I know atm due to technical limitations this isnt possible, but lets say it was possible. Would you prefer a MMO with one server/game world for the entire community or the multi- server system we have now where only about 5%-10% of the community actually plays together? I'll toss up a poll I'm actually interested in reading what you guys think.
For the ones that seem to have trouble reading OPs i'll highlight something for you.
Obviously due to tech limitations you can't have a million freaking people on one server.
Read and understand a post before posting please!!!
I am playing Planetside on the USA server and I get no lag. Also that with Vanguard. It feels like theres no reason to divide the people betwen usa/europe. (other than patch hours, maybe)
So am I going to get to know all of these 300k people? I don't think so.
As it stands, if a server can handle 3k concurrent players, it will probably have over 100k characters at least infrequently played (counting alts). Are you going to get to know all 100k of those? Of course not.
In order to have a game where you really get to know people (apart from your guildies, where it doesn't matter if there are a thousand players on a server or a million), you have to restrict it to at most a few hundred characters per server--counting the ones that are offline at any given time. That leads to maybe 10 or 20 players online at a given time, which for most games, simply isn't enough.
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The EVE model of one server with players greatly spread out won't work for a "theme park" game with heavily polished content. If there are supposed to be 100k players online at a given time, and one geographic region can only hold 100 players, you need a thousand such regions. You're not going to create all of that by hand. If you go with randomly generated regions, you lose some polish. If you make a lot of copies of various regions, you're effectively having lots of servers.
Most games now are useing a server farm which allows them to have several intances on each server,they set a certain number for each instance when thats met a new instance opens on that server.Example say its set at 30k for each instance and theres 10 instances thats 300k on that server alone.
EQ2 was one of the first that used this,they went as far as to use zone instances with in the game so no zone would get over crowded and you could join your friends too between instances if that instances wasn't too crowded.
Well, for a game like WAR? Abso-fuckin-lutely. But you're right, due to technical limitations it's just not possible (for a fantasy themed game anyways), so it's a pipe dream.
Besides that, EVE just broke the 51K Concurrent Users Online or whatever mark. That's great, but that really means there was, at max, only 51k people putting strain on the server, not 250K.
-------------------------------------- A human and an Elf get captured by Skaven. The rat-men are getting ready to shoot the first hostage with Dwarf-made guns when he yells, "Earthquake!" The naturally nervous Skaven run and hide from the imaginary threat. He escapes. The Skaven regroup and bring out the Elf. Being very smart, the Elf has figured out what to do. When the Skaven get ready to shoot, the Elf, in order to scare them, yells, "Fire!"
I'd go for the Guild Wars route of having multiple channels. Having just one world without channels would be too overcrowded, in the case of fantasy mmo's anyway.
Playing - FFXIV, ESO Played - FFXI, WoW, Lineage 2, Guild Wars, Aion, SWToR, LotRO, GW2, TERA, Rift, ArcheAge, TSW
I would love to see single server with massive worlds to contain everyone.
Idea; A giant world could have different areas similar to countries in real life..and you can go from start to finish in each area without leaving. (I'm talkin' big!)...
You could move to different areas of course....but starting in the different areas would be like the same game with all new content since the world is so big..... I can only dream since this would mean the devs would need to create about 4 games worth of content... Call me crazy--but thats what I would love to see!
I would love to see single server with massive worlds to contain everyone.
Idea; A giant world could have different areas similar to countries in real life..and you can go from start to finish in each area without leaving. (I'm talkin' big!)... You could move to different areas of course....but starting in the different areas would be like the same game with all new content since the world is so big..... I can only dream since this would mean the devs would need to create about 4 games worth of content... Call me crazy--but thats what I would love to see!
Make it too big you have to much open space with no content like EQ2,DnL,too name a couple failures.
Although a big game could be full of content...like I said it would be up to the devs to create about 4 games worth of content for just 1 world.... enough to hold a large populate and enough to replay a few times and not have to redo the same content.. I know I'll never see anything like that due to the amount of content and design needed.. but a man can dream.
