Originally posted by jrscott Originally posted by kaibigan34 4. Buy or create a new database. Oracle is fine but was never meant to handle the load of something as large as SWG. The sheer number of entries were a horrendus load on the database. 70% of the bugs in game all lead to the database in someway.
Kai
If Oracle can't handle it, who can? I'd be real interested to know what database you think would do a better job and why. This is not a challenge or flame either. I'm just curious what I am missing here. Moot point.. they're already changing databases. Look it up on their announcements page.
Shayde - SWG (dead) Proud member of the Cabal.
It sounds great, so great in fact, I pitty those who canceled - Some deluded SWG fanboi who pities me. I don't like it when you say things. - A Vanguard fan who does too. 09f911029d74e35bd84156c5635688c0
Originally posted by Shayde Because this is looking at it from another angle.
When you're dealing with a terminal illness, which SWG is clearly suffering from, you have to decide which treatments are just prolonging the agony, and what can really help.
We've all given opinions on what we thought/wished/mourned over what the game should be. We've dreamed about the Ducks or rollbacks, but you have to step back and ask "Is there a way to actually save this patient?"
Rollback - Not at all possible. You piss off the players you have (again) and the chimps could NEVER code it. We gotta collectivelly stop using that term. Makes all their sphincters clench and ignore us as lunatics.
Free Play? - Sure, I've said I wouldn't pay to play the nge, and if I want to play a horrible game for free, there's Anarchy Online. That, and I'd want to gouge my eyeballs out after seeing what has become of my character.
Sure we've talked about the landfall profits if there were classic servers, but they've always written them off because of their precieved need to further bug-fix or expand. They DON'T do it because they don't want to be developing two games at once. Not that many of us really CARE if they take the game past publish 12 at all. Just put them up and keep them on. Not too much to ask. But $OE has always seen a classic server as a liability... now I see how they can see it as an asset over the $$$$$$. Why? Because deep down they BELIEVE that they can fix the nge and make it work. Crazy, yes.. but you have to give them points for singlemindedness.
So suddenly in 2007 when they have finally "fixed" the nge... they can say "Give us a shot! It's finally just like pre-cu with only 9 professions! Creature Handler Expertise, and finally a real Smuggler's Revamp! Just log in!"
They have nothing to lose and everything to gain. They just have to finally SEE it.
Well, like I said before...it has been said a thousand times that only a Classic server would save this game. That was why I was asking.
Anyways, I have almost given up on MMO's completely. They are all turning into a level/class based, quest advancement system. MMO's are no longer virtual worlds for us to live in and are now only a median to tell a story and allow us to play as the main character. Soloing has been widely accepted and us group gamers have been forced out the back door. It feels like we enter a theme park and after we ride all the rides, the fun is over.
I doubt I will resub to a game until a company makes a real MMO.
Originally posted by Shayde Originally posted by jrscott Originally posted by kaibigan34 4. Buy or create a new database. Oracle is fine but was never meant to handle the load of something as large as SWG. The sheer number of entries were a horrendus load on the database. 70% of the bugs in game all lead to the database in someway.
Kai
If Oracle can't handle it, who can? I'd be real interested to know what database you think would do a better job and why. This is not a challenge or flame either. I'm just curious what I am missing here. Moot point.. they're already changing databases. Look it up on their announcements page.
It's not a moot point to me. I want to know why the poster thought Oracle was not good enough for the task. Now that your have reminded me of that fact I want to know why SOE thought it was not good enough.
I realize I said I quit. I never said it was forever
Op interesting thoughts , the real problem for me at the moment is the trust thing , The swg devs destroyed everything I had worked for and enjoyed since the start no sorry no nothing they even said if you dont like it , move on . At the moment I can't see myself paying soe to screw me over again .
Originally posted by jrscott Originally posted by Shayde Originally posted by jrscott Originally posted by kaibigan34 4. Buy or create a new database. Oracle is fine but was never meant to handle the load of something as large as SWG. The sheer number of entries were a horrendus load on the database. 70% of the bugs in game all lead to the database in someway.
Kai
If Oracle can't handle it, who can? I'd be real interested to know what database you think would do a better job and why. This is not a challenge or flame either. I'm just curious what I am missing here.
Moot point.. they're already changing databases. Look it up on their announcements page.
It's not a moot point to me. I want to know why the poster thought Oracle was not good enough for the task. Now that your have reminded me of that fact I want to know why SOE thought it was not good enough.
Got me babe.. they've been bitching about it for a while.
They didn't look at the fact that with serial numbers and every crazy resource stat they CREATED the problem in the first place.
Shayde - SWG (dead) Proud member of the Cabal.
It sounds great, so great in fact, I pitty those who canceled - Some deluded SWG fanboi who pities me. I don't like it when you say things. - A Vanguard fan who does too. 09f911029d74e35bd84156c5635688c0
Originally posted by jrscott Originally posted by kaibigan34 4. Buy or create a new database. Oracle is fine but was never meant to handle the load of something as large as SWG. The sheer number of entries were a horrendus load on the database. 70% of the bugs in game all lead to the database in someway.
Kai
If Oracle can't handle it, who can? I'd be real interested to know what database you think would do a better job and why. This is not a challenge or flame either. I'm just curious what I am missing here. 1 player = 80 inventory items, 1000 items in a house + waypoints, datapad, etc. 2 million unique subscriptions over period of 3 years / 25 servers = 80000 user entries per server. Nothing else was ever persisted. World was changed by designers. Players could ever only interact with items in their own posession.
