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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.
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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.
in other MMORPG's people have dummy "mule" characters that only exist to hold items and whatnot, while there's nothing wrong with that, it makes things a little less realistic. with only one character, you can focus on actually developing that character, and playing the game, not inventory management. (and other things.... IANAMMORPGP)
Don't worry, Chris' game company won't do that!
Right? I mean, he's not posting stories about outrage in the MMORPG world in order to bolster his own efforts?
I'm not going to link to the site, as they don't need even more free slashdot press, but people should know that Chris started his own "revolutionary" multiplayer game company recently.
They'll have a super duper game out soon.
It will be much better than Star Wars, which is outraging its users, right? I'm glad Chris is still a slashdot editor, so he can bring this to our attention.
Conflict of interest? Don't worry, I'm sure the slashdot community will mod this down sufficiently. (Especially now that I've assumed they will.)
I bet we'll see some great MMORPG polls up soon too...
The basically have storage costs and controlling of mischievous behavior as the two primary reasons for a single character system, with storage costs mentioned first and at length. Give me a break. Here's a quarter, buy another 10MB of disk space (their fees are a lot higher than that ...). Even with replication I don't buy that storage costs can be that much, unless some engineer really screwed up how to store a character efficiently.
The mischief factor I can understand, but why not state that first? It seems like they aren't perhaps being as honest and forthright as they could be.
.. ,know I would want to see what would happen if I choose a different branch in the game.
Many people, myself included, like to try out different aspects of a game, online or not.
I
Imagine if you could on choose to drive 1 car in grand theft auto? or only play 1 sim. those games would have lasted maybe 5 minutes.
I was on the border as to weather I would play this, and unless the policy changes, it is a definate no.
I probably would have stop playing as soon as I heard:
"Willing to trade 5 Yodas heads for 1 Darth Vader light sabor"
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
It can only store a single ASCII character per purchased account?
In trying to present reasons why the popular desires for multiple characters per server aren't warrented, the one that is probably most popular was completely glossed over.
"I want to try something new without having to leave my friends."
Later on in the thread someone posted a statistic from a poll on the site, stating that nearly 50% of people were going to choose their server based on their friends. This is how most people tend to play these games, with friends. So now if you want to try a wookie instead of a human, gotta give the big adios to your buddies.
There are some situations where a limitation on characters per server is a good thing. Dark Age of Camelot, for example, limits your choice of the three realms to play in to one realm per server for most servers. They do this to discourage 'spy' characters. But within that choice of a single realm you can make 8 characters. Feel free to try out that new spec, or different class, and still be able to have fun with your friends.
I had no real opinion on this game before. But I'm the type that likes to try my "alt of the week". If I can't try it out with my friends, no way I'm getting the game. Pretty effective way to discourage community if you ask me.
There is no rule out there that states "Thou shalt allow all users to have multiple characters on one account". If the fact that some one can only have one character bugs you that much don't pay $x per month to play. Simple. Or, start writing your own games and get your own servers.
And...
IT'S A GAME! If this were something really important then by all means make a fuss, but not for an online RPG!
There are any number of legitimate reasons why MMORPG players who prefer the three types other than "Achievemer" would run multiple characters. "Explorers" would want to try many different classes or races. "Socializers" would want a different character to suit different moods or hang out with different crowds. "Imposers" (player-killer types) would need plenty of backups....
Furthermore, Holocron's post made no mention of whether any reasonable pricing scheme other than forcing users to start entire new accounts (doubtless containing much redundant information) was even considered.
The statement that multiple accounts are used primarily for muling belies an overly constrained mindset about how and why people play MMORPGs. I can only conclude that cutting out three fourths of SW:G's potential market with this draconian pricing move will only have a negative impact on profits.
It allows up to 8 (!) characters per account. And with some extensions, you can have even more!!!
Ciao
----
FB
to wonder if game companies have considered keeping profiles on players based on everything done and said in the game?
/to go to the other extreme/ and blast a shitstorm of personal information about yourself every day on the internet. And it is easy to do, an example being these games.
If some value could be had from something like that, how long would it take for some enterprising game companies to captalize on it?
Some angry words passed between you and some other person in the game, echoing forever onwards throughout your life? Picture your resume sitting before the hiring officer of some company in the future:
"Hey Bill, pull the personality profile, and credit reports for this stack of applicants."
"Sweet jesus, this guy sure is a live one!"
*sound of balled paper hitting bottom of wastebasket*
And there's a whole lot of stuff that seems perfectly normal when in context but could be quite useful in the hands of someone who wants to destroy you.
Make some nasty comment about some future politician? Big Mistake, because guess who he plays golf with on Sundays? that guy, what's his name, Poindexter's succesor. ANd you better believe they're gonna find plenty of stuff on you to shut your ass up real quick-like.