Do you want to share the World of Warcraft gameworld with 300,000 other people at one time (and that's on a slow night)? No? Didn't think so.
Eve Online can have a single shard because the game world consists of thousands of randomly generated sectors of mostly empty space. If World of Warcraft had thousands of zones, then it too could have one server. But it doesn't.
Back when I started WoW, I didn't know anyone else who played, then I met some co-workers who did, of course, I was on a different server than their duo, so I rerolled, then new people would come in who play, also on different servers and they would have to reroll. Would be nice to avoid these scenarios.
Originally posted by phatpetey Hi,Well I choose for multiple servers. Because in some games you already see that there are too many people playing on one server (waiting for mobs, lag in towns, ...). And that really sucks, it drains the fun of playing a MMORPG. But on the other side I also agree with some of your points. Sometimes (in WoW) you really need to wait a long time till you find yourself a decent party to party with.
Yeah but if were all immagining what could be in a perfect world, then in a perfect mmo world the landscape would be as such that even with millions of people playing on one server there were enough quests, monsters and no lag.
You guys know my deal, I play Eve. The game uses only one server for its 250-300k accounts. While 250k doesn't seem like alot since everyone plays on one server Its packed and has a great economy and Large community. Technical lmitiations set aside for a second, wouldn't you rather have a MMO that lets the entire community play on one server, in one game world? Look at the MMOs that released in the passed 4-5 years, they have what 50-400k subs (with the exception of wow) these MMOs release with 5,10 maybe even 20+ servers for a community of 200k or less. Imagine a Game like WAR with all 200-400k accounts on one server. Its would be chaos like the developers intended. A game like Lotro with 100-300k accounts on one server would be amazing you would never have a hard time grouping for a dungeon again. I know atm due to technical limitations this isnt possible, but lets say it was possible. Would you prefer a MMO with one server/game world for the entire community or the multi- server system we have now where only about 5%-10% of the community actually plays together? I'll toss up a poll I'm actually interested in reading what you guys think.
Great post. I wanted to post a question like this but you have already done it for me. I would love one server, but the world would have to be massive. However, I don't like the whole zoning thing. Seamless is the way to go imo, but I don't think you can have seamless and one server at the same time yet. For my world, I have 7 contients ready so that would be good, but I made them all from progresion with expansions. I wanted to design one large map for a one server but I wasn't sure if people would it. But thank you for the results. Also I don't mind multiple servers either.
Great post. I wanted to post a question like this but you have already done it for me. I would love one server, but the world would have to be massive. However, I don't like the whole zoning thing. Seamless is the way to go imo, but I don't think you can have seamless and one server at the same time yet. For my world, I have 7 contients ready so that would be good, but I made them all from progresion with expansions. I wanted to design one large map for a one server but I wasn't sure if people would it. But thank you for the results. Also I don't mind multiple servers either.
Second Life has one world/"server". and its seamless
most "servers" in almost any MMO setup is actually multiple servers working together as one unit. thats why the quotation marks around it. Second Life has TONS of servers working as one big world.
i should probably use the word shard, because so many people have muddy concepts of what "server" or "world" actually means
How could you possibly fit 300k people into a game world like WoW's? I'm pretty sure Eve can pull it off because most of the game "world" is empty space, so it can be pretty much as big as they want it to be.
its all about how many people you can have interacting with each other simultaneously.
all about how you partiion your space.
ithas to be partitioned enough that you don't have more than X number of people who can see the actions/movements of each other. the nature of eve makes it more forgiving in that respect, with no need to instance a region.
the nature of a typical mmorpg means they would have to instance regions in order to for it to be doable, since way more people would want to congregate in Stormwind for example.
it will be interesting to see if EVE starts having to instance space stations when ambulation comes around. not likely if they make sure they have enough and they are spread around. but if people make one particular one a very prominent meeting place, all the sudden they will have a chokepoint that will require some instancing in order for it to run smoothly.
