Is Instant Gratification a Good Thing?
The general consensus among MMO developers these days seems to center around instant gratification for the player base. One of the biggest forms of instant gratification is near instantaneous travel across long distances in the game world. Given the size of the game worlds growing at an ever increasing rate in most AAA MMO’s, it isn’t hard to understand why. But what effect does that have on our perception of the world and more importantly the immersion factor? In some of the larger titles, traveling from one corner of the world to the other could take hours on foot. Most games offer some sort of faster travel mount to help ease the pain, but almost all offer a way to teleport from area to area quickly. On one hand, this is handy if you just need to make a quick trip across the world to complete a quest or meet up with friends. On the other hand, this seems like a massive waste of good game world and pulls players back out to reality. What’s the purpose of an enormous map if you don’t
