Slashdot Mirror
World of Warcraft AQ Gates Open!
Tayman writes "Wow...who didn't see this one coming? The players on the World of Warcraft Medivh server opened the gates to AQ. What happened next? The server crashed repeatedly. Why create content the servers can't handle?
The very first time I read about this patch, I knew the servers would crash. The more people who open the gates, the more angry customers Blizzard will have in my opinion. With 5million+ subscribers, you would think Blizzard would have the best servers/connection money can buy. Although, I'm sure it's more complicated than simply plugging in a few ram chips and faster processors though.
Most of the people involved in the raid are having a great time though. Could this be the most epic battle ever introduced to the mmorpg market? All signs point to yes. Let's see how long the mobs will respawn. Hopefully, the people of the Medivh server haven't seen anything yet.
Either way, I would hate to be a network admin for Blizzard atm. ^_^
Here are some pics of the event. Thanks go out to all of those who took these pics.
World of Warcraft AQ Pics Check out MMORPG Veteran to keep up with the events as they unfold." Update: 01/23 13:44 GMT by Z : Additionally, brandor wrote in with a link to some video of the event.
What AQ is supposed to be (for those that don't play WoW).
An expansion? Just a new dungeon? What's so special about it that it causes such server overload?
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
A good excuse to be a lazy farmer :)
Probable impossibilities are to be preferred to improbable possibilities.
Aristotele
Oh well. Medivh was my "home world" too, till I gave up WOW.
As the authentication servers crash...
Seriously though, this game looks like loads of fun but everyone I know that plays it has a total life-consuming addiction with it.
I'll climb onboard once it's free and less addicting than heroin.
--
Washington DC Metro? Fairfax Underground!
Every time one of my friend starts talking about WoW, or whenever I hear news like this, half of me says "wow, this is cool, I should play." And the other half of me says "thank God I that don't."
Slashdot: 24 hours behind every other site or your money back!
all these wbesites have to be virtually unreadable? Dark text on black background....What are they hiding?
If you mod me down, I *will* introduce you to my sister!
Please, it sounds like fun and a challenge. I played the game for 2 months, but had to quit, not enough time. It's a great game and I think the numbers show that, for once.
I can't understand one word of this slashdot post. Maybe there's hope for my sex life after all.
...and don't have to deal with buggy content, server crashes, mapserver disconnections, developer nerfs, and--stop laughing! Dammit, stop laughing already!
Oh well, at least I have a good time RPing and writing in it...
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
Hmm,
I just wanted to say 1 thing as a wow player.
1. To create content that not only is unplayable for the people that participate in it (how many times did medivh crash yesterday?) but also makes the game unplayable for us not participating in it really is very very crappy. Yesterday I had 172 mins wait in a queue before I could log on only to find the lag made the game unplayable and then all crashed and I gave up. It has been like this since christmas (more or less) and it really is unacceptable for a game 1 year old. I know that this was the last drop for me and will make me look for another game.
Either way, I would hate to be a network admin for Blizzard atm.
. php
I'd much rather be a Blizzard network admin than admins of the dead-or-dying site you linked to! At least Blizzard saw it coming! Sheesh. 07:30 CST and their server is already melting into a puddle.
Coral cache links:
http://www.karashur.net.nyud.net:8090/mmorpg/
http://www.karashur.net.nyud.net:8090/aq_wow_pics
What platform do they run on? Anyone know?
If google can get queries to span the whole web (granted highly paralizable) it seems like something could be done (given the profit) to make the blizzard servers keep working.
I am not surprised. I work for a Data Center/Hosting company. I have worked with automakers, clothing companies, and several other VERY large enterprises. Companys that do hundreds of MBPS of Internet traffic. They ALL struggle getting their hands around the load. That is a fact of life AND it is worse and will always be worse for companies like Blizzard. Load testing companies like Mercury have taken YEARS to develop systems that can reasonably simulate web load. Now imagine having to develop some way to reasonably simulate hundreds of THOUSANDS of users running a THICK client like WOW. Some using modems, some DSL, and some on college campuses. Some sitting there, fishing, fighting, chatting, etc... That my friend is a BITCH to simulate, thus the real world is the only way. I do feel for Blizzard. The customers who can't understand scaling/simulating that kind of traffic has lost site of the truly monumental task they have at hand.
My advice is this, get pissed if lasts more than a week. Else give 'em slack. As a way to compare, MOST large websites(like e-com) suffer on searches. Searches to 'full table scans' of product, product text, inventory etc... Imagine all the other dynamics WoW has vs your frigging browser.
you wouldnt know what AQ means, it means Ahn'Qiraj. It's a new 40-man raid 'dungeon'.
It requires gaining lots of resources for both sides (yes, a combined effort) and after that a long series of quests to open the gates.
"I did this cuz Linux gives me a woody"
This is the 40-man raid dungeon that is harder than the two others that are currently in game (MC and BWL). The elitist guild on my server (Guild: Vis Maior, Server: Bonechewer) has already cleared it on the test realm, and is just working on getting the gates open. We did the event where you get your reputation to neutral with the scarabs, but the server crashed when we originally tried to do the cutscene. They did it again yesterday, and had no issues, despite it being three weeks after we had hoped to do it.
But yeah, Bonechewer is a perfect example of how Blizzard is not applying to their customers. I don't give a flying f*ck about my class (rogue) sucking, and all the buffs I need. I care more about not having to wait in a 30 minute queue on a medium population server, active crashes, lag spikes, and chaos when it comes to doing instances.
Posts not to be taken literally. Almost everything is sarcasm.
What does he mean: "Let's see how long the mobs will respawn."
Does he not understand that AQ is an "instanced" dungeon and the mobs will exist for any group that enters?
Sounds more like a rant about Blizzard's servers. If I wanted to see that, I'd click on any random post in the WoW general forums...
Anyway, congratulations to the fine folks of Medivh. I wonder if Blizzard plans to keep adding this much content to their free patches, or if they're gonna start saving it up for the paid expansion at some point in the near future.