Would I choose one server or multiple servers? Well I guess that depends on the rules of the server. I like PvP. And when I say PvP, I don't mean RvR, or ORvR, I mean no restriction Player vs. Player. Anyone that you see can be a potential friend or foe. If there was a game with those PvP rules then I would prefer just one server.
But considering that most people seem to enjoy the watered down version of pvp (RvR and ORvR), I would much rather have separate servers, each with their own set of PvP rules and restrictions. That way the PvE people can play on a PvE server, the RvR people can play on an RvR server and the PvP people can play on a PvP server. I hate having to be forced to play on an RvR server and have it called PvP (ahem, WoW).
If WoW would actually start introducing alternate "PvP" servers with different rules and restrictions (like EQ did) then I actually might start playing again.
Eve has hit the nail on the head with Hi, Low, and Null sec space.... For a Lone server setup to work It would Have to be something like this. Im not a Pvper.. Not that I dont want to I just dont have the time to try it.
The only Thing I like about Haveing several Servers is the Option to have Diffrent game types On them..
Of course I love the Idea of Devideing the game in to Massive areas that have Say Open Pvp, One for Pve, ect..
Honestly When I first heard about the Instanceing In Tabula, and AoC I thought that there was ONLY gana be one server and you played between the "Shards". Its Stupid to Put in Instanceing AND servers.... Wtf
If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude; greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home from us in peace. We seek not your counsel, nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you; May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen. Samuel Adams
Well on RuneScape you can change servers whenver you log in and there are themed worlds kind of like channels and its nice cause some servers are in different time zones and when yourss is low you just change...
How could you possibly fit 300k people into a game world like WoW's? I'm pretty sure Eve can pull it off because most of the game "world" is empty space, so it can be pretty much as big as they want it to be.
its all about how many people you can have interacting with each other simultaneously.
all about how you partiion your space.
ithas to be partitioned enough that you don't have more than X number of people who can see the actions/movements of each other. the nature of eve makes it more forgiving in that respect, with no need to instance a region.
the nature of a typical mmorpg means they would have to instance regions in order to for it to be doable, since way more people would want to congregate in Stormwind for example.
it will be interesting to see if EVE starts having to instance space stations when ambulation comes around. not likely if they make sure they have enough and they are spread around. but if people make one particular one a very prominent meeting place, all the sudden they will have a chokepoint that will require some instancing in order for it to run smoothly.
Were talking about Eve here... they will Let the lag in the Station be Unberable till they can Buy the Newest ZOMFGWTFBBQ Server from hell to run it.
But they have said several times that you Wont be forced to use Ambulation to play the game... So hopefully we will be OK..
Course the real Choke point will Be OUR PC's... Honestly can we Blame the server for 300 People all Shouting Sparta in their Undies In Jita? Its just sending Data... If It can handle 1200 people in Jita space as it is now, and It be playable... i think the servers can handle the Load... we cant tho.
If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude; greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home from us in peace. We seek not your counsel, nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you; May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen. Samuel Adams
Comments
Sure it can be done with 5 min delay on everything...
The drummer from def leppard only has one arm.....
For the ones that seem to have trouble reading OPs i'll highlight something for you.
Obviously due to tech limitations you can't have a million freaking people on one server.
Read and understand a post before posting please!!!
PLaying: EvE, Ryzom
Waiting For: Earthrise, Perpetuum
I am playing Planetside on the USA server and I get no lag. Also that with Vanguard. It feels like theres no reason to divide the people betwen usa/europe. (other than patch hours, maybe)
As it stands, if a server can handle 3k concurrent players, it will probably have over 100k characters at least infrequently played (counting alts). Are you going to get to know all 100k of those? Of course not.
In order to have a game where you really get to know people (apart from your guildies, where it doesn't matter if there are a thousand players on a server or a million), you have to restrict it to at most a few hundred characters per server--counting the ones that are offline at any given time. That leads to maybe 10 or 20 players online at a given time, which for most games, simply isn't enough.
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The EVE model of one server with players greatly spread out won't work for a "theme park" game with heavily polished content. If there are supposed to be 100k players online at a given time, and one geographic region can only hold 100 players, you need a thousand such regions. You're not going to create all of that by hand. If you go with randomly generated regions, you lose some polish. If you make a lot of copies of various regions, you're effectively having lots of servers.
