Georg Zoeller replied to a thread about Phasing, and it’s potential effect on PvP (I saw him mention it on Google+.. it took a bit for his posts to show in the dev tracker on the site though).
As with pretty much any feature BW talks about.. there are some who turn it into a ‘the sky is falling’ situation, no matter what it is.. I think Georg did a good job pointing out that the phasing/instancing/sharding/whatever you want to call it, that BioWare has planned for TOR.. is a GOOD thing. It’s only going to serve to make the launch day craziness..a bit less crazy. You won’t have to fight for quest mobs with thousands of other folks.. as once a zone hits it’s limit, a separate instance of the zone will spawn, and folks newly entering the zone will go to that copy.
Oh, and he clarifies that all the people who think that a level 50 killing a level 1 is PvP…are going to be disappointed.. you won’t be able to gank new players.
All of Georg’s posts on this, are after the break.. I have edited some of the later ones in, so they appear with the others.
I love how people get ahead of themselves and spell doom and gloom here.
As discussed, we instance planets when the number of players on them goes into the ‘red zone’ where players would experience severe degradation of their game experience (long wait times on spawns, etc.). By definition, the likelihood of this happening is extremely likely early on when all players are concentrated on the smaller origin planets.
The ‘red zone’ for each planet is defined individually based on how many people it can sustain before problems become intolerable. The exact number for each planet is determined through testing such as the testing weekends we run. In any case, several hundred is true, even for the smallest origin world.
Do we want to instance PvP planets? Not if we can help it, but if the load on the planet exceeds what we define as acceptable based on testing, we will instance them rather than make the experience miserable for everyone on the planet.
Originally Posted by Res_1) You don’t know what constitutes a full planet before they shard it and make a new one. It could be as low as ~50 players like STO.Several hundred for even the smallest planet.
Originally Posted by CankiieWait… will it be like Guild Wars 1? O_O where you only see other people at the wilderness if grouped with them?
No… NO!… NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
No it will not.
Even the smallest planet instance in The Old Republic can hold several hundred users at once and cities in the game are part of the planet, not separate zones.
Originally Posted by SoulstitchMMO
Georg Zoeller thinks that world pvp is what killed UO, his opinion on world pvp is, uneducated at best.Soulstitch,
You’re really not doing your cause any favor. Last time I checked, BioWare Mythic was still running UO and it’s not killed. So please don’t put words in my mouth that I didn’t say. If you want to make a point with something I have said, quote it precisely without commentary.
And while we’re at it, don’t assume to know what I think or what my education is. Ad hominem attacks on participants in this forum, developer or not, will not make your personal opinion about any topic more or less important to us.
As for this particular topic – there will be no ganking of newbie players in The Old Republic as all Origin Worlds are sanctuaries that can not be invaded by the other faction. We have no interest in allowing high level players to choke off the supply of new players into the game by ganking them over and over before they have learned the ropes of their class.
To put it bluntly: If that is your fantasy, you will have to find another game, because The Old Republic will not cater to that. For every player who enjoys that particular fantasy, there are a lot of players that don’t enjoy being on the receiving end of it. That’s a fact, a business lesson learned from existing, still running MMOs.
We think we have plenty of great options for PvP in our game, from Warzones, to Open PvP Objective Areas to Open World PvP on Contested Planets, which will be dangerous territory outside the protective reach of guards and fair game for conflicts.
But if you are expecting something akin to the original Ultima Online or DAoC’s Mordred server, you need to look elsewhere.