Runes of Magic as I’ve said previously is a 3d Generation MMOG. It means that when the development started, the developers were able to look at the first two generations and were able bring the winning formulas and features to their new game, enhanced those features, and add new ones the 1st and 2d generations do not have.
There are other criteria or qualifiers of course but the community-at-large do not agree on the generations in MMOGs. Each person or group have their own definition. But personally, I follow the common “generations” definition which other developers like Richard “Lord British” Garriott (the father of electronic RPGs and MMOGs), Brad McQuaid (EverQuest and Vanguard: Saga of Heroes), and others, mentioned in interviews to define the position of their “next gen MMO”.
RoM is that, a 3d Generation MMOG. As such, one of the feature that it got from its predecessors is the instance technology made popular by Guild Wars and World of Warcraft.
Follow up:
So what is an “instance”? An instance in an MMOG is a location that is isolated from the rest of the game world. If a player enters an instance, the game server creates a copy of that location only for that particular player. Any mobs, item drops, quests, and everything in this instance is only for that player and it will not affect any other copies of that location.
This technology came out as a solution to mob camping. I first heard of this from (again) Richard “Lord British” Garriott years ago wherein he explained that there are three types of instances. The first one was implemented in Guild Wars, the second level in Auto Assault, and the third in Tabula Rasa. The common instance type is the first, also known as instance dungeon thanks to World of Warcraft.
What is the advantage? Simple. Let’s say you want to learn the spell Shackles of Light but you need to retrieve first the stolen Ancient Rune Stone Energy Core from the mountain hideout of the most notorious thieves guild in the region. Upon arriving near the entrance to the hideout, there are other players there already. Some were on the same quest as you while the others are on a different quest (maybe they’re on a quest to join the thieves guild).
By now I know that a lot of you are recalling a similar encounter, maybe when your Ragnarok Online guild was trying to get an emperium and you were so out-of-luck for one whole week! You simply can not believe that there are people with lightning reflexes or Internet connection. Really bad right?
Well, you can forget that. With instancing, once you enter that location (in our example the thieves hideout) the server creates a copy just for you and anyone in your party or raid group. You can go on and wipe the whole instance and get all the loots that you can carry without ever worrying about kill-stealers and ninja-looters. You will have your Ancient Rune Stone Energy Core in no time and learn your new Shackles of Light spell.
Did I hear someone say su-weeeeet??
The instance technology is commonly used in dungeons since “traditionally” boss mobs are located inside some cave or abandoned fortress or some network of underground chambers filled with undead. Since I am a newbie in RoM just like you, I can not say if there are what we call outdoor instances in this game. An outdoor instance opens the game into putting boss mobs out in the world instead of the repetitive practice of putting them inside some dungeon.
When you see a transparent portal in front of you (common design is a swirling blue or white/silvery vortex), that usually goes into an instance (unless it is a mage’s portal then it isn’t), as shown below from an MMORPG.com screenshot.
That is an instance. A technology that came from the 2d Generation of MMOGs, you will encounter a lot of these in the game (that I am sure without the need to explore the world) and most of it will probably require that you setup a raid group. And what is a raid group? That will be the next topic for our What-Is series.
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