Since there are fan sites that have 100k+ users with several thousand concurrent users logged in at any given time, and the fact that they push on the order of 10-1000 times more data, this simply doesn't compute. Many of these run the database on one single machine.
SQL databases are designed to handle millions of rows, thousands of tables and billions of records. This isn't a feature. This is the sole purpose they were designed for.
I want to run an MMO before I die sometime (seriously), but I would not touch this franchise with a ten foot pole. SOE has soured and fragmented the playerbase beyond repair. I would not have faith in anyone's ability, including my own, to repair the damage done to the Star Wars name in the MMO market.
All it will take anybody running a Star Wars MMO is ONE TINY MIS-STEP and all Hell will break loose. Even if they GAVE me SWG and all it's assets I would still have to insist upon restructuring the license fee from a fixed rate to a rate based upon subscription revenue, because even if it is properly run and enhanced, the odds are still very much in favor of subscription rates falling over time.
There are too many bad mouths out there. This goose is cooked. I just want SOE to put up a pre-CU server and allow us to enjoy it however long it lasts.
I realize I said I quit. I never said it was forever
The current game is a real mixed bag, not totally NGE anymore, not CU or Pre-Cu by a longshot.
Can it be saved? I think they are pretty happy with how the Smuggler/Officer stuff is coming out. The playerbase in its own nothing-will-make-us-happy way seems to be by and large liking it. So, they could be turning the corner at last.
Bringing back in TK skills is huge, and one of the things people have asked for over and over. If they would be willing to bring back in Ranger, Creature Handler, Bioengineer in other professions, it would do alot towards healing the rift.
Essentially, if they could bring back the essence of what the game had choice wise before, and depth wise, it might work. I've hoped all along they would just work to merge the two game styles. Do I trust them to do that. nah don't trust them at all. But I hope I'm wrong and they can pull it off.
Could I save it? Nope, but I can play it and enjoy it and try not to think about what was or what might come. I can provide feedback as reasonably as I'm able to do. Everyone has their choices to make, but I often think that some of the great debaters here with long memories of the game could be a positive force on the official forums. You never know.
(Note to Ico, who I saw up above--you better be buying LOTRO when it comes out so we can jabber again)
Some claim this was the problem in the design. Bollocks, I say. Instead of taking small ammount of time to normalize the values based on analysis, every response from SOE was a knee-jerk reaction that resulted in absurd nerfs or buffs. Nobody could even remotely fix the big picture. This is a certain doom for every project. Proven daily. Read the blogs. After the game went live or around then, xp rates were tweaked up and down by a factor of 10. That is just something that cannot be possible if you have even the slightest hint of any design.
Q F M F E
I said this over and over during the pre-CU ... the problems were not insoluble, they were insoluble with the harebrained management approach the game took from day 1 .... they never learned to aim small, miss small when they adjusted game systems. "Oh, this is unbalancing ... let's change it by 500%". Um, ever hear of trying 10% first?
Letting basic problems languish for months and then throwing a radical change at it was SOP at SOE, and the #1 reason people left during the pre-CU. We didn't hate the design, we hated the ongoing management of the game and the useless marketing-driven expansions after JTLS.
Originally posted by Shayde Originally posted by jrscott Originally posted by Shayde Originally posted by jrscott Originally posted by kaibigan34 4. Buy or create a new database. Oracle is fine but was never meant to handle the load of something as large as SWG. The sheer number of entries were a horrendus load on the database. 70% of the bugs in game all lead to the database in someway.
Kai
If Oracle can't handle it, who can? I'd be real interested to know what database you think would do a better job and why. This is not a challenge or flame either. I'm just curious what I am missing here.
Moot point.. they're already changing databases. Look it up on their announcements page.
It's not a moot point to me. I want to know why the poster thought Oracle was not good enough for the task. Now that your have reminded me of that fact I want to know why SOE thought it was not good enough.
Got me babe.. they've been bitching about it for a while.
They didn't look at the fact that with serial numbers and every crazy resource stat they CREATED the problem in the first place.
That is the problem in itself with Oracle. Each and every item in game didnt have just one entry for it. It had multiple entries. Hundreds if not thousands.
For example. Lets say a crafter made a scout blaster. You got the initial entry for it. Then you have a entry under that for the person who owns it, how much they paid for it (if off a bazaar or merchant), skills and bonuses when using that item (for each special I might add), crafter name, score made when creating it, equipment used to create it, resources used, each subcomponent (with subsequent entries for each of those items), and past people who mmight have owned it. The list is actually about 10 times longer then that but it shows you just how intenese each single entry was. Now multiply that by about 250 million items in a game and you got quite a huge task for one database.
From what I remember reading about their reasons, it was to stop duping. But duping still occured in large amounts.
Oracle isnt good for SWG because, since the NGE they have lowered the load on the database by 90% thanks to items without serial numbers or multiple entries. Yet still alot of the bugs from early SWG are still there. Bugs that are from the database not being able to handle the load.
A few new bugs have also popped up. Multiple loots is one. Last time I played I killed a DJK and got, not one, not two, not three, but four knight robes off one kill. Part of that is the RNG but also the loot tables which are part of the database.
