Server-less SWTOR

[Cretinus]

In the year 2012, it seems like a MMO with one global server, with one thriving community could be accomplished.

 

You still would have to accomodate all the people. If there was only one global server, then they would have to make the world a whole lot bigger. Otherwise it would be sort of Tokyo underground at rush hour.

And if the world was a whole lot bigger and, for some reason, the number of subs would decline, then the situation wouldn't be very different from an empty server.

[Lord_Ravenhurst]

For those impressed with EVE and it's one server. It is space. Space is really easy for a game engine to handle. When you have buildings, terrain, and players running on top, around, and through all of that it is a lot more math for the game engine to do. Just getting you feet to sit on the ground no matter where your are in the game is difficult to do. Every Time you character moves it is a different math problem for the engine to figure out. In space, there is no ground, very little in the way of obstacles. the game engine has less to do, and can support many many more players in a single area.

 

Sure it´s easier in space, less animation, no terrain, object based rendering - on the other hand, this is something they managed already in 2003 when EvE started. Now, in 2012, CCP expanded to planetery open world with EvE Dust 514, so this is no rocket science anymore. And it´s happening within the EvE universe in realtime. TSWorld is also on one single virtual server (a lot of merged servers in the backend), they´ve also got server side nvidia PhysX and collision calculation. TOR really needs to catch up on these technologies, triple A games should feature triple A technology, right..?

[Solo_Han]

For those impressed with EVE and it's one server. It is space. Space is really easy for a game engine to handle. When you have buildings, terrain, and players running on top, around, and through all of that it is a lot more math for the game engine to do. Just getting you feet to sit on the ground no matter where your are in the game is difficult to do. Every Time you character moves it is a different math problem for the engine to figure out. In space, there is no ground, very little in the way of obstacles. the game engine has less to do, and can support many many more players in a single area.

 

Yes and no...

 

Yes, there's more math. No, it's not that hard with modern day machinery.

 

We're not living in the world of COBOL, with mainframe computers, and RAM sticks as big as your face.

 

EvE was released in 2003. They achieved this. 9 years on, technology has come a long, long way. Pentium 4's were the average consumer CPU at that time. Xeon based servers were still unbelievably expensive. nVidia PhysX didn't even exist at the time...

 

 

The year is now 2012. Quad core processors are now standard in the majority of gamers rigs, and most OEM manufactured offerings. With 8gb+ of RAM, sporting an incredibly powerful, sum eating MACHINE of a graphics card. Let alone with CUDA technology, tessellation, improvements in directX...

 

The maths based calculations are based CLIENT SIDE. They're nothing to do with the servers. All the servers do is convey information. If a server had to do all the maths, games like Aika, that offer 1,000 vs 1,000 RvR battles would grind to a halt, especially when looking at a distributed remote client base of 2,000 workstations.

 

When you jump and land again on the ground, or click a button and do damage to mob, all that information, all that maths is being done on YOUR PC. Not on BW, or anyone else's servers... You can tell this, without knowing anything about remote network infrastructure, simply by looking at MMO hacks. Because all the files reside on your computer, apart from the raw data about your character (items, HP, stats, etc.), then you can edit them (if you can decompile them, or patch them with an assembler). If you have the knowhow, there's no reason you can't make your character fly around the maps. You'll simply send a vector to the BW servers, and they'll display that vector to everyone else who's rendering that scene.

 

Things like buildings, foliage, etc., has nothing to do with the servers. If the servers didn't exist, you'd still see them, and be able to run around, just like you would in a single player game.

 

 

It really isn't out of the question to expect a modern day server, or WELL designed server cluster to handle 1,000's of simultaneous users in the same workspace. The problem isn't so much the hardwares' ability to cope with it, nor really the ability to program it. The real problem comes with jumping to overpopulation in hubs, lack of raw materials, etc.

 

The things I've outlined here are exactly why SWG, WoW, Ultima Online, etc., private servers can operate, legally. You've already purchased a copy of the game files. The server itself just has to respond to any calls it receives. To setup a private TOR server, you wouldn't use ANY BW code, at all. It would be illegal to do so infact. All the server would do is respond to the calls made by the client(s), and the game on the clients machine will know what to do.

 

http://www.galaxiesreborn.com/ - Explains this incredibly well...

 

 

Anyway, bottom line, having one huge server for millions of people is probably stretching it, but having one for 10,000+ simultaneous players isn't reaching into the land of make believe, by any stretch of the imagination. On the contrary, it exists at the moment, with eastern companies with much smaller budgets than TOR, and has done for some time.

[dronepilot]

I'm not interested in transfering to another server. I don't want to have to go through a painful ordeal of getting people from my guild to all "pay" to go to a populated server. I want my entire legacy to go through, every single character . Don't make a single character transfer system, where we will have to pay real world money in order to fix Bioware's mistake of creating too many servers.

 

^ Exactly, this

 

I refused to pay any money over to transfer, to another more populated server of 'my choice' when the problem of populations and cancelled subs was not down to my fault, or anyone else, who have played through the game, and grinded their characters to level 50. I won't re level another toon, because it generally takes too long, and is frankly quite boring !

