Just a wild question for the devs...
Instancing has become a major part of EQ2 (whether you like it or not), so I was curious, will instancing be functional in the EMU?

Heh of course. We will try to implement every feature that will can. Some might be out of reach, but we will attempt to make it as good as possible.

Correct me if I am wrong, but isnt all but major cities considered a instance. Like Antonica and such..... no actually wait, isnt it just a instance after reaching a certain population, that the SOE servers just boot up another one to spead the load and keep things not so over crowed. It was like that at launch, but I dont know if its that way now.
Anyhow though, there are several quest that require instances in EQ2 so it would be hard to not make these function.
Oh well, Im no coder and I have no idea what it takes to make instances function properly, so guess we will just have to wait and see.

Isnt it just a separate map that the character gets ported to ?
As far as my understanding goes, its a map that has all its things done separate from the main world map. - When a group enters an instance, it should hide other non-groupies that are in the same instance.

Agree with Techguy84 because at start of EQ2 you have choise between Antonica 1, 2, 3... And same when you have Sinking Sand 1 and 2 for example you have 2 spawn of Terrorantula so I think it instanced.
And instance needed for lot of Quest, Raid, Tradeskill...

The instancing of the outdoor zones occurs at a certain population (100 people for the major tiered zones). This still occurs in Darklight Woods and Greater Faydark every once in while.
The way instancing works is that when you and your group enter an instanced dungeon (say Nek Castle) a copy of the zone is booted up for the use of you and your group only. If another group accesses the castle while you are in it, a new copy of the zone is booted up for their use, so that the two groups do not interfere with each other. They are basically the equivilant of EQEMUs dynamic zones except that each group gets their own copy of it. My concern is just how CPU/memory intensive is instancing going to be.
Personally, my current plans are to have damn near 60+ static zones with the rest being dynamic instances (35+ more zones). I hope my server (P4-2.8 ghz, 2 gb RAM, 1TB HDD) can handle it ;op