Most games now are useing a server farm which allows them to have several intances on each server,they set a certain number for each instance when thats met a new instance opens on that server.Example say its set at 30k for each instance and theres 10 instances thats 300k on that server alone.
EQ2 was one of the first that used this,they went as far as to use zone instances with in the game so no zone would get over crowded and you could join your friends too between instances if that instances wasn't too crowded.
Well, for a game like WAR? Abso-fuckin-lutely. But you're right, due to technical limitations it's just not possible (for a fantasy themed game anyways), so it's a pipe dream.
Besides that, EVE just broke the 51K Concurrent Users Online or whatever mark. That's great, but that really means there was, at max, only 51k people putting strain on the server, not 250K.
--------------------------------------
A human and an Elf get captured by Skaven. The rat-men are getting ready to shoot the first hostage with Dwarf-made guns when he yells, "Earthquake!" The naturally nervous Skaven run and hide from the imaginary threat. He escapes. The Skaven regroup and bring out the Elf. Being very smart, the Elf has figured out what to do. When the Skaven get ready to shoot, the Elf, in order to scare them, yells, "Fire!"
Order of the White Border.
I'd go for the Guild Wars route of having multiple channels. Having just one world without channels would be too overcrowded, in the case of fantasy mmo's anyway.
Playing - FFXIV, ESO
Played - FFXI, WoW, Lineage 2, Guild Wars, Aion, SWToR, LotRO, GW2, TERA, Rift, ArcheAge, TSW
I would love to see single server with massive worlds to contain everyone.
Idea; A giant world could have different areas similar to countries in real life..and you can go from start to finish in each area without leaving. (I'm talkin' big!)...
You could move to different areas of course....but starting in the different areas would be like the same game with all new content since the world is so big..... I can only dream since this would mean the devs would need to create about 4 games worth of content... Call me crazy--but thats what I would love to see!
https://www.youtube.com/user/NemsGaming
Make it too big you have to much open space with no content like EQ2,DnL,too name a couple failures.
I agree, an empty world would ruin any game.
Although a big game could be full of content...like I said it would be up to the devs to create about 4 games worth of content for just 1 world.... enough to hold a large populate and enough to replay a few times and not have to redo the same content.. I know I'll never see anything like that due to the amount of content and design needed.. but a man can dream.
https://www.youtube.com/user/NemsGaming
I agree, the term they us is Massive-Multiplayer-Online-Role-Playing-Game. Having more people to play with equals more FUN.
i saw a pregnant woman so i kicked her in the stomach...
KERPLAH!
Do you want to share the World of Warcraft gameworld with 300,000 other people at one time (and that's on a slow night)? No? Didn't think so.
Eve Online can have a single shard because the game world consists of thousands of randomly generated sectors of mostly empty space. If World of Warcraft had thousands of zones, then it too could have one server. But it doesn't.
Back when I started WoW, I didn't know anyone else who played, then I met some co-workers who did, of course, I was on a different server than their duo, so I rerolled, then new people would come in who play, also on different servers and they would have to reroll. Would be nice to avoid these scenarios.
Yeah but if were all immagining what could be in a perfect world, then in a perfect mmo world the landscape would be as such that even with millions of people playing on one server there were enough quests, monsters and no lag.
Great post. I wanted to post a question like this but you have already done it for me. I would love one server, but the world would have to be massive. However, I don't like the whole zoning thing. Seamless is the way to go imo, but I don't think you can have seamless and one server at the same time yet. For my world, I have 7 contients ready so that would be good, but I made them all from progresion with expansions. I wanted to design one large map for a one server but I wasn't sure if people would it. But thank you for the results. Also I don't mind multiple servers either.