There are databases out there that can handle a bigger load. Dont know if they could handle one as big as early SWG but at least it would be an improvement. Especially if they werent so dang anal about each item in game.
Here in lies the biggest issue. They couldnt fix the game. But instead of rebuilding the game, as they should have, they instead cut out everything they couldnt fix. Cant get ranger tracking to work? Take out ranger completely. Cant get CH balanced right? Take out CH completely. This Civil War hack and slash surgery isnt a good business plan. "I got a splinter in my finger"..........."Ok chop his arm off."
Yah ok it might have been to costly in the short run but the way i see it. Its bloody Star Wars for Christ's Sake. If they had done it right they could have made a hell of alot more off it. They didnt want to do any real work. Instead they showed just how little respect they have for the community.
Originally posted by Shayde Originally posted by nthnaoun
When you're dealing with a terminal illness, which SWG is clearly suffering from, you have to decide which treatments are just prolonging the agony, and what can really help.
I'm sure you know this, but it's a business, and as long as they're making money it'll stay afloat. SWG:NGE is still in the black ink, although by how much is a good question. They're just milking the NGE crowd and the "I'll be here 'til they turn the lights off" crowd for every penny they're willing to spend. That (plus the simplicity itself) is why there is so much recycled material reappearing. No new creature models, no expansions, reduction in number of devs, etc. $OE is clearly in full-blown cost-reduction mode. This is why I don't think the game will die soon. There are enough players who refuse to leave or who oddly enough enjoy the tripe to keep them in the black ink for a while yet. I don't know that I agree that the illness is terminal - I doubt they'll recover and expand the subs over 200K ever again, heck, the ceiling is probably much lower than that, but they are making money still and until the license is pulled/runs out the game will probably be here. $OE has been in milk mode with SWG for quite a while now, IMHO, since CU at least, although I do think they tried to break out of that mode a few times but failed.
SWG Veteran and Refugee, Intrepid server NGE free as of Nov. 22, 2005 Now Playing: World of Warcrack Forum Terrorist
Originally posted by MrArchy Originally posted by Shayde Originally posted by nthnaoun
When you're dealing with a terminal illness, which SWG is clearly suffering from, you have to decide which treatments are just prolonging the agony, and what can really help.
I'm sure you know this, but it's a business, and as long as they're making money it'll stay afloat. SWG:NGE is still in the black ink, although by how much is a good question. They're just milking the NGE crowd and the "I'll be here 'til they turn the lights off" crowd for every penny they're willing to spend. That (plus the simplicity itself) is why there is so much recycled material reappearing. No new creature models, no expansions, reduction in number of devs, etc. $OE is clearly in full-blown cost-reduction mode. This is why I don't think the game will die soon. There are enough players who refuse to leave or who oddly enough enjoy the tripe to keep them in the black ink for a while yet. I don't know that I agree that the illness is terminal - I doubt they'll recover and expand the subs over 200K ever again, heck, the ceiling is probably much lower than that, but they are making money still and until the license is pulled/runs out the game will probably be here. $OE has been in milk mode with SWG for quite a while now, IMHO, since CU at least, although I do think they tried to break out of that mode a few times but failed.
Interesting point. Although I think they're bleeding red ink, they could limp it along just like MxO. New rewards? ANOTHER BARC! Give me a break.. nect thing is an Imperial Melon!
Shayde - SWG (dead) Proud member of the Cabal.
It sounds great, so great in fact, I pitty those who canceled - Some deluded SWG fanboi who pities me. I don't like it when you say things. - A Vanguard fan who does too. 09f911029d74e35bd84156c5635688c0
Jumping in to this thread way late I realize, but as far as the Oracle DB questions, if not Oracle, who else? They're arguably the most hardcore SQL server out there. You have just about every Fortune XXX running Oracle DBs today. If not Oracle, then either IBM or Microsoft, but I'm pretty sure Oracle is the recognized industry leader.
This is not a knock against MySQL or Postgresql, but knowing how cheap SOE is, they'll probably announce a move to either of those two "In order to improve the gaming experience" of their games. And again, I've used MySQL so that's not a knock on MySQL, just that it is free.
I'd guess that just about every major MMO out there is running on Oracle, but I don't know at all so I could be wrong.
Originally posted by kanezfan Jumping in to this thread way late I realize, but as far as the Oracle DB questions, if not Oracle, who else? They're arguably the most hardcore SQL server out there. You have just about every Fortune XXX running Oracle DBs today. If not Oracle, then either IBM or Microsoft, but I'm pretty sure Oracle is the recognized industry leader. This is not a knock against MySQL or Postgresql, but knowing how cheap SOE is, they'll probably announce a move to either of those two "In order to improve the gaming experience" of their games. And again, I've used MySQL so that's not a knock on MySQL, just that it is free. I'd guess that just about every major MMO out there is running on Oracle, but I don't know at all so I could be wrong.
The duck servers will be using MySQL but will be able to use others. Oracle is a good database, but very expensive. By switching to PostgreSQL (which is what SOE is replacing Oracle with) will save them millions in license fees.
I agree with other posters who say there is much they could have done to reduce DB size and load, such as getting rid of item serialization, etc. Stuff like that will probably happen with the duck servers since they can control/change anything that is database/server side.
