What is the appeal of open world content?

[Sessurea]

In Tera you had actual full open world labyrinthine dungeons. It was lovely to mount up from the village or town or w/e, horse across some lavish countryside, and ride right into a dungeon. No loading screens. Of course this was a lot more significant in Tera due to openworld pvp, but still, it was enjoyable from a pve point of view too. You could meet people in the dungeons, and party up for ( shock! ) hard to beat boss monsters in the open world. Tera is pretty old now, but it's open world is pretty amazing.

[coldreactive]

due to openworld pvp,

I absolutely hate open world forced pvp, so I chose Tempest Reach on the USA Publisher.

[Aylis]

Open world, when done well is incredible.

OMG I LOVED that event boss! I freaked the first time it spawned!

Also absolutely ^^ when open world content is done right its so much fun. It doesn't have to end in spawn stealing and all that stuff either. It can boil down to even personal challenges as well.

I'll see your GW2 video Skaterger and raise you...HOVERBOARD RACING!!!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i0D_qMW49qU

[Mugiawara]

I absolutely hate open world forced pvp, so I chose Tempest Reach on the USA Publisher.

I chose Celestial Hills. I play alone most of the time, but you have no idea how fun it is, just exploring the new labyrinths.
When friends ask me what I'm doing I go ... "I'M GOING ON AN ADVENTURE!" XD
I recently had went into like...this academy thing and here's a gif of the scenery. I take a lot of pics of this game, it's super pretty.

FF really needs this...but TERA's combat is much more fun to aid in this so is GW2 combat.

[Krindor]

TERA isn't truly open world. Some of the areas require a transition because they are on separate virtual servers. But yeah, I really like how "Open" each area in TERA is. But the reason I don't like TERA: Crafting, The HUD uses Flash, AMD CPUs struggle in some areas due to single-threading of x86 programs.

What I was thinking about in Tera was mostly BAMs and they can be considered open world content which is challenging and fun especially solo

[Moqi]

Open world, when done well is incredible.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HeR7D1PfbQg

When it is done poorly, like hunts, it is terrible. Btw I hope the devs can take a look at how open world bosses were done in GW2, no rendering issues even with hundreds of players, there is a sense of danger with their abilities, they don't drop like a sack of potatoes even though they are elites, and they offer equal rewards for participation.

Videos like these are the reason I've never been interested in MMOs. My brother plays a MMO like that, I watch him play sometimes but I just don't get the appeal of these fights at all :/ The reason I like FFXIV is because it's nothing like this.

[Magis]

Because MMOs are basically virtual worlds (or they used to be). The whole interesting thing about them is you could meet other people "living" and interacting within this virtual world. Instanced content is the antithesis of the MMO, it takes something that is massively multiplayer and turns it into a 4 person multiplayer co-op game. This can be seen with earlier MMOs focusing on making the world believable rather building a game around it. Players would have to travel across the world (though had help with some teleports) and transportation had a schedule and would take time to move. In FFXI it was a literal time table and you could see the world go by as you sat on the ferry/airship. In WoW it was a bit quicker, with a instant zone load from Azeroth/Kalimdor once the boat/airship move far enough into the ocean.

Later, MMOs became more and more streamlined (mostly thanks to WoW) to the point where the point was shifted from the world to just being "a game". Honestly I think the best place to see the progression is in WoW's PVP system. First the whole world was an "open" pvp ground. Except for newbie areas, players could kill each other anywhere. This would also cause city raids by players, with attackers and defenders (X-Roads and Tarren Mill anyone?). Heck, the main cities would be raided which would have whole servers participate. It was content generated by the players themselves. Then Blizzard introduced battlegrounds... instanced PVP. While it was cut off to just 20 people... you still had to walk to the battle ground and queue up with the faction you were working for. You could even see the path to the battlefield through an instance portal. Heck, world pvp would spill into these entrances too as well. Then Blizz introduced Battle Masters which instantly teleported you to the battle ground making the treck pointless as well as the original entrances. Heck, most would even know why they were fighting there... just that you talk to the guy in the main city and poof! I stopped playing at the end of TBC, but it's from what I heard, it's been made even less open, with pvp accessible anywhere.

At that point you ask... why even have a "world" if you aren't going to encourage players to be in it? A lot of people play MMOs as a roleplaying game, as an interactive experience of the virtual world, with real people.... rather than just something to do for 10min cause /isbored. Heck some took it even further with actual "roleplaying", fully taking the role of their character.

[Shirana]

I'd actually like to understand the appeal of open world content in general.
From my experience, which is very limited in games mind you reader, it's always been something horrible. I'll give some examples. Like open world dungeons with bosses that were just farmed endlessly by people who would KS you all day. You would report them time and time again but they would always be there not caring for your quests to kill dungeon bosses lol. Or open world raids which was hogged by the top guild on the server who already had the in game currency and real currency to pay for the best of the best to ensure they could out do any other group and thus successfully hogged world bosses for years on the server I played. Even played games with open party loot so whoever was the luckiest to pick something up got all the good drops and could just run off 8D. So I'd actually like to see "open world content done right". Until then I'll personally always be for instanced content and party rolling features on loot.

[Tupsi]

Open world, when done well is incredible.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HeR7D1PfbQg

When it is done poorly, like hunts, it is terrible. Btw I hope the devs can take a look at how open world bosses were done in GW2, no rendering issues even with hundreds of players, there is a sense of danger with their abilities, they don't drop like a sack of potatoes even though they are elites, and they offer equal rewards for participation.

PSO2 is another example:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_nw77OmWnVI

(Also does FATEs better too.)

The appeal is the old FFXIV saying:

"Many vs Many"

It just feels like an actual world, compared to sectioning everyone off in pairs of 4 into instances that don't matter in the long run.

Videos like these are the reason I've never been interested in MMOs. My brother plays a MMO like that, I watch him play sometimes but I just don't get the appeal of these fights at all :/ The reason I like FFXIV is because it's nothing like this.

You simply like single player style games more than you do MMOs.

[kyuven]

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This is a very good point, and also a good point as to why they don't add more open world content than they do.
There are already FATEs and hunts. Hunts are still in the "growing pains" stage (I like to think of them as being in open beta, kinda like FATEs were before) while FATEs and instanced dungeons are more, as you put it, "optimized."
Thing is, once you do open world content with the exception of things that respawn like FATEs, maps, and Hunts, you're done. There's no more reason to hang around quest areas if you've already done all the quests. This is true in every game. The development teams end up with big swathes of content no one is doing anything with.
This is and was a MASSIVE problem in older games. Unused space is a big issue.
In games like ArcheAge or the old Star Wars Galaxies, unused space is used by players, so they can afford to have a whole bunch of it.