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Star Wars Galaxies Only to Allow One Character Per Account
frotty writes "The developers of Star Wars Galaxies recently announced that the game would only allow a single character per purchased account on any server. This has outraged some, and relieved others." Click on the link to see the reasoning behind this move.
It's per PURCHASED account of course. Im sure they would be more than willing to let you buy several accounts to have more than one player.
unzip; strip; touch; finger; mount; fsck; more; yes; unmount; sleep
Holocron very, very elegantly explained just why they're doing this. Read and find out.
u m3 /HTML/088000.html
http://boards.station.sony.com/ubb/starwars/For
After this article, I completely agreed.
And as a clickable link....
The original post wasn't so clear about this. It's one character PER SERVER. There are 10 servers, so you can make 10 characters. Want to try out a totally different race, class, or whatever? Just make a new character on a different server. Don't like it? Use your other character on your other server. The only people this hurts are those who use mules, and I see that as a very good thing.
A big reason given for this policy is the storage fees. It's expensive for them to store everyone's character server-side.
Frankly I'm surprised no MMORPG's have attempted client-side storage yet. The security problems are relatively trivial. MAC (keyed hash) the data before it leaves the server and verify it when it comes back. The client transmits the MACed data when he starts a session, the server modifies it locally during play, and the client gets back the updated and reMACed data when he logs off. If the client tries to modify his char data, the server detects the change and refuses to load the char. If the client gets disconnected before receiving their updated char file, then have the server store it so the data isn't lost.
With an onboard secure coprocessor card, the MACs can be computed and verified quickly and cheaply with little risk of key compromise. The player will have to wait a little longer to load up the game, but if the alternative is one char per acount I'd certainly do it.
This should significantly reduce the storage costs, but with a corresponding (but probably not equal) rise in bandwidth costs. It all hinges on the cost per byte of bandwidth versus storage. If there's ever a point when bandwidth is cheaper, this model should be viable.
Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on lunch.
The fact is, if I want cable TV in another room, I have to pay for an additional cable outlet.
Uh, what planet is this on? Here in the US, cable companies are prohibited from charging on a per outlet basis. If I want cable TV in another room, all I have to do is buy a splitter at Radio Shack. Now, if I split it too many times I'll get a poor signal, but then all I have to do is buy a signal amplifier. Bad analogy.
If I want a phone for my daughter or heck, for myself in my office, I have to pay.
For a phone? No, you don't. Again, you just split the line and add an extension. Now, if I want to add a separate line, okay, but that's not the same thing, that's consuming additional resources (an extra number)
If I want a second cell phone on my family plan, I have to pay.
Only because the cell phone providers are in collusion to prevent people from getting the services that are possible. There is no technical reason why I can't clone a handset and have more than one cell phone...other than of course only one can ring. In fact, if you know the right codes to enter you can do this.
I have multiple computers on my home network, and I pay for the extra IP addresses.
Or you just setup a router/NAT/whatever and share the existing IP address.
No, I have no idea how many character branch possibilities there are. I'm saying any one individual can try 10 character branch possibilities at any one time. However each character resides on a differant server. With most MMORGS you can have multiple characters on one server. This allows players to swap items between thier characters etc. Many people feel this puts other players at a disadvantage. So some games are starting to limit the number of characters a player can have on a particular server.
Of course you can get by this by simply purchasing an additional copy of the game and paying the monthly fees for two accounts.
It is not just the costs of the raw disk space,
but the enormous time and expense required to maintain/backup/restore a large database. Your 25 cents will not go very far.
Also, the access times would increase with more data to churn through, causing complaints about lag. These raise their CS costs and also cause bad word of mouth on the boards.
And, from my reading of the entire article (not just the bullet points), muling is a major reason for the change to SCS. Even more so than the storage costs.
They are trying to attract mainstream folks who have never tried evercrack and want something more than Sims Online. This means not catering to the muling that the average person would find unfair.
Well you can still try your alt of the week, just on a different server. The designers are attempting to create a more realistic economy and game. IN RL you can't have 10 jobs and pick which one you want to do each day why should you be able to in their VL?
... all on one account. With production being automated while away from the game this would effectively create an unworkable economy where only the lucky would being able to support themselves.
