General: Sanya Weathers's MMO Underbelly Debuts

Dana

A look under the hood from this pioneer in the field of Community Management. Weathers was once the Director of Community Relations for Mythic Entertainment, where she helped launch Dark Age of Camelot.

Check back each Friday for more from Sanya.

Now, her debut column, "The Server Stability Blues:"

A short time ago, I was playing my favorite MMO, and there were… issues. My server is somewhat overcrowded compared to some of the other servers in the list, and it shows. We periodically froze in place. In the north part of the zone, melee simply didn’t land and the monsters got the icon for “hey, I can’t hit you.” At least, until you got out of range and got hit with the critter’s ranged attacks, which meant that anyone of the melee classes simply couldn’t play. All was fine in the southern end of the zone, until the entire server wobbled and dumped a third of the players.

OOC was, predictably and understandably, filled with frustration.

Then came one particular outburst. “(Insert game developer) doesn’t *care* about server stability!”

Read it all here.

Eveeldour

Good read, I would actually like to see a bit more of a behind the scenes view of MMO's, thanks!

 

0/

 

 

Paks

Excellent read!  I always wondered how people can think that devs don't care about things that will lose subscriptions for their game...

 

 

Khalathwyr

There was a time that I didn't think very highly of Ms. Sanya (I know, like she cares, right?  ). But, after being introduced to Tasos, she ain't so bad. I mistook feisty for something else, I suppose. Anyway, good read. I don't necessarily agree with her points, but that's the great thing about living in a free society.

LiquidWolf

I WANT MORE OF THIS!!!

These types of stories, the behind the scenes look and the feelings/thoughts of the people who keep the game going, up, and patched would be GREAT!!

I want server admins, update coders, and even the freaking janitor who has to keep the servers clean.

Thanks for a great article.

porgie

These are the kinds of articles I like.

Great choice in getting Sanya on here. 

Teala

Tweety!  Awesome...she will be very welcomed addition here and her first little article is a winner.  

vickykol

I also enjoyed this article.

Two more reasons why people choose a more highly subscribed server:

-- It is more likely that a new player has family, friends, enemies, etc. already on a busy server than on an empty one.

-- Some people have had bad experiences with games with low server populations, and so they deliberately choose servers known to have higher activity (livelier).

Until developers have figured out how to deal with these problems, admonitions to use a low population server will not be as effective.

Coldren

I've been following Sanya ever since I joined DAoC at launch.. Wasn't around for her EQ years, but still a big fan. For those who liked it, might I recommend her other sites/blogs/fun factories:

http://www.examiner.com/x-5353-MMORPG-Examiner

http://eatingbees.brokentoys.org

 

Dana

Originally posted by Coldren


I've been following Sanya ever since I joined DAoC at launch.. Wasn't around for her EQ years, but still a big fan. For those who liked it, might I recommend her other sites/blogs/fun factories:


http://www.examiner.com/x-5353-MMORPG-Examiner

http://eatingbees.brokentoys.org

 

 

I knew I forgot something! Updated her bio to include the linkage

Kyleran

Originally posted by vickykol


I also enjoyed this article.
Two more reasons why people choose a more highly subscribed server:
-- It is more likely that a new player has family, friends, enemies, etc. already on a busy server than on an empty one.
-- Some people have had bad experiences with games with low server populations, and so they deliberately choose servers known to have higher activity (livelier).
Until developers have figured out how to deal with these problems, admonitions to use a low population server will not be as effective.

 

I'd say right now, after the server order listing reason this would be number two on the list.

In the past, I used to chose servers with medium loads.  But experience with several games has shown that more is better, and even if it means lag/queues in the early months, if I plan on playing a game a long time, I'll normally never go wrong chosing one of the most crowded servers.

Thats why it really "Grinds my Gears" _[TM] when developers try to thwart me by either not listing the server population or trying to trick me by listing them all as "mediium". (looking at you, AOC)

This was a good article and something I took for granted. I never thought I played a game where the Dev's didn't care about stability, unless it was some F2P game or something.

But what does disturb me is dishonesty.  No point to design a game with giant 200 vs 200 battles knowing a large majority of your player base will lag out/DC and apparently, theres no real fix for it based on current tech.

CCP/EVE have been working on the issue for 5 years, and made great strides and yet, many will tell you, there still are lag issues to be mastered.  At least CCP doesn't hide from it or deny it exists, and they try very hard to fix it.  I wish more companies would be honest in this way.

Anyways, grind off, I'm glad to see Sanya added to this site and I look forward to more articles.

LynxJSA

Originally posted by porgie


These are the kinds of articles I like.
Great choice in getting Sanya on here. 

 

Agreed. A great article and useful info. Nice work, Sanya!