A) Kill Monster - Get exp points
B) Get money
C) Use A&B to "level up"
D) Use results of "level up" to do A&B faster!
All these games are (WoW, DaOC, STG, ect..) are big statistical simulations where the players do nothing but tweak numbers (player stats). I'd like to see a game where NOBODY get's to see ANY numeric values for ANYTHING. The only player indication should be health which should be some sort of description at the bottom of the page which says something like "you feel awful" or "the pain in my leg hurts like hell!".
No "levels" for the players to work toward. All you could know is that you used that cool two-handed sword to kill the troll and it was kinda easy....should you go attack that dragon? These games would REALLY be interesting then.
The game producers KNOW that numeric stats addict people because people naturally like to make systems efficient.
You'll need a gown, a towel, a satchel, and a pile of junk mail.
And, of course, an AQ dispenser.
paintball
Whoa. Generally, I take slashdot to be a lighthearted place to read interesting techish things. This post really does give me pause though. Not only does it sound like a mad World of Warcraft player's blog entry, it doesn't even explain the elements of what happened. If it wasn't for the fact that I play World of Warcraft I wouldn't have had a clue what he was on about.
I agree, Blizzard should have tested that part of the patch more specifically. Apparently, the gate was already opened on the test server (this is what I've heard from other players, I never did test the patch) which would leave me to suspect they never tested opening the gate very much.
I actually expected this crash.
Proceed with Format (Y/N)? Y
Wow...who didn't see this one coming? The webmaster(s) of Karashu.net decide to feature the opening of the gates to AQ on Slashdot. What happened next? ...
I guess it doesn't take an average slashdotter to finish off the paragraph. :)
Brilliant idea!!! I remember having a GM (specifically for Rifts, a Palladium RPG) in my paper RPG days who decided he'd take our character sheets and not let us see them. We had turned the game into such a hack and slash nightmare that he got sick of mastering the game for us. The second he took our character sheets and we stopped worrying about comparing our numbers... We started to ROLE PLAY so much more than role dice for 10 hours at a time and kicking tires on how much SDC (structural damage capacity for those not familiar with Palladium games) our armor could take.
All these games are (WoW, DaOC, STG, ect..) are big statistical simulations where the players do nothing but tweak numbers (player stats).
Agreed, the levelling up is usually just as exciting as filling in numbers in a spreadsheet, but there are some MMORPGs that try to do something new. You are even stuck on thinking that it has to be about combat and killing stuff. These people try to do something even more innovative, which might be why they haven't become as popular:
Puzzle Pirates, the first mmoarrrrrpg. You simulate combat by solving puzzles. Different players that crew the ship perform different puzzles, the better they do the more tokens the captain gets (movement, cannon shots, ship health..) to use when the sea battle commences.
A Tale in the Desert, a game that has NO combat. You "win" over other players by performing artworks, building pyramids, getting people to vote for you or performing cermonies and rituals, like for instance
"Have 20 charactars stand still and quietly observe the sunrise. If one speaks or moves away the ritual is destroyed."
or "Bury a large bag of money in the desert. Tell 10 other players where it is. If the bag remains for a week undisturbed you have passed the test of friendship. The other players get nothing for participating in the test. Unless they cheat, in which case they get the money."
You can get laws voted through that changes the whole game, and so on.
Both games are characterised by having more mature and social players than the hack and slash games, and a much larger percentage of female players.
I haven't played them myself though more than the demos. I stay away from most games and especially online games after shaking off a one year Everquest addiction 5 years ago.
Try them! Both have demos available, ATITD have a Linux client, PP both Linux and Mac (runs on all platforms that have Java actually).
Being bitter is drinking poison and hoping someone else will die
http://files.filefront.com/AhnQirajzip/;4654102 That's the video! Enjoy!
Are people really surprised that putting all lvl 60s on the server, (and the vast majority of players logged on), crashes it? I simply don't think MMoRPG servers are designed to handle load that way. On the other hand, I think it would be smart to create a type of failover set of computers to pick up the load of any computers on any server that were reaching fatal limits. A type of SWAT computer group to help back up the day-to-day servers.
I do security
They're being slashdotted. Not directly, of course, as nobody can just click to log in - but *everybody* is running over to the server and creating toons on it in order to go and see the new content. People had been warned that it was happening, everyone knew that this was going to end up being the fate of the first server to open the gates.
What can you do when 5+ million players all want to see the new content, but their own server's gates aren't open?
-- A mind is a terrible thing.
I dont really know what it is, so I should probably shutup.
But it looks like a Dark Age of Camelot: Trial of Atlantis rip of.
http://www.intellipool.se/ - Intellipool Network Monitor
These games are the biggest regret of my life. Seriously. I once spent over 1400 hours in one year playing one (back in the text days). That's seventy days, if you are counting.
I could have been getting good grades, chasing chicks, and figuring out what the "#$# to do with my life. I seriously messed up all three. Instead, I just had the coolest equipment in some worthless game. A couple people I know failed out of school entirely because of these games.
You can do better.
What the OP neglected to mention is that Blizzard already had to take extreme measures to prevent players from other servers from crowding into Medivh to rubberneck. They not only closed character creation on Medivh (and a crapload of other servers), but also ported characters less than level 30 out of the relevant zone in an effort to reduce crowding.
What's unclear from the story as posted is whether the fault here is solely Blizzard's fault or whether players with no affiliation with the Medivh server caused the overcrowding and subsequent crashes.
I'd like to thank Blizzard for making a server wide event that opens an instanced dungeon that 2% of the player base might get to. Sure, there is also a 20 man AQ instance, that maybe 8% of the player base will see. (It's on par with zul gurub). So instead of making another instance like Upper back rock spire that everyone can do, they continue to cater to the EQ fans who like 4-8 hour instnace runs on saturday nights.
Leeroy!!!!1
I played EVE for around 9 months. Independent for 1-2, then finally got back into Xanadu (I was Xanadu in Planetarion, but being a member in PA didn't guarantee EVE membership. I wouldn't have played EVE if not for Xan though.)