... just convince them all to create characters on another server. Its not really *that* much of an inconvience is it?
Even still the developers made clear you'd be albe to relinquish skills and go back down the tree (your only set characteristic is your race). I think the ability to have characters on different servers + the ability to alter skill paths is an acceptable compromise.
The other factor is that mules and multiple characters destroy economies. Sure, you might use the account just to try out your alt, but someone else might be creating a whole guild of craftsmen to annihilate the competition
You can still try out that character with your friends
Reading the responses of most people I don't understand why most people are hung up on the storage issue. Maybe it will cost them lots of money, maybe it won't, at the same time we're ignoring the gameplay issues that I think are core to SOE's decision. The people who are screaming the loudest about this are the Everquest and other MMPORPG power players. They want SWG to be Everquest in the Star Wars universe. They want muling so they can store huge amount of accumulated loot. They want to be able to twink new characters with the latest and greatest stuff. In order to build a complex or powerful item in SWG requires multiple skills that a single person can't have. This makes sense. Most of us can't build a car from scratch, much less a VCR or telephone. I'm not talking about assembling them from pre-made parts, I'm talking about building every individual component themselves. By requiring users to depend on each other to get the things they want requires interaction between the players and discourages being an a-hole to everyone you meet. If you can have 10 characters per server than you won't need anybody you can build it all yourself, no interdependency, no socialization. I honestly believe that the reason that SOE is using one character per server is to improve gameplay and interaction. Having played several other MMPORPGs this is something that desperately needs improvement. Maybe it will work, maybe it won't, but I believe it's worth a try. For those who want to twink, mule and grief, keep your EQ accounts.
STOP ROCK VIDEO
There is nothing to stop you from doing just that with only 1 character. You have 3 options in star wars.
1- Since this character obviously does not meet your style of play, delete it. Since you are ready to try something new you obviously have not become attached to it, and 2 days played time is not much to give us.
2- use the sell back option for the skill, wow a game that you can change your mind and sell skills back so that you can try something new like you mentioned.
3- Create your character on another server. This goes along with number 1, 2 days is not alot of time to put into a character, and you will not have made any lasting friendships by that time, lasting friendship takes more then 2 days to build up.
Please read the post by Holocron on the reasons behind SCS when you can.
SCS is critical to many aspects that are only unique to SWG and not other MMOs. This is not a SCS Vs MCS issue. But more of which will be best for SWG.
I am sure alot of old school MMO gamers will be put off by it but here's my take anyway
First of all, the customizability of SWG needs SCS. It's not only when you create your character but also after throught your SWG gamelife! The Image Designer Profession can alter your look, hairstyle, tatoos, cloths etc. There will be 3 layers of clothings. Your house and many other things can be customized and personalized. Your pets can also grow! Not just in its stats and skills but its size! There are many more other features of the game that can be customized. This customizability aspect of SWG is unseen in any other games. And it needs SCS to maintain a feasible server/CS cost.
SCS ensures a player-driven economy will not get destroyed by excessive muling and self-sufficient players. And it secures the roles of the crafter professions in the economy. Trading at this scale will also foster a tighter community.
SCS also means no more two-face cowards that play their main hero then logon their griefer char once in the while to just piss people off. With only one character per server, and such heavy emphasis on interdependency, every single actions you do in game counts. Griefer can still buy separate accounts, but he would have to pay to do that and that atleast covers the additional CS he caused.
There are many more reasons and benefits SCS will bring to SWG. The only benefit MCS I can see so far is satisfying the old MMO gamers "habit". I canforesee SWG's SCS concept will only be the first in the 3rd generation MMOs. As MMO becomes bigger, more detail and more complex, they will need SCS.
It all boils down to one question, do you want to play UO/AC/EQ-in-space, or do you want to play SWG? Those who gets put off by SCS and refuse to play SWG, I am sure a good portion of them will try out SWG when the others rave about it when its launched. Ya, I have that much faith in it. ;)
I will stop here before I carelessly break my NDA :p
P.S. In a nutshell SWG's SCS means, for each account you own, you can have 10 character but only 1 on each server.
