Stop being intentionally obtuse. You rail against Ut and then pull shit like this out of your ass.
Not accurate at all.
Umm, did you actually read it? An AZ is a zone designed for a 4 man group but inside the AZ are portals to instanced 12 man raid content.
Couple of weeks? It takes two/three days maximum for even the most cursory of leveling experiences to hit Level 10 for Cyro.
I don't know AZs sound OK. If its a full zone or around the same size and filled with everything a normal zone is, I could have fun with that. I loved grinding elite mobs in the open world in WoW (before they nerfed them) with a group. This sounds like that and more. Grind some mobs, do some quests and even some dungeons, all tuned for a group? I'm down for that. Its not revolutionary, in fact its more old school, but it has more potential than just a standard dungeon.
Also factor in replayability, lockout timers etc.
The AZ itself isn't instanced. A delve is what everyone else refers to as a torch dungeon in the regular zones. Those are instanced. The 12 man raid trials are instanced as well.
You wait in queue(and almost guaranteed there will be one) if you want to pvp and pray people who just want to pve just go to the overflow instead of waiting. It's going to happen, and I am going to laugh when I see people rage about queues. Thankfully this usually only last a few days into launch and the concurrent numbers drop like a rock afterwards.
The loot can be decent to fill in gaps and supplement until crafted. I know crafting has the best stuff, but its going to take a while for crafting to make purple/orange for people.
And this is why people think you are a shill.
Yes, I assumed trials were instanced. I don't know, I actually like the idea of AZs. Its a combination of open world group PvE and instanced group PvE. I like that. Its a nod to the MMO past. Maybe we will a see old school mob camping. Lol
I dont agree with everything you say but this is a legit post. Some of your concerns are worthy of consideration. I say to you, the game has not even released yet. More data and statistics will be collected as time passes. Perhaps the devs will change their minds at some time. Control of the UI is clearly a battle between the devs and the UI community and and it may come to be that eventually the devs cant hold back the loud cries from the players who want to mod the game.If you like PvP you should get more info about PvP and how it works in MMOs : first of all, gutting API won't prevent people from cheating, exploiting and doing bad things. There already is abot for TESO, and it's safe to assume more will come, API or not. Second, a player "running bots" doesn't really mean anything, PvP wise. Are we talking about scripts ? Macros ? "Smart" scripts that would trigger some action (i.e. purging the enemy as soon as he got buffs on him) would turn really shitty, especially when you have GCDs to to deal with. It wouldn't give a solid advantage in PvP, since you can't really hard theorycraft any encounter and you'd spend more time dealing with your scripts than actual fighting. And about macros, with nowadays keyboards you can macro a lot of stuff, again API or not.
Third, ZOS vision would be quite okay if TESOs UI would be functional, but it's not. You have status bars at the bottom of your screen, action at the middle, enemy / ally status bars at the top of the screen. If you do serious PvP you should know it's quite tedious having too much space between UI elements, your eyes would become tired very fast and you'll see yourself having to move your head up and down to "see" the different UI elements. At least we should be able to move the frames. Let's see how it really works if you want optimal performance and eye comfort :
Red circle : vital informations zone (where critical stuff happens).
Blue square : eye comfort zone (which would vary regarding your screen's height and size).
Green thing : Head-up Display (HUD) zone, optimal eye comfort and vital UI informations).
Now regarding TESO's UI, having to raise your head / eyes each time to check whatever debuff / buff your enemy is on, is really tedious. Checking your ability bar, your status bars and your enemy's target frame requires 3 eye "moves", where in my screenshot it requires none. Keep sieges wise, you'll never see a thing, you'll spend your time jumping from one UI element to another, and ZOS bar status requires you to check the bar for seconds to see what's going on, instead of having a icon which can be seen in a fraction of second. Some people, let's call them the expert players, would like to minmax their user interface as well. They'd like a combat log, moving frames, displaying useful information to get the best of their gameplay. Saying "let's gut the API otherwise people will cheat and run bots" it like saying "let's stop waste management because the Mafia uses it to launder money". I don't know about you, but I don't want to live in a world of shit just because some people don't follow the rules.
What non-instanced zone?
The adventure zones support multiple groups in each instance, so I'm calling them non-instanced compared to the torch dungeons that only support one group. Is this wrong?
Sounds right, I missed the part where he talkd about the "Delves" being instanced off and contain a boss/skyhsard.
How does having better reading comprehension skills make me a shill?