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Server capacity?
FredomSekerZ
Member Posts: 1,156
With the TSW's single server tech and how they claim that their dimensions are huge and far greater than standart server cap and now GW2's increase fo server cap too, i'm wondering, does anybody have a clue of what the max capacity for mmo servers is?
The number i see pop up the most is 5k. Does it apply to all servers equally? See, i don't think this number is right at all. TERA as around 20 servers combined from both the US and EU, so that's 100k. But TERA's sub number where (don't know now) at 700k.
So, what does every think?
Comments
It depends on the game. Most MMO servers cap out at 2k-5k but few ever reach that. OTOH, at the time of this post there are over 40k people in EVE Online.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
Server caps are a product of a number of factors.
There are physical constraints like client/server requirements (both bandwidth and QoS), database structure and performance and elements like that. Most of these can be addressed with more or better hardware, however server grade stuff isn't cheap.
There is also an element of gameplay in them as well, too many people in an area can ruin a game's design and pacing. We largely accept that for the first few days the starting areas will be swamped and it will be a challenge to quickly kill our 10 rats and move on, I doubt we would be forgiving if that situation persisted for weeks or months as we level deeper into the game.
5K is likely a good trade-off for all those factors.
Subs are not a measure of server capacity. Being subbed and playing are very different things, most (if not all) companies are incapable of supporting their entire base all at the same time. Odds are you will rarely (major patch or expansion) see a que even if they can only support 1/3 concurrently.
Actually the cap of a single server in Eve is much lower than that. When you see a single star system maxed out on players, thats where the cap is.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky
If your game engine is designed to support it, individual zones and instances can be easily farmed out to different physical machines, so the question is not really how many people you can put on one server, it's how many characters can be simultaneously interacting with each other in a single zone.
You're confusing physical server with gameserver/shard. He is talking about gameservers.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre