Just wondering if the game world itself is instanced... I'm hoping not.

I find loading screens to be the single most immersion-breaking thing you can do to a game, and sadly gamesas has a bad history with this (ie. every interior is instanced from the main world)

I think WoW and Rift should be commended on their major game worlds being traversable from north to south or east to west completely without a loading screen... it seems to be a lost art.

All the MMOs I have played recently are instanced heavily.. even to the effect of splitting up single "zones" into 3 or 4 instances.

I dislike the "convenience" of GW2's instant teleport feature. I much preferred in WoW getting on a Gryphon and soaring over the treetops to my destination - even it takes 5 minutes.

Any information on this?

Judging by the first snips of gameplay released, interior areas seem indeed to be instanced. Also, since ESO will be using this "mega server", there's reason to assume that ESO will not feature an open world without loading screens between areas, and might be similar to GW2 in that regard. I imagine that is easier this way to provide as many instances of an area as is needed for the amount of players active in said area.

But I share your sentiment, for the most part: If WoW was able to provide a continuous world without loading screens already 8 years ago, why is it apparently such a big deal in modern games?

Compartmentalization helps massively with optimization and making a seamless world gets harder as environmental complexity increases and is nearly insurmountable when aiming for the lowest common denominator due to the limiting factor being disk IO time and memory bandwidth which haven't seen much (read, any) improvement in the low-end over the last ten years.

WoW pulls it off thanks to its graphical simplicity, that is low-resolution textures and meshes, few static objects, even fewer dynamic objects, etc.

I agree that completely open worlds are much better for immersion, and given TES' history of being completely open (at least within each province) it's almost criminal to break each province up into geographical areas separated by loading screens, but... it looks like ESO will indeed be designed the way GW2 is. They aren't creating one province at a time, but instead creating small areas from (I think) all of the provinces, and leaving plenty of room for expansion within each province. So for example, you won't be able to visit every city from Skyrim - only a few of them at first.

The silver lining is that each area will likely be huge. Exploration is still a strong focus for the game, and to support a high playerbase with their megaserver technology we're probably looking at a Tamriel with a much larger scale than we saw in Skyrim and Oblivion. That's a guess, but it seems highly likely. But yeah, exterior loading screens

I couldn't agree more. I hate instanced areas. Let's just hope the instanced areas will be the enemy factions and Cyrodiil. I can live with that, but I seriously hope there will be no loading screen when walking from Skyrim to Morrwind; I'd hate that.

I think, if possible, maybe they could add so that people with bad computers could check a box in their options, like this;

[X]Instanced areas: checking this box will increase your performance greatly, but it will add loading screens to new locations.

For once, I think that this might not be easily achieved technically.
An engine is optimized for doing things one way.
Unless they go for 64 bit to support more than 3 GB RAM on windows.

Although i agree with you about instancing and loading i'm pretty sure you couldn't go from north to south, east to west in rift and wow without loading. Going from continent to content is done by loading, you cant swim the oceans.

As for TESO, from what i understand it's not an open world and you can't go from faction area to faction area without loading.

Sure, but whereas WoW only had loading screens between continents, it seems ESO might be going the GW2 route of having loading screens between each geographic area. Think of each area in WoW being separated by a loading screen - such as leaving Stormwind and entering Elwynn Forest having a loading screen, and then leaving Elwynn Forest to enter the Redridge Mountains having another loading screen, etc. It would also be like having a loading screen along the road north of Riverwood in order to enter the tundra area in Skyrim.

That's only a guess, but it seems highly likely since they've said that each province will only have two or three cities to visit at first, with most parts of each province locked away for later expansions. I would LOVE to hear they are locked away by invisible walls, and that those walls will be removed later on, but it seems far more likely that each province is separated into a dozen or two areas, all locked away behind loading screens.

Yeah i know how loading works in mmo's been playing them since the late 90's and i've also played GW2, AOC, EQ2 which all use the same system you describe.

TESO from what i gather will use the same system but i might be wrong.

I like instant travel.
And I hate a game world that is artificially small just to make it possible to travel seamlessly from location to location.
SWTOR is one example where the immersion is broken by the ridiculous small worlds and cities.
In contrast TSW: I love Kingsmouth. This feels like a real world.

SW:Tor is a perfect example of a game immersion-killed by some puny loading screens. SW:Tor seemed immersive at first, but it's honestly one of the least immersive MMO's that are made in the last years. Loading screens are alright between provinces, but if it's going to be a loading screen between riverwood and the Whiterun plains, hell no. I hope Skyrim is going to be the same size as in normal Skyrim. I seriously do.