Yes I feel that SWG could be "saved" or made more intresting to the coustmers. Money would have to be spent. (I know my plan just dried up and blew away right there.) First a Classic server or two for those who wish to play there as well as free transfer from any server to the Classic server free of charge. Pick a publish that was most stable and implement it. but a skeleton crew on it to fix bugs and bugs only. Those that want there game back have it.
As for the NGE contiune to add back into the game the elements that fans have been screaming for, even if you need to use the framework of the NGE's 9 professions to do it. As well as many new quest lines for all professions. Now for the one thing that I feel would help more than anything a simple reorganzaiton of the galaxy into Core and Rim sectors. (I know ive posted before but it fits the topic) Core heavy Imperial flavor, Lots of Imp quest lines and stuff to do. You could even make Coruscant a theme park planet and have high end shops for Traders and Entertainers could have places to put on shows that at least felt like it was the center of the unvierse. Needless to say it would open up plenty of content for smugglers, bounty hunters, spies, and combat teams of all factions to run. Those jedi who wish to be slaves to the dark side could work to find favor in the Empeors eyes in this area as well.
The Rim would be the place where the Uncle Owen crowd could run there business and collect there supplys and adventure all day. The Rebels could have faction missions out here The GCW coudl rage as the Rebels and the Empire fight for the planets out in the frontier of the galaxy. The jedi who wish to serve the light would be out here in the Rim trying to get a handle on there powers and how to rebuild there devasted order and confront the Stih Lords that have crushed the galaxy under there heels.
Dividing the galaxy in this way would open up intresting ways to play the space side of the game as well. Smugglers coudl bring in strike teams to the Core or move contrband items for a price. Guilds could work to crush activity in and around certain planets as a part of the GCW, Imps if they lost could retreat to the realtive safety of Imperial space in the Core. I think it would add greatly to the Star Warsy feel of the game! (Sorry couldnt help myself)
Doing these things would I feel set the game up for everyone who reached 90 and where done with the quest. The GCW could become the content for the maxed out toons.
Take the 5 lowest pop servers, inform everyone playing on them that they are to be wiped, but offer free transfers to other servers.
Put pre-CU publish 13 on there (last TEF publish). Run them over the holidays with basically no support except CSRs.
See where the population goes (we know what will happen) and if subs increase (they will, at least somewhat).
Come January, make the decision. If the population shifts to the point that the 5 pre-CU servers are heavily populated and the NGE ones aren't, shut down all development of the NGE and move to pre-CU. Spend the time fixing bugs and issues (like making armor other than comp viable), revisit the original combat REVAMP that was worked on for pre-CU, and convert the expansions and other post-CU content.
If they gave us back the game we wanted then worked to actually fix it and then expand on it (like they should have been doing the last 1.5 years) they'd make the base they have happy, they'd make the part of the old base they got back happy, which in turn would put the game in a state where it is POSSIBLE for subs to grow again.
MMO's are a social game, people get in because of friends/relationships etc. Make the people happy, they will bring other people.
Piss everyone off (which SOE has been the world champ at), they leave and make sure others don't come.
This is the O N L Y option there is to save SWG. Any other idea will fail before it's even implemented. We don't want CU. We don't want NGE. We don't want a NGE with watered down pre-CU elements slipped in. We want the game we bought, period. The NGE will never succeed no matter what they do with it, even it it does one day become what most would consider a good game because SWG will forever carry with it the baggage of the betrayal of the players and the legacy of once shooting for the moon but now being happy to just jump off the ground in ambition.
The duck servers will be using MySQL but will be able to use others. Oracle is a good database, but very expensive. By switching to PostgreSQL (which is what SOE is replacing Oracle with) will save them millions in license fees.
I agree with other posters who say there is much they could have done to reduce DB size and load, such as getting rid of item serialization, etc. Stuff like that will probably happen with the duck servers since they can control/change anything that is database/server side.
Some people claim you need to code in C++ because it's the fastest. Surprisingly, with some caution, a Java server will outperform C++ one with considerably less effort. But this is blasphemy and you often get yelled at for suggesting something like that.
There's only one problem. You need competent engineers and a stable, comfortable team that's not bogged down by management.
But back to SQL. MMOs make best use of SQL if they don't use it at all. Load the scene from database, then forget about it until you persist the data back. SQL is good for one thing, storing relations between data. MMOs are about using 2% of that data 90% of the time. You know, movement, the health bar and skill buttons. The rest, proportionally, is negligible, but presents most database load.
It all comes down to design. Why is serialization an issue? Each resource needs an ID anyway. The serial number presented in SWG is nothing by reference ID of resource spawn/schematic template in the database. It was just sugar coated into human readable format. It's the number you need anyway.
When you use a weapon, you don't query serial numbers and crafted reources. When you load an object, you simply calculate it's 8 or 9 parameters into a vector and use that from then on. Weapon doesn't change. At least, that's how it should be. But if they were calculating all the data on the fly, then you do get into a problem.
Most of the heaviest lag was caused simply by skill use in large battles and processing movement data and range checks.
The only problem I see with that Wildcat is that Sony considers all 3 ( or 4 but who's counting as they fly by..... ) incarnations of SWG a failure. So just giving back Pre-CU with nothing else makes no business sense to them. CU form was hemoraging subscribers according to there own words and the CU was there fixing of the pre-CU issues. If the pre-CU numbers were such that they felt that they had to shift it (the game experience) then they will never just have pre-CU servers again. So my thought was to have several pre-CU servers for the "people that want there game back" and they can try to get the NGE in some kind of form that perchance the WOW crowd and there deep pockets (or more accurately there many subscribers might give SWG a try. Anyway thats were I was coming from in my post. Have a great day all!