:(
EVE had a great concept, but it was too full of bugs and no real endgame other than mindless mining and farming NPCs in 0.0 space. There was supposed to be this rich commerce market, but the truth was that the commerce market crashed almost instantly with oversupply, and the only people who could make profit were those that controlled the rare Tech 2 blueprints. The problem is that CCP made it too easy for one player organization to control the T2 market. (Yes, I know that organization happened to be MY corporation. I disliked what happened nearly as much as the little guys that got stepped on, partly because I did spend 1-2 months as the "little guy".)
I got tired of the game, and while I loved Xanadu, the game mechanics caused us to fight internally way too often. I wound up leaving the game before it destroyed friendships. Unfortunately, not everyone was so smart - I don't recall the details but Xan tore itself in half a month or two later. I wasn't surprised.
I play Dark Age of Camelot now, which has a much simpler concept (bad in some ways) but a much more well thought out endgame (very good) and game mechanics that don't easily contribute to strife within guilds/corporations/whatever they may be called in a given game. The only bad thing is that none of my former Xan buddies play.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Pray tell, write some more, I can't seem to find any details...
The Shard Defense during the Bael'zharon story arc (first arc) was the most epic story battle ever where the players on the Thistledown server defended the 'Soul Crystal' housing the first uber boss of AC from not only other players, but the devs themselves.
The most epic 'raid' would have to be the Ayan Baqur Wars on the Darktide PVP server.
They crashed because they were the first to open the gates, and everyone on other realms wanted to see it, so they created accounts on the server. Would be nice if they spent the money to build a megaserver. Then they wouldn't worry about crashing the server, or lag, or even have to mess with separate realms. Just one huge server. You'd just crash your own computer as you try to render the 10s of thousands of people who crowded into this zone to watch the gates open.
If you have enjoyed morphine, you might like to try heroin now.
You're an immobile computer, remember?
I used to play WoW but I couldn't figure out what AQ was. I wish someone told me it was the bugs in Sithilus(sp) so I would care a lot less especially when there are rumours about a joint Alliance/Horde 100-man raid on Arthas.
I have noticed the comments on sex lives and "thank god, I don't play this game". Back in November (coincidently the 1 year anniversary of WoW's gold release), I ended up having 1.5 hours of free time per night. Do I spend it playing a RP game that never changes and never updates OR do I go and workout and do something for my health.
Play a video game or workout.
When you look at those options, do you really have a choice? Am I alone in this or am I the only geek who has seen the light?
ChozSun
ChozSun.com
How about killing a monster that is suposed to be killable, in a one time event with servier wide reprocussions, with cooperation from nearly all of the top guilds on a PVP server in a non-instanced zone? Not only did we have to battle the dragon that figuratively and literally instantly killed people, there was plenty of unfriendly pvp going on as well! Oh, and you get nothing for all of your trouble.
... I'm happy that I'm not involved with any MMORPGs any longer. It isn't just the redundant game-play and 1337-d00dz that I don't miss. It is the constant, high-pitched, whining/b!tching/moaning that comes from the player-base any time anything happens. Now /. is becoming infected with the feckless whining of game forums. Great. Can't we get back to rational and interesting discussions about Microsoft and the RIAA?
More pics: http://photobucket.com/albums/f324/Heldarcina/
According to IANA, anyway. Their servers crash because they "open their doors" to 1,000-odd people? Pathetic.
'scuse my ignorance (and my lack of recent WoW events, I quitted after 3 months and finding the game rather lame), but why is this important? I know, a lot of people see WoW as the center of their world, but are we being the witnesses of some great development in online gaming here? DAoC had raids with 100+ people before, so I'd vote no. Server-wide organization and cooperation has also been here before, so that's no first-one either.
So the question, what's special about it?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I had the same experience reading his post. I think he was trying to explain but I didn't understand a word he said.
Perhaps there's room in the industry for a company that specializes in MMORPG server side coding and the unique problems that arise therein. Hmm...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
How hard is it to get into a High-Level raid guild in WOW? Is it like in the orginal Everquest where it got almost impossible because the gear/content you needed to get into the guild was almost impossible to get into without having a large guild, or in WoW all you really need to be is level 60 and high playtime
There's a lot more to it that stats.
Stats are only important for 2 things:
- Bigger stats open up new challenges (since beter stats = beter attack and defense), so you can see new places and fight new monsters
- Bragging rights
One does not spend 5 hours killing Purple Dragons of Death just to get your level from 130 to 135, one does it because:
- A level 135 can defeat the guardian of the magic cave of Zarathor (and go kill Pink Dragons of Ice), while a 130 can't
- You get to brag to your teammates you're now 135
A bigger pull that stats are items. It's the satisfaction of getting those "Baby Pink Dragon of Ice Socks" (+5 to enchanting, glows pink) that you can only found at the very deepest levels of the Zarathor cave that makes your day.
An of course there's always yet another item that requires yet a higher level ("Gloves of Houling Night Witch Hair - +15 health, +8 strength)
The wife and I both quit WoW about 2 weeks ago. I'd say that we are much happier without it. We are more relaxed and get a lot more accomplished in our lives.
MMORPGs in general, and WoW in particular, have a way of slowly sucking you into their world and chewing up ever increasing amounts of your time. It's human nature to want your virtual character to grow stronger and do well. But WoW is a game of timesinks. You invest massive amounts of time or you don't progress. In the end you may find it feels more like a vaguely exciting 2nd job.
My advice: if you are playing WoW more than 10 hours a week, give it up for a month and see if you don't feel a lot better.
Because of all the damn raids. I do not want to sit and try to get a 15 man raid together to go to UBRS much less the time it takes to get a 40 Man together for one of the big dungeons.
Blizzard lost me as a customer as soon as I finished the last 5 man casual quest. Enough with the dungeons that take 8 hours to complete. I don't have that kind of time, I have a job and a wife. All i see coming down the line is patches adding more RAID content. SO I moved on.