In a way, tribes who think you've stolen their souls whe their pictures are taken, have grasped a small part of something. If someone has sufficient information about you, they do have your soul. Everything would be predictable to them. Even if you had a chnace to confront them, they would know ahead of time how to counter the arguments, because they've reviewed arguments you've had in the past. If you tried to take them to court...out comes the shitstorm of information. all that stuff you said all those years back. Have tremendous power over you through this knowledge alone, not mentioning all the possibilities for blackmail.
Ahhh contraire! You have nothing to hide, do you?
Sure. If that lets you rest easier at night, you keep on believing that. Otherwise, you might want to ponder the sorts of things about your life that will be bought and sold like a credit report.
Maybe I wasn't clear enough. You don't need to be a criminal to be concerned about this. Any information about you, is power that can be used against you. If people are execerting effort to gather information about you, chances are goodwill towards you isn't a major factor in their efforts.
Ok, now I'm sounding paranoid. But think about it. I'm not saying to go hide in hole and treat life as if it were some precious secret, I'm just pointing out that it may not be wise
In this way, the only true speech is anonymous speech.
...And I've experienced the frustration of realizing that the class, stats, whatever that I chose, though perfectly acceptable, were entirely incompatable with my style of playing in the game. When I go into an MUD or an MMORPG, I generally build a very standard character and spend a day or two just exploring and figuring out how this, that, or the other just plain conflicts with my playing style. Yes, sometimes I can guess decently well, but in general, I need to fine-tune certain things to meet my needs. Since none of us have any idea how different skills, battling, etc. will be from the other games we've played, we don't KNOW how to tune our characters. I'd LIKE a test character to run around for a few days...it'll save me a lot of frustration and potential hardware accessory damage when I toss my keyboard or gamepad across the room after cursing myself for picking Rodian as my species when it's so damned clear that for my playtype I should have picked Trandoshan (or Wookie or Human or whatever).
I understand the issues they're trying to counter. I understand the REAL issue which is the fact LucasArts knows they can milk the Star Wars franchise/MMORPG combination for quite a lot of Money with a capital M.
They know that's the case, we know that's the case. There are no secrets here. So why the hell are they still lying to us? If they were outwardly honest and said "We're choosing to do this because it will allow us to charge for each individual who uses the service." I honestly don't think that their audience is going to be less receptive to it. Everyone will consider it and decide whether it's worth it to them or not. But there ISN'T AN ALTERNATIVE if you want a Star Wars-themed MMORPG. Period. The mass market that is interested in a STAR WARS game is a captive audience...they'll jump through the hoops to have the service no matter what. The people looking for a good online RPG will either sign on immediately or they'll sit back and see if it's all its cracked up to be. If it IS as good as they make it out to be, than the skeptics (like me) will join because it will provide something they can't get elsewhere and we'll put up with the limitations. I honestly don't see why they have to feed us a line of crap about how this is all to prevent multiplaying and then insult our intelligence with that sarcastic "Ah, Virginia, I wish it wasn't so" comment. We're not stupid...we understand trade-offs. But we also understand that they have more to gain here than we do.
If not all sentients are human, couldn't it be possible that not all humans are sentient either?
Remember that this is all being kept in a COMMERCIAL database, the kind with licensing fees and really good performance. TCO isn't just the hard disk storage space. Think administration, think redundancy (as in mirroring), think backup, think load balancing, add in bandwidth costs for balancing, mirroring, etc. and shit adds up.
I work for a storage technology company. These are real details that do cost cash. BTW this is the short list of expenses.
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
Anyone interested in knowing how much it takes to maintain Terabytes of database storage:
Hardware
- Storage
- CPUs
- NIC cards
- Cables
- Electricity ($$$)
Licensing (Commercial)
- OS
- Database
- Admin seats
- User seats
- Storage Admin Software
- Admin seats
Administration
- Salary
- QA at 60k/yr
- Admin at 75k/yr
- Manager at 80k/yr
These are all very ball-park, but you can see that there is a lot more than $1/GB involved here.
Sure you can buy a hard drive for about $1/GB for personal use but you don't count all the man hours involved in maintenance or you don't have enugh activity to need maintenance or any of the other tasks involved with serious database activity.
I hope this starts you thinking about all the effort that goes into keeping a very active DB going.
There's more, much more to say about this but I'm done for now.
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
If LucasArts can achieve that with just an "M", surely one character ought to be enough for anybody?
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
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
You're absolutely correct. Using client storage capacity to store encrypted alts is a particularly elegant solution. The reason why it works -- unlike the stream obfuscation of Everquest et al -- is because the client never receives the symmetric key for the encrypted data. It's remote storage; the carrier for a megabyte blob of something or other. There's no "partial disclosure"; AES or 3DES will deploy just fine, and no kiddie's getting around it. Throw a timestamp and an HMAC into the file pre-crypto, just to prevent various forms of corruption attacks.
