World of Warcraft

This is something I noted but thought nothing off when playing my DK in wrath beta, the world would change as I did quests without a loading screen, could this be the end of instances?

http://www.wowinsider.com/2008/08/25/phasing-is-the-new-instancing/

Oh man, I can't tell you enough how much I can't wait for Blizzard next (gen) MMO!

Some pretty good tech at use here. Though i dont play the game anymore, i do have friends in the beta and i havent seen them this exited since the release of WoW itself. Alot of players have comented that they didnt even see another player (let alone one from the other faction) untill the battle for Lights Hope chappel. many people were concerned that the DK starting area would be another massive clusterfuk like Hellfire Peninsula. 

Good to see their thinking out of the box for the XPack. Would also like to point those interested, to the

The Betrayal of Drakuru

A questline which rivals the one where Thrall goes back to Outland.

Yeah, its neat but other people cant help you or you cant help them.

If a friend asks you to help him clear a village full of undead you couldn't because to you the village is no longer full of undead.

Originally posted by Xiaoki

Yeah, its neat but other people cant help you or you cant help them.

If a friend asks you to help him clear a village full of undead you couldn't because to you the village is no longer full of undead.

To make things a little more clear, the area outside sanctuary is "phased" This means you and only you can see whats going on. This helps in introducing the game and the class your playing. The DK intro also has a huge lore event tied to it so having 50 dks running around on the same quest wont have the same impact.

Mind you they are not phasing the whole game, just certain questlines, few of which you can actually do with a party. Also this feature is needed at the DK starting area or you will have 1000 Dks at launch jumping on the 1st quest mob they see. 

Games like Runescape have been using the same technology for many years now. Heck, even WoW itself has been doing this for a while, as is pointed out in the article. It's really not that difficult to do, and calling it "phasing technology" implies that they did special research or something. Basically you just make an object, such as a monster, and you tack on an extra flag and tie it to a quest. If the player did the quest, the monster shows up, if they didn't then it's invisible. It's very similar to many of the collection quests in WoW already, like the Mana Cells, or the "Spectrecles" as is mentioned in the article.

EDIT: You can still get players to help you. They won't be able to see the monsters, but they can still heal and buff you. In fact, this was a well-known trick in the Spectrecles quest line; the healer takes his/her goggles off so they can't see the dragon, which means they can't draw aggro from it, and they are free to burst heal without worrying about getting killed.

Originally posted by Aethios

Games like Runescape have been using the same technology for many years now. Heck, even WoW itself has been doing this for a while, as is pointed out in the article. It's really not that difficult to do, and calling it "phasing technology" implies that they did special research or something. Basically you just make an object, such as a monster, and you tack on an extra flag and tie it to a quest. If the player did the quest, the monster shows up, if they didn't then it's invisible. It's very similar to many of the collection quests in WoW already, like the Mana Cells, or the "Spectrecles" as is mentioned in the article.

EDIT: You can still get players to help you. They won't be able to see the monsters, but they can still heal and buff you. In fact, this was a well-known trick in the Spectrecles quest line; the healer takes his/her goggles off so they can't see the dragon, which means they can't draw aggro from it, and they are free to burst heal without worrying about getting killed.

You still dont get it its not the same as mana cells, or spectrecles where you could see other players roaming around but not the mobs their fighting. Here you have an entire area allocated to you depending on where you are in the quest chain. So you will not see other players and be able to help/heal them.

Its used as a story telling mechanic so they wont make it so insanely difficult that you cant complete it without help. And they are not gonna use it in the entire game so you wont be a loner throughout. If you see the DK intro quest chain you would see why using this makes sense. Imagine 10 people completing the same qst and 10 copies of arthas showing up. Or like completeing the Orgrilla faction starter quests where you have to wait you turn to be declared the king/queen of the ogres. They will only instance that specific part, not the entire game.

The fact that they managed to do this instancing (ala guild wars ) without a loading screen is what makes it new. The reason their using the term Phasing is beacuse they dont want people to confuse this with instancing (which has a loading screen)