Seriously. The idea of everyone in a region playing on the one server just sounds terrible.

I like TES lore. I like to roleplay. Why should I be punished by being inundated with idiots in the global chat channel (and everywhere else) who can't spell and don't give a damn about TES beyond the whole kill-loot-level thing?

BAD ZENIMAX. BAD.

There are still separate worldspace instances that people are grouped into depending on friends, guilds, observed playstyle and their own preference that includes RP, soloing, casual exploring, etc.

It has a function where you can tick 'Roleplayer' on your profile, and you'll be matched with other Roleplayers in the same instance of the server. I imagine you can also automatically join friend's partitions, so there's no reason why Roleplayers can't get together. Roleplaying, from what I hear doesn't really work unless it's organised anyway, so there's no reason you can't get a group together and get in the same instance.

Also the weeping angel is creeping me out...

That seems overly complicated. So instead of just telling a friend, hey, I play on the, I dunno, Alduin server, you've gotta say, okay, click this checkbox, and then this one, and this one...

How is that better?

No - you click one checkbox and them add them as a friend. If they're not in the same instance as you they'll be able to join it

Multiple servers make it confusing and difficult to match up with friends. Big servers also help to keep world spaces from being empty.

Fair enough. How does global chat, work, then?

Is that instanced as well?

Well I imagine global chat is specific to your instance - but there's technology to talk to friends across instances available so there's no reason you can't message a friend and say 'hey - click on my name a join my partition'. The only concern I have is when they reduce the number of instances depending on how many people are playing - that might squeeze some non-rp'ers onto your turff at peak times. I'm sure they'll explain more in the future but I personally quite like the idea. TES fans are usually accommodating of Roleplayers though (because it is an RPG) so here's hoping you won't get grief at peak times

Yeah, that's what I'm worried about.

I understand Dark Age of Camelot and some past MMOs with three factions had a couple of "free for all" open PvP, role playing servers.

Was kind of hoping for a server like that, I wonder to what extent we will be able to customize the instance options. Not quite sure, but I suspect there are more role-players among the Elder Scrolls fan base, compared to other franchises.

I agree, it would be awesome to have an alternate ruleset FFA server, but I think megaserver kindof rules it out (at least for PvE). One thing Brian Wheeler did mention in offhanded conversation (hopefully I can repeat this), is that since PvP in Cyrodiil is separated into Campaigns, they could in the future consider having a sort of "alternate ruleset campaign", where the mechanisms for PvP are different than normal.

I definitely wouldn't expect anything like this at launch, but because of their campaign separation, it might be possible to have some cool PvP related alternative rulesets someday.

As far as roleplaying goes, I think the megaserver sounds great, but I do hope it treats RPers well. There are a lot of people who are incredibly passionate about the TES lore, and I hope that the gamespace allocation mechanism is very smart about who it puts into RP areas. If done well, I think it could really be the best of both worlds, fostering a great RP community, while not isolating those players from the rest of the game and the rest of their friends who may not be as dedicated to serious roleplaying.