Originally posted by iamjmk The only problem I see with that Wildcat is that Sony considers all 3 ( or 4 but who's counting as they fly by..... ) incarnations of SWG a failure. So just giving back Pre-CU with nothing else makes no business sense to them. CU form was hemoraging subscribers according to there own words and the CU was there fixing of the pre-CU issues. If the pre-CU numbers were such that they felt that they had to shift it (the game experience) then they will never just have pre-CU servers again. So my thought was to have several pre-CU servers for the "people that want there game back" and they can try to get the NGE in some kind of form that perchance the WOW crowd and there deep pockets (or more accurately there many subscribers might give SWG a try. Anyway thats were I was coming from in my post. Have a great day all!
Only preblem with disparaging thd pre-cu as "hemmoraging" subscribers is that according to at least MMOCHART.COM, those numbers were only slightly declining in the year before the CU. The only real drastic decline was about 6 months after launch when they haven't even pushed player cities.
The only hemmorage was post nge. They've exaggerated the pre-nge decline and minimized the nge one in every statement.
Shayde - SWG (dead) Proud member of the Cabal.
It sounds great, so great in fact, I pitty those who canceled - Some deluded SWG fanboi who pities me. I don't like it when you say things. - A Vanguard fan who does too. 09f911029d74e35bd84156c5635688c0
That could very well be Shayde. I was quoting one of there statements. As anyone who has payed attention knows they seems to have a shell game going on with what they say in realtion to why they needed to do what and when over the years.
I think my post may not have made this point very well. I meant that they felt they needed to fix Pre-cu with the CU which then according to what I had read was hemmoraging subscribers. Which is a truly funny thing since that is the very thing the NGE accomplished in spades. But to my knowledge pre-cu had up until WOW respectable numbers in the MMORPG market.
I did not read through the thread much, just the 1st 2 pages, but beyond classic servers, more professions, player interdependence, and the return of the virtual world feel of the game, wounds, states, decay. battle fatigue etc.
When you're dealing with a terminal illness, which SWG is clearly suffering from, you have to decide which treatments are just prolonging the agony, and what can really help.
I'm sure you know this, but it's a business, and as long as they're making money it'll stay afloat. SWG:NGE is still in the black ink, although by how much is a good question. They're just milking the NGE crowd and the "I'll be here 'til they turn the lights off" crowd for every penny they're willing to spend. That (plus the simplicity itself) is why there is so much recycled material reappearing. No new creature models, no expansions, reduction in number of devs, etc. $OE is clearly in full-blown cost-reduction mode. This is why I don't think the game will die soon. There are enough players who refuse to leave or who oddly enough enjoy the tripe to keep them in the black ink for a while yet. I don't know that I agree that the illness is terminal - I doubt they'll recover and expand the subs over 200K ever again, heck, the ceiling is probably much lower than that, but they are making money still and until the license is pulled/runs out the game will probably be here. $OE has been in milk mode with SWG for quite a while now, IMHO, since CU at least, although I do think they tried to break out of that mode a few times but failed.
Interesting point. Although I think they're bleeding red ink, they could limp it along just like MxO. New rewards? ANOTHER BARC! Give me a break.. nect thing is an Imperial Melon!
As much as it pains me to say it, they're not in the red yet. In the end, it's a business, and both Sony and $OE are remarkably stupid but not *that* stupid. Once a product is indeed terminal (in the red ink for good), it'll be gone (even BetaMax died). Obviously the Station Pass helps defray this through a form of revenue sharing as well as permitting them to monkey with/obfuscate subscription numbers for PR and other reasons, but I doubt even a non-Station Pass SWG:NGE is in the red yet. It's relatively close, the game wouldn't be in cost-saving mode if the case were otherwise, but I doubt it's there yet.
SWG Veteran and Refugee, Intrepid server NGE free as of Nov. 22, 2005 Now Playing: World of Warcrack Forum Terrorist
Comments
Moot point.. they're already changing databases. Look it up on their announcements page.
Shayde - SWG (dead)
Proud member of the Cabal.
It sounds great, so great in fact, I pitty those who canceled
I don't like it when you say things. - A Vanguard fan who does too.
09f911029d74e35bd84156c5635688c0
Well, like I said before...it has been said a thousand times that only a Classic server would save this game. That was why I was asking.
Anyways, I have almost given up on MMO's completely. They are all turning into a level/class based, quest advancement system. MMO's are no longer virtual worlds for us to live in and are now only a median to tell a story and allow us to play as the main character. Soloing has been widely accepted and us group gamers have been forced out the back door. It feels like we enter a theme park and after we ride all the rides, the fun is over.
I doubt I will resub to a game until a company makes a real MMO.
Moot point.. they're already changing databases. Look it up on their announcements page.
It's not a moot point to me. I want to know why the poster thought Oracle was not good enough for the task. Now that your have reminded me of that fact I want to know why SOE thought it was not good enough.
I realize I said I quit. I never said it was forever
At the moment I can't see myself paying soe to screw me over again .
Moot point.. they're already changing databases. Look it up on their announcements page.