Playing EVE now. What I like most about it, other than it being completely different than WOW, is that the play experience is dictated by me. I can be as indepth as I want, sinking hours upon hours into it at my leisure, or just login every now and then to check my skill training. Which makes it much more accessable to me during the week while I work, just login for a quick 30 minute to an hour fix and actually still come away feeling like I accomplished something.
Its also a game that involves some patience and time-management too, since all skills are learned in real time (even while not playing). The end result is as long as I choose carefully what skills to advance there is no way to literally be left behind training wise. Money still takes some grinding but not like it does in WoW.
A fun MMORPG without so much tedious upkeep.
"If I were bound by all laws everywhere I'm sure I would have committed a capital crime somewhere."
1) You have to invest a tremendous amount of time doing very boring tasks just to get a half-decent ship (100s of hours moving mined minerals from your cargo hold to an external container - during asteroid minig).
2) Traveling takes a long time and it's only interesting the first 1/2h you play the game.
3) The most interesting parts of the EVE universe (0.0 space) is fully PvP enabled and in practice controled by groups of corporations (corporations in EVE = guilds in other MMORPGs), know as alliances, which are mostly composed of those corporations that got there first. You'll be hard pressed to go there without getting your ship blown up (possibly making you loose the equivalent of many hours worth of mining asteroids)
After playing EVE online for many months i more or less came to the conclusion that the game pretty much consisted of time-sinks - ways of making you spend time without it actually being fun - and left (even though i had amassed a lot of virtual wealth in that game).
WoW is taking over Battleon? Someone notify Twilly! Stat!
What sense does it make to roll a new character on the Medivh server so you can see the new content? You have to be lvl 60 and nicely equipped before you can even stand a chance in AQ. By the time you new character reaches 60 the server you were on will have its gates open as well.
Who is this noob anyway?
Why, yes you did! That was quite an accomplishment! Never been done before! You have validated your existance and have made your mamma proud! I believe a Nobel nomination is in your future! You are quite special, and I am proud to be a member of the same forum as you! If I were you, I'd bet the lottery tonigh, because you are just unbelievably fortunate and lucky, leading a charmed life. That was very auspicious and with your abilities I see nothing but good things happening to you!
I am so envious. It must be great to be you.
Mod down people who tell people how to mod in their sigs
So I thought with all that free time i'd get around to coding that game I always wanted to create or studying more for my certification but in the end I think I just watched TV instead.
"Thanks to the remote control I have the attention span of a gerbil."
I feel kinda the same as most other people here. I love games, and I know a ton of people that love WoW, so sometimes I feel like playing it, but I am also glad that I don't. While I like the concept of MMORPGs, I feel that the whole leveling thing is best left to a single-player rpg, like the soon-to-be-realeased PS2 game Valkyrie Profile Silmeria, and the rerelease of the original on the PSP. In SP leveling rpgs, your incentive is only to beat the game (and in good rpgs this means you don't have to spend hours running around for random battles). Multiplayer RPGs should be more focused on the roleplayng and the economy, or simulated socioeconomic interaction. Face of Mankind (fomportal.com) is in open beta and looks like it's trying this idea, I might look into EVE Online, and STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl is going for an interesting fps/rpg combo as well (no leveling or stats but a trade economy and lots of customization and interaction beyond shooting). For someone who wants a more realistic (i.e. wounding, aiming, etc.) fps, look for Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth on Xbox (and hopefully PC someday...). I usually only buy about the four of five of the best or better games a year, so that I can play a good amount, without playing all the time or never finishing anything, but right now MMOs are just not what I am looking for. I'll wait till the genre matures.
The 'Net is a waste of time, and that's exactly what's right about it. - William Gibson
anyone know if you can purchase *and* download wow online? i am too lazy to go to the store for anything other than beer and smokes.
A 40 man raid dungeon is an area of the game that an organized group of people (raid) can enter to play without the area being accessible to the general population (WoW calls them instance dungeons). The article is about a new one that was just released, and is much harder than the others. There was a per server build up for this that one server completed first, then died in the storm of people who wanted to go see it.
Slashdot: Where anecdotes and generalizations can be freely substituted for facts, logic, or intelligence
If your server has a three hour wait period, use one of the 20+ others. Alternatively, turn off the game and play something else.
Ok, seriously, what exactly motivates all these "I'm so glad I don't play MMOs" comments? Are we supposed to pat you on the back for avoiding the big bad mmo?
Or its is some strang kind of elitism, "Well I may play games, but least I don't play those dirty MMOs." I know people that play console games MORE than I play WoW (more hours a day that is) and yet people always blab about "MMO addiction." NEWS FLASH, any form of entertainment can be addicting, but its easier to marganalize people with a form you don't particularly like. But tell me, which is "worse" spedning 4 hours in from of the tube with a controller in a completely self absorbed activity, or spending 4 hours in an MMO where you actually can speak and interact with actual people.
So for all the "I'm so glad I avoid MMOs" people, get over yourself and put your hypocracy where its wanted.
Had you spent the 1400 hours chasing chicks, what do you think you might have had to show for it? Other than VD or a seriously brused ego?
Spend 1400 hours chasing chicks, and you're bound to get really good at it! Then you can write a book on the subject and make tons of money off of geeks who get tired of playing World of Warcraft, but who can't talk to a girl to save their lives.
People always go ballistic at the slightest interruption. Often the symptoms are suspiciously like withdrawal symptoms in an addict. No surprise there.
Another thing to consider is that WoW has been around for a little over a year. It is the highest player volume online game ever as far as I know. Even higher than the Asian games like Lineage that have a couple million subscribers. In addition, MMOGs are a relatively new market, whereas the financial sector has been around for a very long time and it has been online for considerably longer.
I quit WoW several months ago and am quite happy that I did, but not playing gives me the clarity to see that they are not doing so badly as far as server stability, and that this is a momentary bug that will be addressed. It is not conclusive proof that Blizzard is a Monopoly of Network Dumbasses.
