Guild Wars 2

In addition to the open world zones, I think that a great feature to have in Guild Wars 2, would be privatized zones that are invitation only. These privatized zones would have all of the same Dynamic Events, Waypoints, Heart Quests, Points of Interest, ect. as the open world zones, but they would be your own zone that you could explore with your friends, guildmates, or just by yourself.

Post Privatized Server Implementation Scenario:

Before you walk into a zone, you add 4 of your friends or guild mates to your party. As you walk into the zone a pop-up confronts you that says “Join [Open World] or [Create Private Zone]”. This pop-up might be a nuisance to some players, so there should be a box to check, if anyone should want it, that states you always want to join [Open World]. If you should change your mind, you can go to the options and un-check this box.

When you enter the privatized zone with your friends or guild mates, you now have a list of options you can select depending on your preferences of how you want to play that zone.

The options should include, but are not limited to:

-Difficulty of Dynamic Events and NPC Enemies – [Normal] [Hard] [Very Hard]

-Dynamic Event Recycle Timer- [Normal] [ Recycle 20% slower] [ Recycle 50% slower] [Do not recycle events while I am in my privatized zone.]

-Enemy Re-spawn Timer – [Normal] [Enemies respawn 20% slower] [Enemies re-spawn 50% slower] [Do not re-spawn enemies while I am in privatized zone.]

Also, there should be an additional invitation panel. You should have the option to invite up to 45 (50 players total counting you and your group) other players into your privatized zone. These players cannot access your zone unless they are invited. I think this would be awesome to get 50 guild mates working together in a zone like Orr.
Note: 50 players per privatized zone is just a suggestion. It would be up to Arenanet to decide how many players can join a privatized zone via invitation.

Before you write this off as impossible to implement, this is almost exactly how the entire game of Guild Wars 1 was played. The only difference is that you could only have up to 8 players in your zone at once, and you only had access to Normal Mode and Hard Mode difficulties.

I think the implementation of privatized zones would be great for players who do not like playing with strangers. Also, privatized zones would turn zones like Orr into organized “raid-like” encounters with the option to play with 45 (or more/less) other guild members.

Privatized zones will not be to everyone’s liking, and that is why open world zones will still exist, they just won’t be as bloated and cram packed with “zergs” of random players.

As long as creating this instances costs over 50 gems per person, and at least 100, preferably a primer number like 131, fine by me.

It never always comes in handy to have something else to spend gems, so there’s more chances of people having a couple of surplus gems they end up selling.

It should cost 1337 gold per person

In the first place that sounds like a good idea, but I see problems when everyone is starting such a private zone… The real zone will probably just be an empty place or at least not that filled with many players any more like it should be! But probably this could be handled with a well-thought implementation…

If it’s for primary the challenge, I would favor changes in actually zones/events!

I’m not so sure this is a great idea. It would divide up the playerbase and the “official” instances would become ghost towns aside from a few newbies and the guildless.

This would be fine for towns though. There have been a few times my roleplaying group has purposely gone into an overflow zone to use a tavern for a private event that would have otherwise been packed with players. But I do not think PvE zones should be split up.

However, I agree that having “Hardmode” PvE instances might be a good thing. I would love to see an instance of each zone where every normal mob is a veteran, every veteran is a group boss, every group boss is a world boss, and every world boss is… hmm, a universe boss, I guess? That would be a lot of fun, but it should be a public zone, accessible to anyone.

The game was designed to make it easy to group with strangers (at least for WvW and PvE — jury is still out on whether dungeons require a finder system or not). I’m not sure how it’s good for the game or the overall community if there are private worlds that only allow some people to join.

I understand why some people might want the feature, but I think that’s like asking GW2 to be an ordinary multiplayer game (like D3) instead of a massively multiplayer game.

I like Lily’s idea of allowing a customizable home instance for a guild. If I recall correctly, ANet has already said that they are planning to introduce guild halls at some point and I imagine that these would serve a similar purpose.

@Lily Miranda
The thing with a “hardmode” PvE instances could be nice. I would still favor changes in difficulty/challenge in the “official” instances, but if that won’t happen, than I would like to see something like that…