They never respawn.

often people have said to me that instancing is not a good thing, that instancing detracts from the immersion of a game. well, i can see why some people would say that but here is my take on it.

What’s an instance?

An instance is a private version of an area that just you and your party share, you will not bump into random players like you will in World of Warcraft or other more persistent MMO’s.

You would think that when you exit the outpost and neater an instance that it would be a lonely feeling but far from it. Because you can still access guild and alliance chat you you still feel engaged in the world, even when you are in a party of AI henchmen you do not feel alone.

In fact because of instancing you never have to queue up in line waiting for a ‘boss’ to spawn or continually miss those kills you need because some one else has come and murdered everything in an area.

I fact, there is one wonderful thing that instancing does. when you will something it will no respawn, once you kill something it stays dead until you exit and re-enter the area. meaning that if you are doing badly you don't have to battle your way through never-ending hordes of enemy's, just the 200 or so that are populating the instance.

It’s possible in Guild Wars to entirely clear an area. in fact thanks to hard mode vanquishing titles its actually encouraged.

once you have completed a campaign (finished the primary quest/mission line you unlock a little button that is visible in the party window called ‘hard mode’ when you click it you enter the instanced wilderness in a more difficult mode of play.

but once all members of the party reach –60DP (maximum death penalty) you are all tossed back to the outpost.  

there are two major reasons to tackle an area in hard mode, the first is to clear the area for your Vanquisher title (that you get once you have cleared EVERY area in a campaign) or to get a bonus on your title points. for example if you tackle an Asuran area you will get extra Asuran title track points (double in some cases) for the same number of kills.

 

This has been a very basic article regarding Hard Mode and Instancing, it is by no means all i have to say on the topic but it is all i have time to write at the moment, i will give a more in-depth look at Hard Mode (HM) at a later date, after all, its almost an art clearing those area’s.

Note: this weeks 404 Radio (Episode 36) will have an in-depth talk about the GW Bard posts. you can get 404 Radio from the RSS feed, here http://feeds.feedburner.com/404-Radio