Its awesome as you do well solving the puzzle character's from street fighter beat the crap out of each other. Its tetris on crack
I know this was a joke, but I think there is a realistic reason for the "War Effort". In any MMORPG, since game items do not have any inherent value, and can be created infinitely, the economy eventually suffers. Money becomes more prevalent and as new items are found, less valuable. In order to control the cheapness and overabundance of items, they come up with ways for items to be taken out of the game, thereby returning value to items, and making 60's feel like their Hackmaster +5 is still worth it. This started in WoW with the cloth faction quests, and progressed to rid servers of near billions of items. Some servers took it more seriously than others, but essentially it has succeeded. Many of the items in the war effort have greatly increased in price, when beforehand they had nearly bottomed out.
Microsoft Sucks, F/OSS Rocks. I get mod points now right?
Big media wants people to watch more TV. Or read newspapers. Or magazines. Not play games on the computer with friends who's jobs have taken them thousands of miles away across the country (or world).
Why report stories about TV addiction or other such things? Why not report it instead about games. If they're lucky and get a few to quit, that's probably more TV addicts in a few years for them anyway.
Slashdot Patriotism: We Support our Dupes!
Gnomeregan (GMR) Uldaman (ULD)
No point in trying. The minute he got to the part about rogues needing a buff, you can tell he's full of shit six ways from sunday.
I've played a rogue for six months. They in no way need a buff. Warriors need a minor nerf on overpower and paladins need a bubble nerf now that they can actually do something besides be invincible (clarifications: Overpower is an attack warriors can use after the enemy dodging that does immense damage. Based on the name and description, it should proc off of block and parry, not dodge and miss. "bubble" refers to a Paladin's multiple ways of being temporarily invincible).
Other than that? Rogues rule the roost. Mages are nothing to a dagger rogue, priests have one shot at saving themselves from a rogue, and then it's game over. A warlock without his succubus is fair game, and a warlock with one is just a matter of waiting until the right time to hit him. I hate using he WoW cliche "learn2play," but it really applies to the grandparent. If your a rogue, and you're getting pwned by other classes, you're not picking your fights properly.
With my addiction to Nethack, I have no time for WoW!
As someone who spends alot of time playing WOW, I often wonder what technology is being employed by these realm servers. Can anyone out there provide some insight?
Silly boy. That's now why the wrold went down. Chuck Norris roundhouse kicked the server because people in the game wouldn't shut up about him.
Georgia Tech, the leader in Chia(tm) technology.
no news there then!
I find it very depressing that this post is indicative of the slashdot community. Events in fictitious worlds... Alas, I am surrounded by kids.
Our greatest enemy is neither a single man, nor is it a nation, it is, as it has always been, our own greed.
This is the very reason I quit just yesterday. Blizzard has moved to doing all powerhouse raid crap and left the rest of the game to languish. So about 2% of the pschyos willing to play the same content over and over again for 5 hours or more each day are the only ones enjoying the end game anymore. To add insult to injury, they expect the rest of the people playing to help those top 2% along AND destroy the servers in the process. What started as a great game as sunk into a huge fucking mess.
*Fortitudo, aequitas, fidelitas.*
Also serving static web content is trivial compared to tracking the state of 5 million clients and letting them see each others in real time is so far beyond web hosting that it is laughable.
I worked at video game companies (Turbine) and I worked at some of IBM's large server farms (Poughkeepsie, Southbury) doing performance balancing. As far as software goes I have to say video games server technology makes web content delivery look like the stone age. The only thing that even compares in complexity is when IBM hosted the Olympic coverage. Trying to compare simple web content to a system where clients are all making updates to each others environments in real time is impossible.
I hate it when the Wow server's crash, but I have had my ego battered by what the guys at Blizzard have managed to do. They have done some great work and I am curious to see other game companies surpass the work Blizzard has done.
Nothing here is trivial. If it was it would have been done right the first time.
Now, if I were a genius like Steve Jobs or something, my ideas would be tremendously successful, but as it is, they are only slightly successful, but as a result I have a lot more money to throw around, paid off all my credit card bills in no time. I still have a subscription to WoW, and my wife plays with her younger siblings sometimes, I stopped playing the instant I reached level 40, it's still waiting there, beckoning to me, but I just haven't had *any* time since I started my working frenzy a few months ago. I really do think it would be fun to get back on and buy my mount and stuff, but I don't see that happening anytime soon.
And if you tell yourself, "well who am I working for? I don't have any JOBS to do..." you are only making excuses. You work for yourself, or for the community. I write open source software when I don't have anything to do (yet in all cases, my open source projects have been components of my own projects). When it's done, I figure out how to make money with it (in all cases, by selling the entire thing to someone who could put it to better use than I). Point I'm making is as long as you are doing SOMETHING constructive, you are benefitting yourself more than you know. The open source stuff I have released has brought job offers to me, which is reason enough to do this, although I turned down the job offers because my goal is to be financially independent, creating the things I want to create, never asking myself who was going to buy them (allthough, like I said, someone always buys them).
I understand that working all the time will drive some people crazy, I have tried this off and on over the last few years, but trust me, the first time you sell something you created it all becomes worthwhile. Someone I know, who runs his own successful business, once told me that all the successful people he knew had one thing in common; they were workaholics.
I guess I'm a "casual" WoW player, at least in comparison to others here (which might be like saying that one is a 'casual' junkie, in relation to the people in the lobby of a detox facility), but I find the jargon used in chat very confusing. It's not exactly transparent -- the acronyms mostly make sense, it doesn't take a genius to figure most of them out -- but there are some times when I wish there was a dictionary. Perhaps someone has created one, somewhere.
I'm posting this in response to your post, because I saw you use the word "nerf," which I've now seen a bunch of times and can't figure out. I understand it refers to a change in the game by the developer that adversely impacts a person's character...? It's not something like an acronym where the meaning can be easily backed out of the word.
Anyway, more generally my point is just that I don't think experienced players are aware of how steep the 'social learning curve' is for new players. Given the emphasis on teamwork in WoW in particular, this is a bit off-putting when you're new.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
They have (now or over the course of release) 5+ million subscribers.