It's not a moot point to me. I want to know why the poster thought Oracle was not good enough for the task. Now that your have reminded me of that fact I want to know why SOE thought it was not good enough.
Got me babe.. they've been bitching about it for a while.
They didn't look at the fact that with serial numbers and every crazy resource stat they CREATED the problem in the first place.
Shayde - SWG (dead)
Proud member of the Cabal.
It sounds great, so great in fact, I pitty those who canceled
I don't like it when you say things. - A Vanguard fan who does too.
09f911029d74e35bd84156c5635688c0
1 player = 80 inventory items, 1000 items in a house + waypoints, datapad, etc.
2 million unique subscriptions over period of 3 years / 25 servers = 80000 user entries per server. Nothing else was ever persisted. World was changed by designers. Players could ever only interact with items in their own posession.
Since there are fan sites that have 100k+ users with several thousand concurrent users logged in at any given time, and the fact that they push on the order of 10-1000 times more data, this simply doesn't compute. Many of these run the database on one single machine.
SQL databases are designed to handle millions of rows, thousands of tables and billions of records. This isn't a feature. This is the sole purpose they were designed for.
I want to run an MMO before I die sometime (seriously), but I would not touch this franchise with a ten foot pole. SOE has soured and fragmented the playerbase beyond repair. I would not have faith in anyone's ability, including my own, to repair the damage done to the Star Wars name in the MMO market.
All it will take anybody running a Star Wars MMO is ONE TINY MIS-STEP and all Hell will break loose. Even if they GAVE me SWG and all it's assets I would still have to insist upon restructuring the license fee from a fixed rate to a rate based upon subscription revenue, because even if it is properly run and enhanced, the odds are still very much in favor of subscription rates falling over time.
There are too many bad mouths out there. This goose is cooked. I just want SOE to put up a pre-CU server and allow us to enjoy it however long it lasts.
I realize I said I quit. I never said it was forever
The current game is a real mixed bag, not totally NGE anymore, not CU or Pre-Cu by a longshot.
Can it be saved? I think they are pretty happy with how the Smuggler/Officer stuff is coming out. The playerbase in its own nothing-will-make-us-happy way seems to be by and large liking it. So, they could be turning the corner at last.
Bringing back in TK skills is huge, and one of the things people have asked for over and over. If they would be willing to bring back in Ranger, Creature Handler, Bioengineer in other professions, it would do alot towards healing the rift.
Essentially, if they could bring back the essence of what the game had choice wise before, and depth wise, it might work. I've hoped all along they would just work to merge the two game styles. Do I trust them to do that. nah don't trust them at all. But I hope I'm wrong and they can pull it off.
Could I save it? Nope, but I can play it and enjoy it and try not to think about what was or what might come. I can provide feedback as reasonably as I'm able to do. Everyone has their choices to make, but I often think that some of the great debaters here with long memories of the game could be a positive force on the official forums. You never know.
(Note to Ico, who I saw up above--you better be buying LOTRO when it comes out so we can jabber again
)
Q F M F E
I said this over and over during the pre-CU ... the problems were not insoluble, they were insoluble with the harebrained management approach the game took from day 1 .... they never learned to aim small, miss small when they adjusted game systems. "Oh, this is unbalancing ... let's change it by 500%". Um, ever hear of trying 10% first?
Letting basic problems languish for months and then throwing a radical change at it was SOP at SOE, and the #1 reason people left during the pre-CU. We didn't hate the design, we hated the ongoing management of the game and the useless marketing-driven expansions after JTLS.
Moot point.. they're already changing databases. Look it up on their announcements page.
It's not a moot point to me. I want to know why the poster thought Oracle was not good enough for the task. Now that your have reminded me of that fact I want to know why SOE thought it was not good enough.
Got me babe.. they've been bitching about it for a while.
They didn't look at the fact that with serial numbers and every crazy resource stat they CREATED the problem in the first place.
That is the problem in itself with Oracle. Each and every item in game didnt have just one entry for it. It had multiple entries. Hundreds if not thousands.
For example. Lets say a crafter made a scout blaster. You got the initial entry for it. Then you have a entry under that for the person who owns it, how much they paid for it (if off a bazaar or merchant), skills and bonuses when using that item (for each special I might add), crafter name, score made when creating it, equipment used to create it, resources used, each subcomponent (with subsequent entries for each of those items), and past people who mmight have owned it. The list is actually about 10 times longer then that but it shows you just how intenese each single entry was. Now multiply that by about 250 million items in a game and you got quite a huge task for one database.
From what I remember reading about their reasons, it was to stop duping. But duping still occured in large amounts.
Oracle isnt good for SWG because, since the NGE they have lowered the load on the database by 90% thanks to items without serial numbers or multiple entries. Yet still alot of the bugs from early SWG are still there. Bugs that are from the database not being able to handle the load.
A few new bugs have also popped up. Multiple loots is one. Last time I played I killed a DJK and got, not one, not two, not three, but four knight robes off one kill. Part of that is the RNG but also the loot tables which are part of the database.
There are databases out there that can handle a bigger load. Dont know if they could handle one as big as early SWG but at least it would be an improvement. Especially if they werent so dang anal about each item in game.
