Ok, please don't bash me people!

There are easy solutions to these concerns. Allow me:

Simple, the devs only need to program it so that there can be no ganking. If you're killed, be it by monster, trap, or player, you cannot be looted. Bam!

Assigned drops for the individual or team that caused more damage to the affected mob. Multiple assigned drops for bosses/raid bosses.

This is the only real concern, while the quests wouldn't need to waited for, but more the quest rewards/mob target/etc. A bit of creative thinking on the dev's part and this could be all but eliminated. Ideas might include having quests be in instanced 'dungeons' scattered throughout the "wilderness" zone.

There needs to be dangers, and those dangers need to be able to be easily avoidable by everyone, if they choose to. In other words, there could be battlegrounds in these "wildernesses" that are PvP, and when you set foot on them, you are now free game. So that you couldn't just 'accidently' step foot on the area, and you couldn't escape death by stepping out, there would be a 60 second warmup and cooldown period.

Again, no looting off players. That is simply unfair and causes ruthless gameplay. It doesn't need to be that way. Like I said before, this would be a good idea, as long as it was something not required, and just extra. I would not want the majority of the game like this, just a handful of zones. Definately keep missions, all the primary quests, and most of the side quests the way they are now.

As far as server concerns, as long as these zones were treated like towns/outposts, with districts and limited amount of people per district, it should be fine. The total amount of people allowed would probably need to be cut by about half, due to weapon skins, hi res armors, pets, etc. now need to be loaded for everyone present. Yes, lag would be worse than pretty much everywhere else, but that's still not that bad for most of the players out there.

Arcanemacabre, funny what a little imagination can do for insurmountable problems, eh?

People seem to get hung up on the thought that a person is advocating one thing to replace another when most people are just suggesting that something (non-instanced areas, for example) could be added to Guild Wars in a future expansion/update.

I like the idea of adding "wilderness" areas to the game. Differing from explorable areas currently in the game, these areas would allow more than one party to enter a map zone. It could involve a free for all PvP and/or a mega boss encounter or a different type of mission quest scenario.

So you are running around in this open "wilderness" area with an elementalist and you get a great drop. I arrive with my Assassin and gank you. No problem my Assassin gets some xp and you respawn and BAM I gank you again, and again, and again.

Soon you are on 60% DP and are so easy to kill im getting a constant flow of xp until you just get frustrated and rage quit and I collect your item once the timer runs out.

Yea i can see how this should like lots of fun!!!

And Im just describing the first thig that came to mind.
There are a lot of other ways to abuse the "open" system.

How silly you must feel, having not read my entire post. You must've overlooked the part about the PvP battlegrounds. Most of the wilderness would be PvE, where no one can kill anyone else. I.E. no ganking.

Before you even make this point, allow me to elaborate: You get a great drop, and die before you can pick it up. If you are alone, you respawn at a shrine as you would anywhere else while solo. If you are in a team, and they choose not to res you, allowing the 10-minute grace period for assigned items to pass, they can then gank you, yes. But guess what? That's no different than how it is now. Really? Really.

The battlegrounds would be the 'dangerous' area. Yes, someone could kill you over and over again, just like in PvP. Guess what? You can kill them over and over, too. Since there is balance in skills, unlike most other MMOs that are open like this, it's completely fair. You would also have a concious choice of entering this zone or staying away from it. Completely fair.

What's the problem?

The problem is that you've just denied a pve area to people that aren't interested pvp.

...however this is just the start of the problems of a non-instanced zone. To me the bigger issue is trying to spend some time killing bad guys when there are random strangers standing in front of you in their underwear spouting the usual stream of homophobic or racial epithets. As long as games don't require personality tests, instances will always be the better option.

This is not a discussion about Guild Wars anymore, it's completely off topic, and as such will now be closed.