Maybe, just maybe, this is "good enough", and they have no reason to put more money in because they have 5 MILLION SUBSCRIBERS with the current implimentation.
Business is about maximizing profit. Maybe they _think_ that this is the _best_ way to run the business. Perhaps they did the math and found they are at the peak of investment vs. return. If they put more money in, they don't linearly (or exponentially) get more subscribers, so they are happy... VERY HAPPY.
Sucks for the gamer, but if you really hate it, show your vote by canceling your account.
Modesty is one of life's greatest attributes
UBRS is simply too easy and requires very little if any strategy. You don't need ts/vent to beat it, you just need coordination and knowledge of how a certain boss fight goes. UBRS was pathetically easy, all you have are generic mobs that hit hard and aggro based on the global rules of teh game.
You basically have tanks grab aggro and take damage, the damage dealers do their part, and the healers heal. Mobs rarely if ever have any special abilities. You can use that strategy and clear the entire zone.
MC is somewhat similarily boring and easy but it still requires some coordination and has more special npc moves and aggro effects. It's clear that blizzard is moving away from that simplicity in all new raid dungeons whether its 10, 20, or 40 man.
Hmmm... Pie...
I've played several MMORPG's, and WoW is unfortunately the worst. The reason is that it uses TCP, instead of UDP like the others (Everquest, CoH, and so on).
:)
:)
With TCP, one dropped packet, and your connection lags out until the packet can be regenerated -- typically on the order of several seconds. More than one dropped packet every minute or so, and your game becomes unplayable. Have fun playing on a wireless connection or oversubscribed residential cable/DSL line!
I would love it if Blizzard would put some effort into making their network connection reliable under load. IMO, it is one of the few things Everquest got right. Due to the game's age, it was designed for people playing on analog modems, and as a result, its connection dropout-tolerance is quite robust.
[SCTP would be the best of both worlds, but unfortunately, it is still a pipe dream, and I'll save that rant for another day.]
I can often tell my line has hiccuped when my partner shouts "Oh crap" as his WoW screen freezes, even though my Web browsing and Internet radio playing continues on just fine for me
Dr. Demento On The 'Net!
"With 5million+ subscribers, you would think Blizzard would have the best servers/connection money can buy."
If they had such good servers, my Diablo II game wouldn't have server lag everytime a decently-powerful monster comes around. I can either give it all my bandwidth, or just a tad and leave azureus running, and it still lags. No, it's not packet choke, because my ping to google (after 400 simultaneous packets) shows a steady 50ms response.
I understand if they took Battle.net servers and dedicated them to WoW, but if WoW is lagging too, they need to readjust their budget.
"I'm a well-wisher, in that I don't wish you any specific harm."
5 million clients is utterly misleading. No server is handling more than a few tens of thousands, if that - concurrently, far fewer. And they're usually affecting a few hundred other clients at any given moment in time (and again, at any moment in time, usually far fewer).
Also I'd hestitate to describe fully transactional websites with secure communications through to multiple back-end systems, including inventory, payment and fulfillment "static web content".
But that's ok. You defend them; I'll continue to keep multi-billion businesses afloat.
(incidentally, we do get 5m hits a day. on one of our websites. if you mean unique visitors, then yes, blizzard get more. although I suspect still fewer than we get across all 45 of our websites. but that's just multiple brands, they all connect through to the same back-end inventory system)
It's quite simple, really.
When you are playing these games for such a long time you start to recognize the pattern involved. The game is *designed* to take up as much of your time as possible in order to extract the most money out of my wallet. No game out there is as profitable as WoW.
But that's not the worst. The worst is that when you click to sign into your character, you have that sinking feeling in your stomach that you could be doing something better to enrich your existence on this Earth. You could be volunteering, you could be putting in extra time with your family, you could be going to the gym and get in the best shape of your life (what I did).
I'm still a gamer to the core. And without WoW I have SO MUCH MORE TIME for more games than ever before. So this isn't about gaming versus real life...I will never give up gaming, and I get to enjoy more of it and remain a happier and healthier human being than I ever was during those 8 months I was addicted to WoW.
I hear your point, but I don't think everyone that plays WoW ends up being a high end raider.
I play MMOs about 2 hours a night on average, with longer periods on the weekend. I don't watch TV at all and I only watch a couple movies a month. I do read books and probably spend almost the same amount of time reading as I do playing.
The high end raids don't particularly interest me. I find them kind of annoying and way to time consuming in relation to the rewards. After having been level 60 for awhile on WoW I thought it was time to move up to high end raiding, a few ZG runs kind of made me feel that this type of play isn't just for me. I switched games to another MMO where I can have fun as a casual player again. I'm sure when I hit whatever point in the game the time sinks hit hard, I'll move on again.
I love exploring the vast worlds in MMOs, I hate repetitive grinding of the same content.
Sometimes my arms bend back.
Gnomeregan - gnome or gnomer
Uldaman - uld or ulda
Maraudon - mara
Wailing Caverns - WC
Ragefire Chasm - RFC (horde only...and personally I find RFC/RFD/RFK to be confusing sometimes, but that's the names people use)
warlocks pwn rouges. Felhunter with paranoia....fear...curse...fear...shadow bolt...fear and repeat until dead rouge.
I have been playing in a MUD for 6 years now (Played: 5834 hours says the "score" command, you do the math), but (except for the first few months or so) it is idle time. What I *love* about the MUD is that you can have it in the background while doing other stuff and never miss anything. I have a trigger to beep whenever anyone sends me a privmsg and I get back there and talk to them for a bit (no different than an IM client, really). I don't go to quests and stuff if I don't have loads of time (honestly, that's almost never, since I prefer to spend my time elsewhere).
Most importantly though, the MUD is lower in my priority list, below going out, reading wikipedia/slashdot/digg/the back of a juice box and studying (in that order, unfortunately). This way I almost never get bored (almost, MUDs are dying these days) and I don't miss out on my other activities to MUD.
