Star Citizen

[Xanthian]

From what I understand the universe in the game will be Persistent.. the Instanced part of the game is more closely related to sharding than a WoW style raid/PVP instance. IE there is one server and MANY shards to play one, each shard holding a limitation of the number of people. Also remember there could easily be instanced area's for specific type of PVP, such as Squad vs Squad (just speculation here but it makes sense). This will allow forced to name a time and date, and fight it out without interference from people not involved. I know I know.. some people just want to get involved and wreck other peoples parties.. well you can do that in the shard. So we are looking at a merger of instanced and persistent.. So you log on and switch over to the shard your buddies are on (if there is room) and go hunting.

If done right.. sharding is a great way to allow more people to play a good game; rather then requiring everyone to have high end PC. If your buddy is in a shard and a massive fight starts and there is room.. you just hop shards and goto the fight.. This actually makes the universe more diverse, and keeps mega squads from ruling the verse (something Eve has always had issues with). The games difficulty should be in the flying and tactics.. not the zerging and fur-balling.