The Problem of Shards, Servers, and Queues In MMOs

An editorial at GamesIndustry takes a look at a couple of problems many MMOs have failed to solve as the genre has evolved over the last decade: log-in queues and a split player base. The most recent example is Aion, which launched in Europe and North America a few weeks ago. Players on some of the game's servers had to deal with lengthy queues until enough people left the starting areas and spread throughout the game. To NCSoft's credit, the queues are mostly gone already, and it wasn't simply launching with too few servers that was the problem (nor was simply launching more servers a perfect solution, as Warhammer proved). In fact, several servers had no queues at all, but many players had set their sights on the more popular ones — a problem facing other MMOs as well. At this point, it becomes a matter of programming — how can the developers for these MMOs build the networking aspect of the game such that more hardware can easily be allocated when it's needed, and also make it easier for people to play together without the restriction of different shards or servers? EVE Online has done well with a single game universe, but it's not clear how far that model can scale upwards.

Comments

Champions did it too

[Locklear93]

Champions Online has also launched with a single world architecture. Each zone has multiple instances, dividing the population in dozens of copies of each region, across which players can freely move if they wish to do so. Zones with friends, supergroup (guild members), and party members have priority, of course. These instances CAN fill, but if they do--just get your friends and all go to a new one.

Re:Champions did it too

[Nylathotep]

the complication is its impossible to meet people because they are scattered amongst a hundred shards. Multiply it by the different zones and you never see the same people. Add to it the drop in drop out nature of grouping and the social aspect suffers. Having seperate servers like WoW have their own issues with having friends who play but are not on your server, but at least the people who are on the server you see day in and out.

I'm kinda stalled at 29 because of the group instances, but I don't know people. I don't even know where to go for lfg grouping (ala IF). The built in lfg tool seems to be ignored, to the point that when I tried it, trying to send a message to the people in the list showed noone was online. Maybe they were on an alt, I don't know. You would think the interface would send the message to the currently online character.

I suppose I could join a random supergroup recruiting but I like to actually meet people before joining a group.

Re:Champions did it too

[cloricus]

Close, though a little inaccurate.

The solar maximum is still unknown for EVE as Jita has yet to push it to its limits. Systems on reinforced 'supernodes' can handle 1,500+ players with little to no lag at all. Those same servers have been able to sustain hours of fleet combat involving over two thousand players with acceptable lag (10 seconds to 2-10 minutes on module activation). Normal nodes that haven't been reinforced can handle limited fleet combat of about 700 pilots before lag sets in and 1,000-1,200 with no combat. A normal node will also host a handful of solar systems.

In regards to each solar system being like a continent that is a conceptual divide. WoWs 4 continents are still considered to be a contiguous 'world' as users are all acting towards the common goals of the world and interacting with the same player set. So EVE has 5,300 odd continents in its world compared to 4. Also note that you can 'walk over' the line between two grids by simply pointing your ship in the direction of another grid and flying to it. Like in WoW you also have the option to warp between grids, this would be comparable to flying a gryphon there. Grids are better thought of as a dynamic draw distance of the world around you.

Excluding technical differences like these the defining factor of EVE is that your actions effect over 300,000 players in the only (heh) instance of this 'world'.

Eve online runs Windows Server

[DAldredge]

http://www.microsoft.com/casestudies/casestudy.aspx?casestudyid=4000002990 Just FYI

Re:Eve online runs Windows Server

[sopssa]

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Re:Eve online runs Windows Server

[DAldredge]

Sorry, I'm new.

Re:Eve online runs Windows Server

[Anonymous Coward]

So THAT is why they need one hour of downtime every day...

Computational Problem

[phantomcircuit]

This is a computational problem that the major game studies are hopelessly under prepared to solve.

Mostly they hire people who get degrees in game design that include very little in the way of computer science. This is actually a fairly difficult problem to solve.

The fundamental design flaw they all have is that servers represent space in the game, it's a flawed assumption about the best model to use.

Re:Computational Problem

[Matthew Weigel]

Heh, no. I'm an MMOG server programmer, and I know a fair number of others, and a lot of us have backgrounds in distributed computing, with plenty spending time in academia before being lured into games. That game companies mostly hire people with game design degrees is a falsehood propagated by the institutions that offer those degrees. For one thing, there simply aren't enough people going through those schools to feed the industry's need for fresh meat; for another, the quality of programmers fresh out of any school is generally insufficient.

As for fundamental design flaws... eh. I've heard plenty of that kind of talk from (for example) Project Darkstar; it's easy to say that, it's a lot harder to actually do the research to understand all the options and the inherent flaws in each. Interestingly, even EVE Online - lauded for its one-world approach - uses geographic decomposition too, and it works just fine most of the time (and now they've got a system for dedicating special hardware to the corner cases).

Re:Computational Problem

[Bat Country]

This fellow was inadvertently correct. Representing space (volume) by putting sections of it onto single computers is a bad idea. Inevitably, no matter how good your design or how well-ordered your content is, some areas are going to become more popular than others. Hence, you're going to get congestion.

A much better model is representing player (and non-player) actions as work units then distributing them evenly across a network of linked computers then getting an integrated result for each "region" (zone, map, city, whatever) each server frame. Make the server frames something like 50 frames per second and have player actions lag about 2-3 frames behind server-side action and you'll see little delay on the client machines but help mitigate potential race conditions between player actions (both players simultaneously attacking and reporting that they attacked on server frame 2,348,342 and both score a fatal blow on the other).

To mitigate player lag you can distribute update packets based on the density of the update vs the distance of the events from the player vs the player's average data rate.