My cousin plays WoW, and he is totally addicted to it. I can understand how he spends all day on a MMORPG since I've done that at some point, but I wouldn't play WoW even if it was free. Besides, you can write bots for the MUD to do anything you want, and as a programmer that's a huge advantage of MUDs.
Send email from the afterlife! Write your e-will at Dead Man's Switch.
The single player RPG Oblivion is sorta doing away with levels and experience points. http://www.elderscrolls.com/games/oblivion_overvie w.htm
:)
Instead of gaining points and then suddenly getting better at everything once you reach a certain number. You will only get better at things you actually use.
So if you use your sword a lot, you will get better at it gradually over time. and so on with other skills.
I really like the idea and look forward to playing the game.
I don't have time to dedicate to MMO's so I prefer single player games
My cat's breath smells like cat food.
Obviously you are alliance or you would have not forgoten about:
RFC, Ragefire Chasm
and the following do get abriviated but are so unpopular that they seldom get named:
Mara, Maraudon
Ulada, Uladaman
GPLv2: I want my rights, I want my phone call! DRM: What use is a phone call, if you are unable to speak?
If they would the game would be stable. Google handle much more data traffic than WoW yet I haven't seen the service crash or become unusable even once and I'm on the web everyday (I don't say it hasn't just that it must be REALLY rare cause I never even have heard of it). WoW has logging issues, server stability issues since the begginning none of which has ever been addressed. Every patch they release don't solve bug they change bugs. I am ready to bet that this is included in their business model. Some guy somewhere researched how many downtime their player are able to endure before resigning their subscribtion and they are going to do their best so this downtime (via in-game bugs, logging issues, server overloads...) remain. The more downtime the longer it takes to achieve our goal in the game the longer the subscribtion goes.
Blizzard has NO interest in changing the situation, no incentive, no reason and they wont.
This issue isn't about elitism or hypocrisy, it's that you rarely play WoW for 4 hours -- that's a "minimal" session.
No other form of computer game that I've seen has the power to suck your time away. The sheer amount of life that game sucks away from you is sickening when you really start to think about it (90+ hours to reach level 60).
-Stu
Other than using Savvis for bandwidth, I'm not sure how many other details have been revealed.
It would be interesting to know if they're using their own database system or if they ended up using a 3rd party product such as Oracle or MySQL.
Fear and seduce should both not be an issue - get 24 hks (say 5 runs in WSG if you're on defense, 2 at most on offense) and get your anti-fear trinket. Now, a warlock loses their effective fear/seduce against you, and a mage's polymorph is also useless. The second fear is on diminishing returns, even if WOTF or the trinket broke the first. If you're undead, a warlock has one 25% duration fear (2 seconds tops), with one second tops on the first two. With BOE drop trinkets, it's actually possible to completely cancel three fears in a row as an undead rogue, then diminishing returns makes you fear-immune for two minutes. Master of deception cancels paranoia (except on a human warlock, much less if they hit perception), and even with paranoia, they can't see an equal level rogue approaching from behind (felhunter usually faces the same way as the warlock, too). Ambush, one tick, backstab. Right there, at level 60 with a good dagger, you have 3000 damage - 5000 possible if both get good crits and you have a REALLy good dagger.
Point comes down: A rogue is designed to come out of nowhere and attack. You get the backside twoshot, trinket away fear or seduction, blow a couple cooldowns. Warlocks are one of the harder fights for a rogue, but warlocks do not dominate at all - it's fairly well balanced, usually comming down to who gets the aggression first. The only classes that completely dominate rogues are hunters (flare - however, I've seen rather few hunters smart enough to stand on their flares) and warriors (overpower. Without overpower, it's a pretty even fight, mainly favoring the warrior when both are very well equipped - warrior armor scales better than rogue DPS)
"Most of the people involved in the raid are having a great time though. Could this be the most epic battle ever introduced to the mmorpg market? All signs point to yes."
;) Now that's epic.
Apparently the submitter is utterly clueless about MMOGs in general. A bunch of big mobs in a dungeon somewhere isn't very epic. It's been done to death.
Not to mention, if you want to throw numbers about (from what I understand, it's some sort of 'forty-man' dungeon)... Go look at EQ1. Go look at DAoC. Forty people isn't epic, it's a bloody empty village.
Call me when you have 180 people fighting and dying against a single mob for an hour and a half.
They did nerf the paladin bubble- if you are bubbled you get a one minute debuff, similar to Weakened Soul, that prevents you from being bubbled during the duration. So yes, they can still bubble, but they can no longer use the self-bubble and then immediately the Blessing of Protection for two bubbles in a row.
That may not be enough (one bubble still lasts 10 seconds, which is an eternity in PvP) but it was a nerf.
But Blizzard have locked 20 or so servers so that new players can't create characters.
They're citing the reason as "alleviating load so they can fix latency problems".
What it really means is that people who've finally paid up to play don't get to log on. Pretty nasty stuff.
I am government man, come from the government. The government has sent me. -- G.I.R.
If you have the chance, please read my update to this "issue".
AQ Pics
Take care,
Tayman
The Scepter of the Shifting Sands has been reassembled and the War has begun. The gates are open and the forgotten horrors of Ahn'Qiraj have been unleashed upon the world once more. This epic event is currently taking place on every server with varied progress. The North American Medivh server takes the first place ribbon by gathering the requisite number of supplies for the War effort and completing an epic quest line that takes a small handful of brave heroes to the four corners and back. Watch rare footage and read about the entire adventure chronicled by some of the top guilds of Azeroth in the latest issue of Sprawl's Scrawl.
http://sprawl.doesntexist.com/
Before you go off thinking I'm some digital crack addicted WoW player who has over 2000 hours logged into the game, I don't play the game. I enjoy MMO's but I hate WoW.
People are still fucking shocked that a server crashed? Guess what, the game has been out for over 1.2 years and Blizzard has yet and will probably never fix their colosal fuckup. Think about it, they made good profit on pretty much all previous franchises, then when we want ya know, a sequel to one of the best RTS games from a fucking decade ago, almost, we get "World of Warcraft".
