Wondering...

[Bafoon]

Will we be able to make instanced zones like Plane of Fear, Unrest, etc. Non instanced so that our whole server can enjoy?

[ZexisStryfe]

I am sure you could, but why would you want to?Instanced zones tend to be very small and allowing even 25-50 people into such a zone would overwhelm it. There would be nothing to kill very quickly. Plus, these are the zones that have a very linear progression and you need to do everything in order to continue. That can be very difficult if there is a person 2 min ahead of you killing everything you need to progress. I fyou are intent on changing things from live, that is one thing, but if you want to keep close to live... I would suggest against it.

[techguy84]

I would imagine that Lethal could implement a flag in the zone database table that would indicated wether or not a zone should be loaded as a instance for certain groups or guilds, and at which point you could 1 or 0 that field and world would load the zone accordingly.
In most cases, this could be a bad thing, but I myself think it would be great. You just need to make sure that your mobs, npcs and quest are worked accordingly, or as Zexis said, it could be more of a pain in the ass than a blessing.

[Bafoon]

with the ideas I have it is worth experimenting with.

[ZexisStryfe]

Personally, I am doing a total custom server that does not take place in Norrath, so I plan on taking some of the larger instances like Emerald Halls and making them full fledged zones. The main sticking point is however that this zone can no longer be heavily scripted like it is on live (I assume, I have not raided EH yet). Personally, with zones like unrest or nektropos, I would keep them instances and heavily story driven, because I don't think they would be much fun otherwise. Just my 2 copper tho, its your server and you can do whatever you like with it!

[LethalEncounter]

Yes, in fact it would even be easier than you thought. Starting with 0.5 the zone that is stored in the characters table will use the zone's name instead of the zone's file. What this means is that you can create more than one zone that uses the same file (the zone file data in your client's paks directory). Therefore you can create a custom zone, call it whatever you want and then populate that zone with your custom content. You won't have to modify the existing zones to do this. The only limitation to creating your own zones is that the actual zone file must be on the client machine before it can be used.
The 'always up' flag will be added sometime soon as well to designate zones such as city zones that will always be active.