I save a comment spawned around the release of Guild Wars. It’s tied to other comments I wrote in the past and in particular to the two-parts article about the death of the genre (one, two):

—
We are back at discussing the Original Conflict.

From the “game design” point of view the use of the instancing technology is the very best way to deliver good-quality PvE. Instancing means control and control means that the devs have more tools to balance the type of “pattern” they are going to offer.

It’s obvious that the fun of PvE comes from a balanced challenge.

Now the conflict is between THIS model, that Guild Wars achieved perfectly, and the “original mmorpg myth”.

This second model isn’t game-y design but more near to a “simulator”. So the persistence becomes the actual pattern to reproduce. The “verisimilitude”.

That’s the basic conflict between two different models. Old time mmorpg players usually expect to find the second, so they feel upset or dissatisfied.