Of course, that's just my two cents.

Nature Online

[Bazman]

...manages to run a single world instance - it does raytraced graphics in real time, the fees aren't too bad but I'm not sure how to respawn.

Re:Nature Online

[Locklear93]

Respawning is easy. It's not coming back as a level 1 dung beetle that's hard.

Re:Nature Online

[Cloud K]

Ah, no, you combine two characters roughly around level 30 (although some elite players manage it at 13, against the rules in most zones) and spawn a new avatar from that. Curiously, Slashdot players often neglect to work on that particular skill set and often fizzle the Matefinding spell.

The new avatar does start at level 1 though and you are normally expected to mentor them until at least level 18. And you don't get to play the new avatar yourself - character death is permanent and linked to your account. However there are rumours that your account may be ported to a secret project when your character dies, either on the good or evil side depending on your actions during the original game.

I also find it quite difficult to get vendors to buy spider legs and pieces of rotting zombie skin from me in this world - it's a lot more focused on tradeskills as a way of earning money.

Re:Nature Online

[_Sprocket_]

Yeah - but that system is riddled with bugs. People are always finding exploits. And the development team is unreachable. I mean, sure - there are those who claim to be community managers but I think most of them are con-artists and trolls. I don't think I've ever managed to get in touch with a real GM. I'm not even sure how their ticketing system really works.

So sure - you have one example of a single world instance that's pretty popular. But it has so many flaws. And that is really driving a market for a different implementation. Otherwise, you wouldn't see all this competition trying to come up with alternatives.

Re:Nature Online

[BorgCopyeditor]

Depends on your race, class, and faction.

Re:Nature Online

[Phrogman]

The Crafting system is definitely the best in any MMO I have seen. Literally anything can be made and sold if you can find other users who want to buy it, and if the item in question doesn't exist, the system is flexible enough to allow you to create it yourself. Some items are banned though, and there can be severe penalties for attempting to produce or sell them - although in some cases if you have secured a position with an in game guild (called a "Corporation" in Nature Online terminology, or a "Government" in some cases (although usually Corporation own Governments, its complex)), you can get away with it due to guilds have superior rights in game over individual player characters.
Actually Nature Online is really quite cutting edge with regards to the player created content aspect of the game. Pretty much everything in game is player-created.
The PvP system is quite evolved, can be highly stressful, and quite well supported. Perma-death does tend to decrease player willingness to participate in PvP however. The fact that PvP can theoretically break out anywhere at any time does lend a certain frisson to the game for some people, although often the likelihood of such impromptu PvP, or even dueling (which has gone out of fashion amongst players) can be determined by the zone you are in.
Oh, yeah, zoning. The Zoning system is perfect, there is literally no noticeable difference when you zone from one area to another.
Communications can be a problem. There are great communications tools available (although strangely no universal guild chat of any kind), but while spatial/local chat is free, virtually every other type of chat costs the player "money" (the term for credits/gold in the game).
Its quite common for players to complain about the maintenance periods in an MMO. Virtually every MMO requires some downtime to do maintenance on the system, but players often find it extremely annoying that they can't play during this period. NO has solved this with a unique approach - each player character regularly undergoes a downtime for maintenance - often as much as 8 hours per day - but the whole system remains running at all times. This asymmetrical approach to server maintenance means that each individual can choose the time for their downtime maintenance, and its even flexible enough to allow you to break the roughly 8 hours required up into smaller periods stretched out over the day (although this is not recommended) or even to skip nightly maintenance entirely - although this can end up in resulting in a longer maintenance period the following day, and if repeated too many times in a row can result in distorted graphics, lag and lowered response times in many areas of the game.
Overall Nature Online is a superior title and one that many MMO players should investigate more (although virtually all of them have one of the free accounts you recieve if you are lucky enough to be invited to the game, many do not participate beyond the minimums required to get started). It does have a long learning curve. It does have permadeath (although as noted above some people believe you do get a new account at a later date, some people believe you end up in new secret projects that are perhaps in beta at the moment. Its all based on wild player speculations, so take it with a grain of salt). It does have the most unique and engaging new player creation system ever devised, which allows 2 players to create a new account that will be handed out to a random recipient. In fact this system is so much fun many players engage in it just for the enjoyment of the process - sometimes even to the degree that they ignore the actual requirement that both players cannot be of the same "gender" (an obscure classification of character sub-type that is one of the things you can't choose when you are spawned). If for no other reason I highly suggest you explore this subsystem of the game, it really is unrivaled by any other system in any other MMO, period. Its even better than PvP for most players!
My personal ratings for Nature On

Re:Nature Online

[Opportunist]

Respawn is tricky. Only one managed to do it so far, but it took him three days and he did it in godmode.

Re:Nature Online

[Pumpkin Tuna]

Graphics: 10/10 (The graphics are perfect, its hard to imagine any improvements that could be made)

Speak for yourself. I ran into a glitch where the graphics were great for a while, but started fading around level 20. At first I thought it was my video card, because I could still see things nearby, but everything far away was blurry. By level 32 or I had to rate the graphics a 20/60. I finally dropped 2000 gold pieces on a permanent healing buff that fixed the problem. I'd give it a 20/20 now.

Why not go fully peer-to-peer?

[Richard W.M. Jones]

We designed a "peer-to-peer" MMO many years ago, although I have to say we didn't implement it and the devil is definitely in the implementation. Anyway, you can read the design docs here. After it was clear we weren't going to write it, I published the docs just to give a priority date (1998) to invalidate any stupid patents ...

Rich.