I've heard rumors that Mines, Caves, Tombs, etc are not instanced.

Is this true? I honestly think this would be a deal breaker for some people, myself included.

There are some dungeons instanced and some dungeons are public... In my opinion they NEED to have public dungeons to create a complete MMO feel... so for me, if it was all instanced i would be devo :/

Dungeons in the faction zones (PvE areas) are all closed/instanced. While the dungeon in Cyrodiil (PvP area) are open/public dungeons.

One of the best things about UO and DAoC were the public dungeons. Why are these an issue for you, OP? Have you played a game with public dungeons before? Honest questions.

Not to be off topic or anything but are you perhaps an aussie?

I've travelled the world and found that the only people who use the word Devo are Aussies haha.

Anywho back on track, I'd love the idea of instancing the smaller dungeons as how annoying are those packed little ones... Yarg....

Open dungeons svck. They are nothing but zerg fests. That feeling of content is already being handled by Dark Anchors, we do not need open dungeons on top of them.

Depends on how they are done. Public dungeons can be enjoyable. UO and DAoC never had an issue with overcrowding because dungeons were sizable. UO also had many dungeons, and rather than making dungeons progressive with a handful or less for each level bracket, the dungeons themselves simply had progressive content. Newer characters could stay near the entrances, while the more developed characters would venture further. I enjoyed the social aspect of public dungeons immensely. I feel modern MMOs make them too business-like. The only memories of dungeon crawling I have from Rift and WoW are from organized guild raids, but many of my random dungeon excursions in UO and DAoC are just as memorable.

Well guess you are going to hate Cyrodiil then. Because Cyrodiil has 18 open dungeons in it.

For good or ill there has been a fundemental shift in the way the greater amount of the playerbase plays. Mostly its going to depend on how the rewards are doled out as that is what the players will do, whether its cash, gear or xp. You put "uber loot" in there and either everyone will segregate (you need 9000 gs!) or simply grab gobs of people to zerg it into the ground (this is more likely since everyone gets loot who hits a mob). Those great days of yore are dead no matter how much you want them to return. As they say you simply cannot go home again,

Please tell me something I did not already know.

Haha yep Aussie as mate

Look at it this way guys, Public dungeons would work REALLY well in this game the way the server is setup... The preferences which helps select the zoning / people you play with (on the mega server) will also be regulating numbers in a particualr area, this will limit overcrowding, secondly by having a mix of some public and some instanced means that if you dont like public dungeons just go do instanced ones...

I guess some people play MMO's to have their own little private games... i play MMO's to be part of the world created, to me always being influenced by or indeed influencing other people around you is one of the foundations of a MMO... but for some people i guess its juat about leveling their character and not having to interact with the vast world of other players. Instance dungeons feel so stale after playing in a vibrant public dungeon with group competition and also groups helping each other out.. Also public dungeons always offer a slightly different experience due to mobs popping on top of you, or stuff being camped or being called on to save a bunch of newbies trying to make thei way though, having to camp an area trying to kill PH's to get a name to spawn... these things in my opinion are core to a MMO player inteaction during a combat situation (pvp aside)... otherwise these MMO games just feel like a 2 - 4 player game with a lobby that has graphics...

Definitely agree that the public dungeons should be big though.

I haven't, but I can just picture it:

Enter mine

Everything is looted/dead

One guy off to the side farming a special chest that has a chance to drop a rare special dagger

10+ people at the spawn NPC at the end of the mine, all waiting for a respawn and a Tag.

Wait 2 hours before I finally get a tag.

Just doesn't seem enjoyable from how I can picture it.

Devs have stated that if you participate, you get loot and exp regardless of party and that it is instanced. Why worry about tagging? Again, if the dungeon is large enough, and provided it isn't a single mob/chest dropping the good stuff, but many different ones, then again overcamping isn't a problem. UO had wide dungeons with multiple levels and no real boss monsters. You simply farmed and either got a good item or didn't, but at least got gold for your trouble. DAoC had named mobs, usually half a dozen anyway in a single dungeon, and each dropped some random named loot.

There is no "tagging" in this game. As long as you help out kill a mob you will get experience and loot from it.But you have to actually attribute in the kill you. You can't just hit it once and expect to get a reward for it.

Well that's good to hear. But what is stopping someone from hitting it a few times, and afking for 30 sec? Do you need to do a specific % of it's hp worth of damage?

You have to have a good contribution to it. You can't just hit it and leave.

EQ had public dungeons and my guild kept all the other guilds on our server blocked out of the top end dungeons for months.

I realize this is probably different, but many dungeons required keys. We kept the mob that dropped the key dead for months so that we didn't have to compete for the dungeon. The only real competition was the race to the dungeon when our "spotter" saw the mob spawn.

Alrighty.

You seem to know quite a bit about ESO, I'm just going to ask one more question.

I never got to play DAoC, but I know the pvp system is going to be very similar. But what's stopping one of the 3 factions from being overpopulated and just dominating the whole thing? I could see a significant amount of people going Orc, just due to the Orc's past popularity. Daggerfall then dominates and some people swap over to their Daggerfall alts and joining in on the one-sidedness.

If you have ever played DAOC the public dungeons were huge. They were not zergfests at all. Often times you would go in and see no one at the entrance. Fight your way deep enough and you would see some other players.

That's good to hear.

Each 'campaign' for Cyrodiil is capped around 2000 people. The campaign is suppose to be smart enough so that there should never be a huge advantage for one faction to overpopulate all the other factions. So you should never see it be like 60% EP 25% AD and 15% DC. It should be more closer to a 40/30/30 type of situation.

But ZOS has said that if one particular faction is very underwhelmed they might allow more people to join the campaign from that faction so that it will even out more. And they said that if one faction is just too dominate that the other two faction should naturally team up together to beat them.

That's good to hear. But after playing WoW for 8 years, doing tons and tons of BGs, it's hard finding the co ordination in a small group of people, never mind ~1200.

It would make sense for the two lessers to team up on the one with the advantage, and I would really enjoy seeing it, but past experience has shown me otherwise.

You are never going to find coordination between random people. If you want to have a small coordinated group for Cyrodiil join a guild that specifies in that, or just do it with friends.

open dungeons is one of the main reasons im looking at this game. im sick of instanced crap. they've also told us that the open dungeons will get phased based on people in it. so the zerg fest theory has already been shot down.

Oh yeszzz we do!

You keep saying this but offer no source, please link me a source saying that all the dungeons outside of Cyrodiil are instanced. And no "i heard it in a vid" wont do, link the vid or the dev quote to back up what you are saying.

Let me help you.

Matt Firor


Public dungeons are crucial to one of The Elder Scrolls Online’s central ambitions for socialising: to see players meeting each other in the game world rather than the interfaces. “They’re basically a space that’s designed for people who are not grouped together to go into to fight," Firor says. "It’s a great place for people to connect with other players and they’re very important to us, although we still have instanced private dungeons and end-game raid dungeons for groups of up to six players too.



"Each one of these public dungeons is soloable, however, and there are a lot of them, but they’re also dangerous. Lots of creatures, very close together. Basically, if you solo it, you’ll need to find a place to heal, and then you might find another player there who’s exactly like you, and needs help, and then you can fall in together. You’ll have met someone that, hopefully, you’ll want to stick around with later on.”

http://www.edge-online.com/news/elder-scrolls-online-return-public-dungeons/

Does the above sound like he is only talking about public dungeons in Cyrodiil, nope.

Stop spreading misinformation or at least do your homework.