Marc Nottke at Massively writes his last column on “phasing” for MMOgology, a column that had a very good run. Phasing is a mechanic in a persistent MMO world where prior to some event horizon players are all in phase alpha of a zone. After the world-changing event, players belong to the phase beta club. A town that players once loved is burnt to the ground, there may be new mobs, new quest-givers, etc. in the beta phase.
The problem with the big MMOs current use of phasing (namely World of Warcraft and Lord of the Rings Online to a much lesser extent) is that the community is partitioned. The door goes one way, folks. When you raised the ire of the enemy and your city was burned, well you can’t go back in time to see the city unburned. That would be silly. Now it’s time to eke the new world order out of the ashes.
Guild Wars phased the world between the starting area and the rest of the game with the first offering, Prophecies. Players refused to leave. They stayed in phase alpha, and to some degree – as much as is possible in Guild Wars – built a community there. This is an extreme, but it does highlight the dangers of phasing. People are not happy when people in the beta phase club cannot come back and group up with the slower alpha phase club. Developers therefore have to be careful to limit the scope of the alpha phase in width and depth. Areas unaffected by the event should not be partitioned, and players should not have to spend inordinate amounts of time trying to pass through to beta phase. More thoughts after the break.