Pretty trivial, and there goes the DB problems (in exchange for a bandwidth hit).
The job of the game is to be addictive and fun for as long as possible. Supporting group play, both in-house and across geographic boundries, is empirically one of the more important techniques for "keeping people hooked". If deciding to try an all-new character forces me to lose my original investment, I'm not likely to switch. But since my original interest was driven by boredom, I'm also not likely to continue paying $10 a month now that the entertainment value has ceased.
On a similar note, nobody ever paid $10 a month because they really felt good about supporting that EULA.
Yours Truly,
Dan Kaminsky
DoxPara Research
http://www.doxpara.com
MCS or Multiple Characters per Server is a very abused thing.
1. Mules. Many characters are created just to hold lots of items or carry them places the main character cannot go. Sum up the capabilities of the main and all the mules and you have a super-character at the expense of the game company and the other players game enjoyment.
2. Low level char is acting an ass so people around him get mad at him and wont group with him. He goes and gets his high level character and spawn camps preventing others from enjoying game. Harassment is a very real thing. Now you got an alt war on your hands and it's a support nightmare due to the fact that it's hard to identify alts.
3. Hi level players decide to start alts. They twink (give hi level stuff to their own low level characters) and now the new main chars of new players are at a disadvantage. Nothing like being passed over for a group because your Bronze armor didn't stack up to the Cobalt armor of your level 10 warrior competitor.
4. The one-stop-shop. You got yer Shamans making potions, your enchanters making jewelry and fetching components for the shaman. You got yer gnome tinkering. Why would you need to do business with anyone else?
People will always find a loophole in the rules. The SCS (single character per server) idea will address some of the inequities currently brought about by the abuses of MCS (multichar per server). I'm sure that the more financially endowed players will purchase multiple accounts (like they are doing even now with MCS) so that they may continue to abuse the game - with SCS they will be forced to pay for abuses AND they will be more accountable for same.
Some ideas:
To address some of the problems with SCS such as wanting to dabble with a new char class. They could have a short lived tryout character at the end of which time the user could decide whether they wanted the original char or the new char. Only one would live. HOWEVER, this would also allow the transfer of goods from one to the other i.e. the new char benefitting from the old char's accumulated wealth and items - an abuse.
They could allow users to purchase more slots per server. Would still allow abuse of trade as purchasing additional separate accounts BUT would keep users from transferring directly from one char to another - they'd need a cooperative mule.
To sum up:
The SCS idea is the best one they've come up with yet to address inequities.
Codifex Maximus ~ In search of... a shorter sig.
The problem with DAOC is that it is nothing more than an analysis of EQ and trying to address the little nitpicking issues people had with it.
1. People didn't like waiting for ports in EQ. DAOC provided rentable horses.
2. There were problems with low level chars wearing hi level gear. DAOC wouldn't allow the lowbie to wear gear that was outside it's level range. I feel that if a char were personally successful due to real gains then they should be able to purchase the advanced gear - DAOC would not allow this.
3. There was the problem with gear never wearing out in EQ. DAOC solved this problem by having degradable gear. Not a bad idea really.
4. People complained that they were spending too much time getting their body back in EQ. DAOC used the concept of the headstone. Go to the headstone and pray. You get your exp back. No need to worry about lost gear at all - you already got it back. Where is the risk?
DAOC is not a bad game. It merely examined what people didn't like in EQ and tried to address them. In the end, it seemed that they handed them the game on a silver platter. At first you might be pleased! Indeed! But, you soon begin to realize that the game is not as challenging. There is no real risk and without risk there is no danger of failure. With no danger of failure there is no perceived success. Risk of failure is what makes gambling challenging - the potential rewards are great but skill has not alot to do with it though some. Risk of failure is what makes ANYTHING challenging.
Risk vs. Reward is the idea or vision of Verant. I agree with it. You risk much and through good planning and skill - not to mention a bit of luck you get the reward. If it's just handed to you on a silver platter then all you have to do is just sit there and wait for it to fall in your lap. No challenge... no risk... no fun.
Some of the good new ideas have gotten back into EQ but I hope Verant continues to try to maintain balance of play so it stays challenging.
YMMV
Don't know about physical location of servers. That is beyond the scope of the SCS or MCS issue. However, I do maintain that different servers have different economys and userbased societies - it has a direct bearing on which server different folks will want to play.
Codifex Maximus ~ In search of... a shorter sig.
...but seriously though, I very much hope that SCS will increase player-accountability. Heck, I very much hope that SCS will increase actual RP. With only one character to work with, perhaps people would be more willing to really *play* their characters and flesh out the Star Wars universe.