Greenfeen

I think you over looked the number one reason why some games struggle with server stability. That being the game was never completely stable to start with.

Using Lotro as an example- It never had a stress test that it didn't fail. Lotro's a great little game, solid content, solid community, great graphics and you get more than 50 people close together and the game chunks and lags. Get over a 150 people close together and the zone wobbles, add other server stresses (peeps signing in, loading zones etc) Lotro crash and burns. If lotro had a meeting area similiar to other games like WoW's city Ironforge, Lotro's server would never boot up. Lotro's decision to go high graphic sunk server stability from day one. Lotro hand cuffed itself. Instead of revisiting their graphics  they make sure their game design keeps people spread all over the map. It worked wonders for them for all this time. Now with an aging game and most players all at endgame content the player base is jammed into smaller and smaller areas (eg 21rst Hall sorta mini Ironforge) and the game stability has diminished. The current free trials just add that extra stress that pushes their servers over the red line.

I used to be that poor bugger that got the 2 a.m. call go reboot such and such. It sucked! But what really sucked was that most times I had to run downtown to reboot such and such was that it would have been prevented if someone was inhouse monitoring instead of a script to ping everyone's pager that the servers crashed. You want to run your company 24/7 then have the support sitting there 24/7 scaled to server load.

The part on the programmers I agree with. But still, that's not the players problem. That still is the games company's responsibility to retain talent and document absolutely everything. As well, companies still think its the cheapest route to outsource and it can be. Until the duck feathers hit the fan and nothing is documented and no one on staff really know what depth the outsourced code reached.

Players are payers. Scream bloody murder on any and every issue you might have. Because if you don't you'll never get a 'ticket number' and if you never have a 'ticket number' it will rarely if ever be looked into.  Gaming companies want to spend money forward not spend money backwards to fix stuff. You pay to play, whatever game you spent your money on keep that company on tenderhooks until your issue is resolved or take your hard earned cash elsewhere.

wolffin

As allways nice to read something by Sanya. Being that it is Fryday think I will get  a slushy tonight and toast to fond memorys of fighting for the realm.

Stalinfalcon

/trollon

Wow, Kyleran, for an elite member of this site I would have expected better of you than: '...unless it was some F2P or something.' I hereby Knight thee Troll of the Realm. Your post is hereby summarily dismissed!

/trolloff

At least the rest of the responses, so far, have been enlightening, especially the ex server-maintenance chap.

Akousmata

Well written article, and ideas, I agree with most of what she says, but I have to admit, I love to play Devil's Advocate:

I'd have to say the most important thing anyone in any company should be worried about is profit.  Everything else comes in second to that, however, server stability for me is definitely an EXTREMELY close 2nd.

"The server is at the top of the list of options, alphabetically. No matter how many gentle suggestions appear in the announcement box for new players to please for the love of god choose Zifferelle as their new home, new players wind up picking Abericious. In this scenario, Abericious and Berisia are the only unstable servers. There is no way to fix it besides mandatory server transfers."

I'd have to say a real quick fix for this is to leave the list of servers unsorted and provide a search feature to find your server or a separate box with a list of servers for which you have an avatar.   Then just rotate the unsorted list every time a new player joins, or for a true bell curve effect randomize the list every time.  This way a player can always have access to a specific server if they want one, but newer players that feel the need to just start right away will be able to get into the server at the top of the list which, hopefully will balance the load more.  The only restriction is that you wouldn't want players to sort the list, but that's not the issue that's presented in that bullet point.

The server has a recognizable name. LOTRO’s first two servers are “Arkenstone” and “Brandywine.” Guess which one is overloaded. Hint: It’s the one recognized by the most casual of Tolkein fans.

This one is just the choice of the LoTRO developers, they could have just as easily named all the servers with obscure or non-obscure names or simply Server1,Server2,...ServerN.  Granted this isn't "cool" or "hip" when it comes to the MMO community, but there's fixes for that as well.

The game might be more than a few years old, on its tenth group of server programmers. The resulting layers of code would take a genius with infinite free time to puzzle out. If the game is old enough, the server programmers are the youngest, greenest, newest hires not considered experienced enough to work on the unannounced Future of Gaming product. So the person least able to deal with the legacy is the one who has to try. This would seem to contradict my assertion that server stability is all the company cares about, but it truly doesn’t. In this scenario, the server programmer is one of the only people left on the team at all.

Good point here, but it all comes down to game design when it comes to extensibility and scaleability.  If you plan ahead, write good clean code to start with, and refactor properly at regular intervals (which is the choice of the game's management, not necessarily the developers), then many of those problems can be avoided. 