Here in lies the biggest issue. They couldnt fix the game. But instead of rebuilding the game, as they should have, they instead cut out everything they couldnt fix. Cant get ranger tracking to work? Take out ranger completely. Cant get CH balanced right? Take out CH completely. This Civil War hack and slash surgery isnt a good business plan. "I got a splinter in my finger"..........."Ok chop his arm off."
Yah ok it might have been to costly in the short run but the way i see it. Its bloody Star Wars for Christ's Sake. If they had done it right they could have made a hell of alot more off it. They didnt want to do any real work. Instead they showed just how little respect they have for the community.
Kai
When you're dealing with a terminal illness, which SWG is clearly suffering from, you have to decide which treatments are just prolonging the agony, and what can really help.
I'm sure you know this, but it's a business, and as long as they're making money it'll stay afloat. SWG:NGE is still in the black ink, although by how much is a good question. They're just milking the NGE crowd and the "I'll be here 'til they turn the lights off" crowd for every penny they're willing to spend. That (plus the simplicity itself) is why there is so much recycled material reappearing. No new creature models, no expansions, reduction in number of devs, etc. $OE is clearly in full-blown cost-reduction mode. This is why I don't think the game will die soon. There are enough players who refuse to leave or who oddly enough enjoy the tripe to keep them in the black ink for a while yet. I don't know that I agree that the illness is terminal - I doubt they'll recover and expand the subs over 200K ever again, heck, the ceiling is probably much lower than that, but they are making money still and until the license is pulled/runs out the game will probably be here. $OE has been in milk mode with SWG for quite a while now, IMHO, since CU at least, although I do think they tried to break out of that mode a few times but failed.
SWG Veteran and Refugee, Intrepid server
NGE free as of Nov. 22, 2005
Now Playing: World of Warcrack
Forum Terrorist
When you're dealing with a terminal illness, which SWG is clearly suffering from, you have to decide which treatments are just prolonging the agony, and what can really help.
I'm sure you know this, but it's a business, and as long as they're making money it'll stay afloat. SWG:NGE is still in the black ink, although by how much is a good question. They're just milking the NGE crowd and the "I'll be here 'til they turn the lights off" crowd for every penny they're willing to spend. That (plus the simplicity itself) is why there is so much recycled material reappearing. No new creature models, no expansions, reduction in number of devs, etc. $OE is clearly in full-blown cost-reduction mode. This is why I don't think the game will die soon. There are enough players who refuse to leave or who oddly enough enjoy the tripe to keep them in the black ink for a while yet. I don't know that I agree that the illness is terminal - I doubt they'll recover and expand the subs over 200K ever again, heck, the ceiling is probably much lower than that, but they are making money still and until the license is pulled/runs out the game will probably be here. $OE has been in milk mode with SWG for quite a while now, IMHO, since CU at least, although I do think they tried to break out of that mode a few times but failed.
Interesting point. Although I think they're bleeding red ink, they could limp it along just like MxO. New rewards? ANOTHER BARC! Give me a break.. nect thing is an Imperial Melon!
Shayde - SWG (dead)
Proud member of the Cabal.
It sounds great, so great in fact, I pitty those who canceled
I don't like it when you say things. - A Vanguard fan who does too.
09f911029d74e35bd84156c5635688c0
Jumping in to this thread way late I realize, but as far as the Oracle DB questions, if not Oracle, who else? They're arguably the most hardcore SQL server out there. You have just about every Fortune XXX running Oracle DBs today. If not Oracle, then either IBM or Microsoft, but I'm pretty sure Oracle is the recognized industry leader.
This is not a knock against MySQL or Postgresql, but knowing how cheap SOE is, they'll probably announce a move to either of those two "In order to improve the gaming experience" of their games. And again, I've used MySQL so that's not a knock on MySQL, just that it is free.
I'd guess that just about every major MMO out there is running on Oracle, but I don't know at all so I could be wrong.
I agree with other posters who say there is much they could have done to reduce DB size and load, such as getting rid of item serialization, etc. Stuff like that will probably happen with the duck servers since they can control/change anything that is database/server side.
Yes I feel that SWG could be "saved" or made more intresting to the coustmers. Money would have to be spent. (I know my plan just dried up and blew away right there.) First a Classic server or two for those who wish to play there as well as free transfer from any server to the Classic server free of charge. Pick a publish that was most stable and implement it. but a skeleton crew on it to fix bugs and bugs only. Those that want there game back have it.
As for the NGE contiune to add back into the game the elements that fans have been screaming for, even if you need to use the framework of the NGE's 9 professions to do it. As well as many new quest lines for all professions. Now for the one thing that I feel would help more than anything a simple reorganzaiton of the galaxy into Core and Rim sectors. (I know ive posted before but it fits the topic) Core heavy Imperial flavor, Lots of Imp quest lines and stuff to do. You could even make Coruscant a theme park planet and have high end shops for Traders and Entertainers could have places to put on shows that at least felt like it was the center of the unvierse. Needless to say it would open up plenty of content for smugglers, bounty hunters, spies, and combat teams of all factions to run. Those jedi who wish to be slaves to the dark side could work to find favor in the Empeors eyes in this area as well.
The Rim would be the place where the Uncle Owen crowd could run there business and collect there supplys and adventure all day. The Rebels could have faction missions out here The GCW coudl rage as the Rebels and the Empire fight for the planets out in the frontier of the galaxy. The jedi who wish to serve the light would be out here in the Rim trying to get a handle on there powers and how to rebuild there devasted order and confront the Stih Lords that have crushed the galaxy under there heels.