After all, what would ruin the experience of living on Tattoine more than being constantly subjected to conversations like this:
A) Psst! Hey, Bob, it's me. Al.
B) Bob? Dude, you're a CHICK!
A) Yeah, I know. I just finished watching "Bring it on" so I wanted to be a hot acrobat for a day.
B) Dude! You're hot! Let's go back to my hut.
A) Uh... I think I'll go make a Wookie instead. C Ya.
(some time later)
B) Dude, you are one HOT Wookie! Let's go back to my hut.
Yes...but did your other roles exist solely to support your primary role. For example, did you create a Cleric/Healer character in order to have someone whose sole reason for existence was to act as paramedic to your Warrior (and I'm not talking about the initial investment in time -- obviously, you had to spend some time getting the Healer's level up to a respectable point so he could meet all of your Warrior's needs -- not only routine healings but resurrections and such, as needed)?
The issue becomes particularly cloudy if your Cleric/Healer does not actually adventure with you and instead waits for you to visit him whenever you need something....or when you want to store some gold....or for any other reason that places the Cleric/Healer in a pure support/increased carrying capacity role.
Your Cleric/Healer has now destabilized the local economy. If you can get free healing from your Cleric/Healer, why would you ever go to any of the other Healers in town? (And even if you move money from one character to the other in order to simulate "paying" for the healing service, you haven't really paid for anything -- you've moved money from one storage location to another; both of which you own).
As a Gamemaster, I have always allowed my Player's to create and play multiple characters but I have never allowed them to create/play them simultaneously and I have never allowed one Player's character to support another of that same Player's characters. My reasons? Economics -- it is a lot easier to motivate players to take on adventures when they are strapped for cash. If Joe never had to seek assistance outside his own pack of PCs, he'd become fabulously wealthy and overly powerful -- not on the basis of his excellent skills but on the basis of exploiting a loop-hole in the game mechanics.
One positive in most face-to-face RPGs, at least, is that your character typically does not improve in skills when you are not actively playing them (I am aware that some RPG Systems support "off-time" skill advancement but have never seen it widely used after playing RPGs for over 20 years). Now consider MMORPGs where you do not even have to be present for your character to be gaining/improving skills. Now not only have you destabilized the local economy but you have also turned that "extra character" into a factory. Now...maybe "Sword Factory" is an interesting role to you...
With mules existing to solely support primary characters, why would anyone bother playing a character with a support role? Why would I bother to play a weaponsmith or other artisan when I know other players can create their own, tell them to study/learn their craft, leave them and come back to an accomplished character who can now provide a service to them for, essentially, free.
Most MMORPGs I have seen (and most MMORPG players I have talked to) are more about accumulation of wealth and power than they are about ROLE-playing. SWG, it seems, is actually attempting to provide a ROLE-playing experience -- you don't have to be a combatant to make a difference. Choosing to be a merchant, opening a shop and supplying other adventurers can be a fun role (I'm thinking about the barkeep or equipment supplier who can function as the local rumor mill here...) as long as "mule" characters are eliminated...if a Player has no reason to visit your store because he's got a pack of mules meeting his every need then there is no reason for you to create that merchant character.
Just my opinion...
codemonkey
Why does everyone always talk about this "Mule" crap when this subject is brought up? I've been into RPGs off and on since '81, and I can't remember a long running campaign EVER where I just used a single character. Why? I would periodically feel like PLAYING a different ROLE. That is, after all, the entire purpose of a ROLE PLAYING game....
People talk about mules because in many games these alternate characters, whose sole purpose is for a specialized method of getting around imposed gameplay rules, run rampant. The use of mules deteriorates the economy, the community and the role-play aspect of the game. This is due to anonymity, less player investment in the mule character, benefits from specialization that a "real" character can't hope to compete with and more.
Role-Play? While I understand where you're coming from, the sad truth is that in MMORPGs the majority of the player base does not role-play. Multiply the number of players that don't role-play by how many alternate and mule characters you have and the true role-players are swamped by a population that just doesn't give a frell about anyone else.
If anything, the lack of insta-anonymity, muling and increased character investment should only help to increase the level of role-play.
I hope. Not that I'm going to play it, simply because I don't really want to play a mega-blockbuster movie franchise game. Although the single-character-per-server idea tempts me to.
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.
First of all, let me say that I don't play any of these games (I prefer to waste my time reading slashdot and the like *ahem*), but that said....
I think what it means is "consistent with the rules/laws of the imaginary universe". If things aren't consistent, the game loses its appeal. (I guess)
-- It only takes 20 minutes for a liberal to become a conservative thanks to our new outpatient surgical procedure!