I know I'm doing a lot of monday morning quarterbacking with my comment, and I'm not disagreeing with the article, just food for thought.

 

Belsameth

Originally posted by Coldren


I've been following Sanya ever since I joined DAoC at launch.. Wasn't around for her EQ years, but still a big fan. For those who liked it, might I recommend her other sites/blogs/fun factories:


http://www.examiner.com/x-5353-MMORPG-Examiner

http://eatingbees.brokentoys.org

 

 

QFT!

 

Here's her EQ rants btw. A worthy read as well. 18+ required

web.archive.org/web/20051217102848/http://tweety.bowlofmice.com/

Sanya

After so many years doing community, I'm totally confused by kindness and approval. But thank you

Slushies - ah yes, my euphemism for "some of you people have driven me to drink, and it will take at least four shots of Jager to erase the memory of this day, but I can't talk directly about my incipient alcoholism on this website." Sweet memories!

@Vickykol - you, madam, assuming you are in fact a madam, are 100% correct and I wish I had a do-over for this article. I should have included those reasons. I personally play on Brandywine when I'm playing LOTRO because of those reasons, and would not transfer off for any incentive despite occasional queues and instability. But I also know that to keep my crackling chat channels, I'm gonna have to eat the lag. Maybe if everyone had to click something that said "This server is overloaded and occasionally crashes. Is it worth it to you? YES/NO." Because in most cases, the devs cannot do anything immediate about it, and can't give you an ETA on a fix at all.

It would help if dev people would pick a freaking engine suitable for their announced design, wouldn't it?

@Akousmata - what's it called if you're playing devil's advocate with someone widely considered to be Satan's minion?

Okay, srsly - "write good clean code" - I have a followup next week from a technical director that goes into this a bit, so let me know what you think then.

 

 

 

 

Sanya

@Bel: hahahahahahahahahaha

I tell people that your sins follow you forever on the internet, and here you are proving it!

I don't regret most of those. Some were me being young and ignorant. Some were me being drunk and maudlin. All of them were funny at the time. Thanks for dredging them up for me, I lost the originals years ago.

Copeland

This was a blog or a rant?

Sorry but if you feel the need to write an article saying that an IT company (and all mmo developers are an IT company) cares about its backbone, you're probably dumber than the people saying "this company doesn't care about server stability". Or your just ranting.. either way, this blog equates too.. Pepsi really cares about its taste!..

duh.

Tell me why companies refuse innovation..

Tell me why every game has the same basic functions..

Tell me why paid beta is the industry norm..

c'mon.. give me the real underbelly.

Did McQuaid really choose smack over Vanguard???? that's what i want to know!!!

Sanya

Originally posted by Copeland


This was a blog or a rant?
Sorry but if you feel the need to write an article saying that an IT company (and all mmo developers are an IT company) cares about its backbone, you're probably dumber than the people saying "this company doesn't care about server stability". Or your just ranting.. either way, this blog equates too.. Pepsi really cares about its taste!..
duh.
 

 

I feel better now.

Copeland

---

Originally posted by Sanya
Originally posted by Copeland This was a blog or a rant?
Sorry but if you feel the need to write an article saying that an IT company (and all mmo developers are an IT company) cares about its backbone, you're probably dumber than the people saying "this company doesn't care about server stability". Or your just ranting.. either way, this blog equates too.. Pepsi really cares about its taste!..
duh.
 

 
I feel better now.

---

Read my edits.. NOthing personal but when i hear underbelly i want to hear the dark truth to why companies refuse innovation, release games too early and don't listen to their fans. This industry has become stagnant. If it doesn't wake up soon it will be nothing but a memory much like the internet bubble.

ericbelser

You left out my personal favorites...when the "server stability" issues aren't actually that at all, but some transmission problem with 3rd party ISPs that you have no control over

Anyways, nothing there that I didn't know...but not everyone has had the thrill of working in a major ISP and all the fun and joy that brings to life....Always good to see at least an attempt to educate the masses.

Sanya

Copeland: Nah, man, it's cool. I was joking with you - see my first post in the thread.

And thank you for the helpful list of article suggestions. I'll do my best.

Copeland

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Originally posted by Sanya
Copeland: Nah, man, it's cool. I was joking with you - see my first post in the thread.
And thank you for the helpful list of article suggestions. I'll do my best.

---

I read it.. seriously Jager over Wild Turkey??

Here i thought you were cute but there can be no future with someone that chooses Jager over Kentucky bourbon... :P

Yeah that's what i took from it...

R U really Queen of the Galactic Universe????

Capn23

Sanya: This is a little Off-Topic, but I'm just wondering what your thoughts on Mythic's Warhammer are. Just curious as to your feelings on how the game turned out and what you think about it compared to DAoC.