I can't think of any occasion when blockage is a good thing.

Intestinal blockage? Nope.
Road blockage? Nope.
Toilet blockage? Nope.
Parental control blockage? Nope (unless you're a parent).
Nasal passage blockage? Nope.
Zone blockage? Nope.
Path blockage? Nope.
Hun invasion blockage? Oh, there's one Oi kin go fer!

Sadly, any game that offers 'mass' to its players (I mean the sense of solidity, not Catholic ritual), will have to deal with blockage.

If an avatar or NPC has 'mass', then you cannot just run through it, as many of us are used to. It's very nice for a pvp game, to be able to assign a bunch of tanks to fill the front lines and protect the squishies.

However, there are unforseen effects associated with this mass.

Zone in to the Thirsty Dog Inn (the ONLY Inn found in the starting village of Tortage), and chances are, you'll find yourself behind two or three other people.

STUCK behind them. Jump and wriggle all you want, you are not getting past them till they move or go LD after the game decides they've been AFK too long.
You cannot shove, jostle or elbow them aside, as you would in a real bar. Well, that's how *I* do it, anyway...

Now the auto-disconnect process may just take minutes (fifteen?), but it seems like an age if you are standing there because you want to get past these morons to go to the barmaid who will zone you to the night-night version of the town where you will finally be blissfully alone.

The problem is, this can also be an issue in the great outdoors. Zone into Conarch Village and you can find yourself wedged behind afk players or worse... into the back end of a giant, hairy rhino.

Hey, it gets more badder yet, because players can block you on PURPOSE, especially on a PvE server, where you can't do a damn thing about it. One guy on a horse was successfully preventing people from passing in that narrow area, and crowing about it. Never have I wished more for a pvp switch. Right on his ignorant arse, where I could kick it, but good.

Sure, the devs can increase the size of the "players spawn here" area to alleviate the issue, but they also need to widen paths to avoid the horseman griefer. No, never mind, then all it would take are two horsemen griefers. Or three.

I am definitely going to go get a beer if that's the case... and reroll on a PvP server.

;-)#
Brasse