Dividing the galaxy in this way would open up intresting ways to play the space side of the game as well. Smugglers coudl bring in strike teams to the Core or move contrband items for a price. Guilds could work to crush activity in and around certain planets as a part of the GCW, Imps if they lost could retreat to the realtive safety of Imperial space in the Core. I think it would add greatly to the Star Warsy feel of the game!
(Sorry couldnt help myself)
Doing these things would I feel set the game up for everyone who reached 90 and where done with the quest. The GCW could become the content for the maxed out toons.
There is only one chance to save SWG.
Take the 5 lowest pop servers, inform everyone playing on them that they are to be wiped, but offer free transfers to other servers.
Put pre-CU publish 13 on there (last TEF publish). Run them over the holidays with basically no support except CSRs.
See where the population goes (we know what will happen) and if subs increase (they will, at least somewhat).
Come January, make the decision. If the population shifts to the point that the 5 pre-CU servers are heavily populated and the NGE ones aren't, shut down all development of the NGE and move to pre-CU. Spend the time fixing bugs and issues (like making armor other than comp viable), revisit the original combat REVAMP that was worked on for pre-CU, and convert the expansions and other post-CU content.
If they gave us back the game we wanted then worked to actually fix it and then expand on it (like they should have been doing the last 1.5 years) they'd make the base they have happy, they'd make the part of the old base they got back happy, which in turn would put the game in a state where it is POSSIBLE for subs to grow again.
MMO's are a social game, people get in because of friends/relationships etc. Make the people happy, they will bring other people.
Piss everyone off (which SOE has been the world champ at), they leave and make sure others don't come.
This is the O N L Y option there is to save SWG. Any other idea will fail before it's even implemented. We don't want CU. We don't want NGE. We don't want a NGE with watered down pre-CU elements slipped in. We want the game we bought, period. The NGE will never succeed no matter what they do with it, even it it does one day become what most would consider a good game because SWG will forever carry with it the baggage of the betrayal of the players and the legacy of once shooting for the moon but now being happy to just jump off the ground in ambition.
I agree with other posters who say there is much they could have done to reduce DB size and load, such as getting rid of item serialization, etc. Stuff like that will probably happen with the duck servers since they can control/change anything that is database/server side.
Some people claim you need to code in C++ because it's the fastest. Surprisingly, with some caution, a Java server will outperform C++ one with considerably less effort. But this is blasphemy and you often get yelled at for suggesting something like that.
There's only one problem. You need competent engineers and a stable, comfortable team that's not bogged down by management.
But back to SQL. MMOs make best use of SQL if they don't use it at all. Load the scene from database, then forget about it until you persist the data back. SQL is good for one thing, storing relations between data. MMOs are about using 2% of that data 90% of the time. You know, movement, the health bar and skill buttons. The rest, proportionally, is negligible, but presents most database load.
It all comes down to design. Why is serialization an issue? Each resource needs an ID anyway. The serial number presented in SWG is nothing by reference ID of resource spawn/schematic template in the database. It was just sugar coated into human readable format. It's the number you need anyway.
When you use a weapon, you don't query serial numbers and crafted reources. When you load an object, you simply calculate it's 8 or 9 parameters into a vector and use that from then on. Weapon doesn't change. At least, that's how it should be. But if they were calculating all the data on the fly, then you do get into a problem.
Most of the heaviest lag was caused simply by skill use in large battles and processing movement data and range checks.
The only problem I see with that Wildcat is that Sony considers all 3 ( or 4 but who's counting as they fly by.....
) incarnations of SWG a failure. So just giving back Pre-CU with nothing else makes no business sense to them. CU form was hemoraging subscribers according to there own words and the CU was there fixing of the pre-CU issues. If the pre-CU numbers were such that they felt that they had to shift it (the game experience) then they will never just have pre-CU servers again. So my thought was to have several pre-CU servers for the "people that want there game back" and they can try to get the NGE in some kind of form that perchance the WOW crowd and there deep pockets (or more accurately there many subscribers might give SWG a try. Anyway thats were I was coming from in my post. Have a great day all!
The only hemmorage was post nge. They've exaggerated the pre-nge decline and minimized the nge one in every statement.
Shayde - SWG (dead)
Proud member of the Cabal.
It sounds great, so great in fact, I pitty those who canceled
I don't like it when you say things. - A Vanguard fan who does too.
09f911029d74e35bd84156c5635688c0
That could very well be Shayde. I was quoting one of there statements. As anyone who has payed attention knows they seems to have a shell game going on with what they say in realtion to why they needed to do what and when over the years.
I think my post may not have made this point very well. I meant that they felt they needed to fix Pre-cu with the CU which then according to what I had read was hemmoraging subscribers. Which is a truly funny thing since that is the very thing the NGE accomplished in spades. But to my knowledge pre-cu had up until WOW respectable numbers in the MMORPG market.
SWG Veteran and Refugee, Intrepid server
NGE free as of Nov. 22, 2005
Now Playing: World of Warcrack
Forum Terrorist
It all depends on if people can make their way through the hordes of negative press that SWG and SOE get.
Oh yeah, I think that Throwback servers will work, just look at DAOC theyre working great!
Extremism in the defense of Liberty is no vice.
move to the Rebellion please.
Thanks