahead and unlocking all the doors. You can have the terrain be altered by player actions. You can ensure fairness.

The real danger of instancing is silence1. Instancing hurt CoH and GW the most when you were in an instance alone, and all of the cross-chatter on your chat channels slowed down. When you play a game that is purportedly a ‘massively multiplayer game’ and your chat channel is barren as a tomb, the sense of isolation is devastating and the irony is inescapable. Ensure that instancing is done intelligently, and that the game still feels like a social space, and instancing can deeply improve the world you provide.

Using instancing doesn’t require balls, just brains.

1 I talk about this in greater length in my Vegas talk, for anyone who isn’t bored with that yet.

Original comments thread is here.