SCS - Single Character Servers
MCS - Multiple Character Servers
CS - Customer Support
-Tang
That's right Ty, if they were to encrypt the data file using AES or 3DES, it would be only a matter of days before someone released a crack to let you edit the file. Pshaw.
Seriously, though. This is not a bad idea, but it still doesn't take into account that they have explicitly said that they intend to have the character working on autopilot to some extent when you're not logged in -- so if you set up a shop or a manufacturing company, the character will still conduct business while you're offline. Well, this makes the situation signifigantly more complex; they can no longer afford to let you download the whole character in order to remove it from their systems. It just won't work with the autopilot functionality.
I wish people would actually read the entire content.
With a single character, you can learn the bottom half of the tree of EVERY SINGLE profession, with the given 200 points. That means with just one test character, you have a good understanding of the mechanics of all the professions.
With a single character, you can completely master three professions, and do the bottom half of a fourth.
I think most people who are knee-jerk angry don't realize how drastically different this game is gonna be from the traditional "pick your race, pick your stats, pick your profession, hope you didn't screw it up!" MMORPG character creation system we have today. If anything, it'll be more like Asheron's Call 2, which encourages players to dabble in a little bit of everything (but for all that, doesn't have enough variety).
No Collision Detection was put in so that players wouldn't get stuck. It was one of the features that most (if not all) reviews commented on highly.
Er, they likely won't just be using straight up SCSI. Let's look at the TCO. I will say that I don't really "buy" the database argument, because my understanding is that the big guys tended to price by horsepower, not size, but I could be wrong.
Lets assume the following, using what I think are probably conservative numbers --
1. 2 million total accounts, one character each
2. 10 server active 'sites'
3. Each character uses approximately 5MB of space
4. 60% change in data set between backups.
5. Each 'galaxy' has overhead of some unknown amount, which I will not take into account in this TCO equation.
Let's consider the storage costs:
1. Each site will need approximately 1TB of data for characters; probably 2TB to be able to do flashcopy for backup purposes; assume 500GB for overhead. Note that they won't be able to use just a standard SCSI RAID, they'll need a real workhorse of a machine. Depending on how cheapie they're willing to go, they might get a mid-range FC Array like the IBM FASTtT700 or a real storage server like the ESS. Cost will run between $210k and $2 million. Per site. However, with the high load, they'll probably need something with oodles of cache, so I'd lean towards the ESS and call it $2 million per site.
2. Disaster recovery. They'll probably use something like the 3590E or H for tape; they'll probably want to store 2 weeks of data with probably 60% change per day -- that works out to about 52.5TB of data. That'll need about 3 3494 frames at ~$100000 ea. That's $300k per site. Then drives -- each drive costs about $40k, and if each drive does about 75GB/hr average and you need to back up in 8 hrs, you need at least 3 drives, plus another 4 or so for tape maintenance -- $280k per site. Tape will cost about $10k extra, per site.
3. Online backups -- this will essentially require you to duplicate the storage equipment once per site, so we end up doubling our hardware costs.
Per site, we're looking at:
$2 million for DASD
$600 thousand for tape
----
$2.6 million in storage alone.
To do the online backups, which I find probable, double that number ($5.2 million); multiply by ten sites, and you get $52 million investment cost. Divide that by 2 million characters, and your approximate cost per character is $26 in storage, per character.
Note that this doesn't even begin to take into account the recurring fees -- vendor support, which you can expect to be at least $10k per month per site, in-house technical support, which you can expect to run probably $20k per month per site, nor does it take into account ANY management software, any bandwidth to transfer to the online backup site, etc,.
More than you thought, huh? Probably by a factor of thousands.
Please write the following on a blackboard 100 times:
ENTERPRISE HARDWARE IS SIGNIFIGANTLY MORE EXPENSIVE THAN THE COMMODITY INTEL COMPATIBLE HARDWARE I AM USED TO. IT IS ALSO EXPONENTIALLY MORE EXPENSIVE AS YOU SCALE.
Mysql or postgress haven't got the balls to handle the kinds of data sets and transaction times this kind of application requires. You need Big Iron, and Big Commercial Databases
So because you shell out big bucks you get big performance? Please, that is like saying becuase you spent $40 for a pen that you will write better. Sometimes can be very little correlation between the money you spend and any improvements you get.