That's great, just what the fucking MMO industry needs, another god damn elven orc sword and shield medievil fantasy MMO. Wow, never seen that before (UO I'm looking at you...eight fucking years ago). Hell just now they are finally coming out soon with D&D Online and Middle Earth Online mmo's. I love a good romp through swords and magic as much as the next guy but when the MMO market is dominated by not just one game (WoW) but one genre, it fucking sucks.
And that is all I hear about in MMO news, WoW this and WoW that. Cool you got 5 million people playing. You know for a god damn fact at $15 USD (change currency depending on country) per month, at 5 million people, Blizzard more than makes enough to come up with a solution to fix a god damn server issue. I once wanted to try WoW, and by now I have, but ya know y ou can't ever really read about it, cause most offical and fan made forums are people just bitching about the downtimes (which I can agree with but it gets tedious ya know) and lag and framerates.
If your MMO can't handle a vast majority of a servers population in a single area, fucking UPGRADE. Come up with a new solution. I hate to use Eve Online as an example since I disliked the tradeskills in the game but they've done a great deal in compression and data transmission. One large server spread out in clusters that so far has held over 20,000 concurrent logins at one given time. That's what like 5 WoW servers? (actual servers in the list not PC's running a particular server).
I too like to see a variety of news on /. it's my god damn homepage. I love seeing shit from space exploration to the latest on the RIAA fucking up day to day life to even game news. But come on, do we really need some half assed submission about a server for a game that really is just a god damn internet penis measuring contest? Thats what WoW is in the end, who wasted enough time to grind and treadmill their way to the level cap, then get the best gear, then the money for the best mount or whatever the personal transportation is (1000 gold if I recall right, or close too it). That's great, you enjoy it? Sure you got the right too but jesus christ on a fucking saltine cracker with Sav Way bought cheese, don't deny it's a fucking eDick measuring contest. It's like walking into an Apple store and watching two iPod owners whip out their storage screens to see whos iPod is bigger in HDD space.
Yea, its a rant. Deal with it. If you can't, go wait five hours in your queue line to join a server.
Aw Frell this
Yeh, but Europe is irrelevant. (That is a _joke_.)
^_^
Mod down people who tell people how to mod in their sigs
Damn children.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
Too many sites abuse stylesheets to lock the font into a specific size which MSIE correctly doesn't not scale (Firefox and opera are broken here)
And a note to the kids: Stop abusing you mod abilities.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
I played wow to get in and play with all of my friends in a fun game online. And yes wow is probably the most fun game that i have ever played. Not because of the content but coz of the pplz.
So, why do I hate wow? Because All of my friends have raids scheduled 6 days a week. So the only way i can see them is to log on. Gone are the days of, hey guys lets go catch a movie, Or how bout we go rockclimbing after work. nope. Same response every time. Sorry man, gotta raid.
People who play console games, watch tv arent incapacitated for 4+ hours straight. Try calling some1 who is watching tv, usually they will talk to you, and you can convince them to do something. Not so for the wow addict.
So i say avoiding games where you have to play for 4+ hours straight is a good thing. *pat on the back* for all those who quit wow/evercrack.
You are right I was grandstanding on my 5 million claim and I apologize for using a cheap shot. And you may be right that major web stores are more complex than "static content", but web servers are well understood and have relatively painless load balancing these days.
No Warcraft server serves 5 million clients, but I am guessing your server farm also uses a load balancer that distributes requests across dozens of servers which then persist to a set of back-end database servers. (or a single powerful blade server with high bandwidth storage subsystem behind it) So you could say that your severs only handle a few thousand request at a time.
Now if you consider that each user in Wow is making multiple transactions per second then you realize that online games are transaction monsters. There is no way that a single server can handle tens of thousands of clients. I remember when we first ran AC on a big honking UNIX box (This is way back before Turbine's Microsoft partnership) we were shocked how a few hundred clients could bring a serious server to its knees.
Also in the game I note a particular vendor wandering northward from one town to another. If a friends then runs along the road several minutes later he will find the vender has been moving the entire time. This suggests that the 10s of thousands of NPCs in each zone have much of the same state as a player. (not to mention having pathfinding, tactical AI, etc.)
To serve the "game" blizzard seems to have realm servers, authentication servers, billing servers, database servers, instance zone servers, chat servers, and maybe even a big-brother servers to watch for and aggregate bot/cheat behavior.
Each virtual world is coordinated by a realm server but clients are probably farmed out to pools of machines that each serve separate zones within the game world. Unfortunately these zones have so much state that makes it slow to dynamically load up additional machines to meet increased demand in a particular zone. Also the amount of data to be coordinated between servers means adding another server to a zone will only have a logarithmic improvement on performance If there are already five machines serving ironforge and their network traffic is maxed out you aren't going to improve performance by adding a sixth server.
This is one of the reasons why Wow has the weakness of zone overpopulation. Hot zones like Ironforge or Ogrimaar stress a set of zone servers unduly. Dynamic zone sizing might improve the population issue but then determining which server owns a particular zone area becomes difficult and finding other servers to negotiate client transfer becomes painful. I think there is a reason most of the larger MMOs have been moving to zone style server coverage. And zone coverage is most brittle when an even causes thousands of players to congregate to a single region of the game world (i.e. the current war efforts).
Hope this helps you understand some of performance issues and complexity of these MMO systems. I definitely am not belittling what you do. Running a major site is HARD work, but even several years ago MMO servers were mindblowingly complex and today they are probably more complicated by far. Also unlike web services which has become fairly well understood these games are the first to reach these points and as forerunners they have no "common solutions" to fall back on. These guys are paving the way for others (or would be if they would give some talks on their proprietary technologies. *heh*)
~Z
Somewhat amusing, today, 06.28.05 Kaplan (lead dev) has an article on /. where he talks about the next big instance. I find it very 'middle of the road' for MMORPG companies to get big and popular and simply forget about thier customer base. EQ did it, CoH has done it (DDO will never get the chance, that game is presently a trainwreck) and WoW is following along.
Now that's a nice reply.
Points taken on board. Thank you.