Great post. I wanted to post a question like this but you have already done it for me. I would love one server, but the world would have to be massive. However, I don't like the whole zoning thing. Seamless is the way to go imo, but I don't think you can have seamless and one server at the same time yet. For my world, I have 7 contients ready so that would be good, but I made them all from progresion with expansions. I wanted to design one large map for a one server but I wasn't sure if people would it. But thank you for the results. Also I don't mind multiple servers either.
Second Life has one world/"server". and its seamless
most "servers" in almost any MMO setup is actually multiple servers working together as one unit. thats why the quotation marks around it. Second Life has TONS of servers working as one big world.
i should probably use the word shard, because so many people have muddy concepts of what "server" or "world" actually means
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Corpus Callosum
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its all about how many people you can have interacting with each other simultaneously.
all about how you partiion your space.
ithas to be partitioned enough that you don't have more than X number of people who can see the actions/movements of each other. the nature of eve makes it more forgiving in that respect, with no need to instance a region.
the nature of a typical mmorpg means they would have to instance regions in order to for it to be doable, since way more people would want to congregate in Stormwind for example.
it will be interesting to see if EVE starts having to instance space stations when ambulation comes around. not likely if they make sure they have enough and they are spread around. but if people make one particular one a very prominent meeting place, all the sudden they will have a chokepoint that will require some instancing in order for it to run smoothly.
---------------------------
Corpus Callosum
---------------------------
Would I choose one server or multiple servers? Well I guess that depends on the rules of the server. I like PvP. And when I say PvP, I don't mean RvR, or ORvR, I mean no restriction Player vs. Player. Anyone that you see can be a potential friend or foe. If there was a game with those PvP rules then I would prefer just one server.
But considering that most people seem to enjoy the watered down version of pvp (RvR and ORvR), I would much rather have separate servers, each with their own set of PvP rules and restrictions. That way the PvE people can play on a PvE server, the RvR people can play on an RvR server and the PvP people can play on a PvP server. I hate having to be forced to play on an RvR server and have it called PvP (ahem, WoW).
If WoW would actually start introducing alternate "PvP" servers with different rules and restrictions (like EQ did) then I actually might start playing again.
Eve has hit the nail on the head with Hi, Low, and Null sec space.... For a Lone server setup to work It would Have to be something like this. Im not a Pvper.. Not that I dont want to I just dont have the time to try it.
The only Thing I like about Haveing several Servers is the Option to have Diffrent game types On them..
Of course I love the Idea of Devideing the game in to Massive areas that have Say Open Pvp, One for Pve, ect..
Honestly When I first heard about the Instanceing In Tabula, and AoC I thought that there was ONLY gana be one server and you played between the "Shards". Its Stupid to Put in Instanceing AND servers.... Wtf
If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude; greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home from us in peace. We seek not your counsel, nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you; May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.
Samuel Adams
Well on RuneScape you can change servers whenver you log in and there are themed worlds kind of like channels and its nice cause some servers are in different time zones and when yourss is low you just change...
its all about how many people you can have interacting with each other simultaneously.
all about how you partiion your space.
ithas to be partitioned enough that you don't have more than X number of people who can see the actions/movements of each other. the nature of eve makes it more forgiving in that respect, with no need to instance a region.
the nature of a typical mmorpg means they would have to instance regions in order to for it to be doable, since way more people would want to congregate in Stormwind for example.
it will be interesting to see if EVE starts having to instance space stations when ambulation comes around. not likely if they make sure they have enough and they are spread around. but if people make one particular one a very prominent meeting place, all the sudden they will have a chokepoint that will require some instancing in order for it to run smoothly.
Were talking about Eve here... they will Let the lag in the Station be Unberable till they can Buy the Newest ZOMFGWTFBBQ Server from hell to run it.
But they have said several times that you Wont be forced to use Ambulation to play the game... So hopefully we will be OK..
Course the real Choke point will Be OUR PC's... Honestly can we Blame the server for 300 People all Shouting Sparta in their Undies In Jita? Its just sending Data... If It can handle 1200 people in Jita space as it is now, and It be playable... i think the servers can handle the Load... we cant tho.
If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude; greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home from us in peace. We seek not your counsel, nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you; May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.
Samuel Adams