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:Eve online runs Windows Server

[sopssa]

Dear Sir or Madam,

The responsible Anti-Microsoft Troll that should have replied to this post by now is on sick leave and was unable to prepare a custom flaming reply to this particular post. In lieu of that, attached is our generic template which we use to write all our flaming responses.

1. Make a general anti-Microsoft jab
2. Blame Microsoft for it's stance against Free Software (and also for lack of network neutrality, the current state of patent laws, the Iraq war, and the extinction of the dinosaurs)
3. Accuse the poster who wrote something positive about Microsoft of being either a fanboy or a Microsoft employee. If the poster in question made a comment about Microsoft's actual support of Free Software in a particular instance, accuse the poster of being an oblivious idiot unable to see through their Embrace-Extend-Extinguish approach
4. State that the Linux revolution is inevitable
5. Finish off with another outpour of flames

We hope you will be able to infer the potential content of the post that should have been done by the respective Troll. Please accept our apologies.

Sincerely,

Assistant Secretary,
Anti-Microsoft Trolling Association, Ltd.

Re:Eve online runs Windows Server

[DAldredge]

Sorry, I'm new.

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

[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.