 

I can only see realistically mergers of under populated servers being the proper option, in handling this problem. Just merge all under pop servers.

[Deadalon]

Actually - the cross server planets in SWTOR would be fantastic for lvling conent. Maps are so big that you hardly meet the 4-8 ppl that are on the same planet leveling.

[Bloodstealer]

I have to be honest, I don't believe any MMO developer can do anything about the community, it's up to the players to do that. There are MMOs out there that have very strong communities but the games are not very good, however I would say part of the reason for some of the lack of interaction is that the game is a little too single player friendly.

 

Thats cos 1-50 is Single Player... no one runs the Heroics or Flshapoints anymore cos its so easy to level the toon without them... then just solo it 9+ lvls over the quest, take next to no damage and get the loot without having to chance a roll... massive oversight by BW to develop a game that allows this to happen.. the very least the higher level the toon is above a quest the more severe a penalty, other than the 5XP thing, there should be.... but when your used to developing games to engage a single player audience, that's a habit hard to breakaway from... experience in the MMO industry speaks volumes when a game is designed to alienate the community from each other with such heavy sharding and no desire to merge servers to build up larger populations...

But then the backlash hits at lvl 50 when you need thos people to run OPS and large Open Word fights like Illum.. but then have the dramatic drop offs in performace when there are more tha 8 peopl in the instance... cos the single player thought process didnt think about the effects of much larger groups with all that particle effects etc etc...

 

Sorry but if there are no tools in place for the community to interact, why would it be the fault of the players... they want to play the game so the only choice left is to go off and do it and then the cycle repeats over and over... no tools to engage the community in an MMO. ie no LFG, poor Guild Tools, a looting system that breeds griefing, constant chest respawning all over the place so players can just run thro planets to loot credits and resources for themselves and alts resulting in underused GTN.

Added to this the forums have such a heavy damage limitation moderation ethic to try and silence as many issues and compaints as possible... then why would anyone want to just keep spamming general chat to group ... you can blame the players all you want but I blame BW for forcing the attitude into the game...

Edited May 11, 2012 by Bloodstealer

[Sindorin]

Uhmm.. you don´t really know what you are talking about. Interacting in a shard universe which is populated by 50K concurrent players is pretty amazing. There is actual traffic, the universe feels busy and "alive".

Did I mention in TOR on my server there are usually 100 players or less, I really need to be lucky to run into another player when I´m on a planet.

 

Besides EvE has 400K subs and growing, since 9 years. That´s not exactly bad, and with the MMOFPS "Dust 514" which is set in the same realtime sandbox universe, EvE will get a huge popularity boost. PC players can bombard ground battles on planet surfaces from their ships, while there is actual shooter FPS style war going on vast open world planets.

 

I know exactly what I'm talking about. You're asking for SWTOR to be a game that has no servers, but instead exists on a single "shard" similar to EVE. Like I said, this is technologically impossible since EVE Online is already pushing the limits of single shard or server tech as it is. You cannot fit all of the active players on a peak evening, on a single server in SWTOR. Go play EVE.

Edited May 11, 2012 by Sindorin

[Lord_Ravenhurst]

I know exactly what I'm talking about. You're asking for SWTOR to be a game that has no servers, but instead exists on a single "shard" similar to EVE. Like I said, this is technologically impossible since EVE Online is already pushing the limits of single shard or server tech as it is. You cannot fit all of the active players on a peak evening, on a single server in SWTOR. Go play EVE.

 

If a virtual single server is not possible, how do you think did they manage to run Dust 514? Can you imagine how many PS3 player will soon enter into the same realm? And how is TSW working if this is "technologically impossible" ? And yes, I DO play EvE. And I like companies who push the boundaries and come up with new possibilities.

Edited May 11, 2012 by Lord_Ravenhurst

[Mallorik]

Let's be fair, they have been doing for 7+ years and in the beginning they had the same problems.

 

I kind of agree, but blizzard also didnt have too many games to learn from. most of the games already out before wow were considered "hard core" and blizzard changed that to increase their player base. And in doing so completely changed the AAA mmo market.

 

The swtor devs have several succesful mmos and hundreds of failed mmos to study and learn from. And when they say things like we are adding a same server lfg tool not x-server, it makes me think they have not ever looked at what previous mmos have tried or they would have seen that a same server lfg tool has been tried several times and has never worked.

 

So it can only be two things, they never looked at how same server lfg tools have done in other games in the past or they just dont care and think that for some reason unknown to everyone else that it will magicaly work in this game.

Edited May 11, 2012 by Mallorik

[Blistrich]

You can't talk up EVE at the moment.

 

CCP has had to lay off staff due to the massive failure that is World of Darkness, and EVE players are so upset with the last two poorly implemented expansions that saw the addition of avatar environments so pointless that CCP actually had to make a big deal about bringing back ship spinning.

 

That's right... EVE's "groundbreaking" new Captain's Quarters and the army of cosmetic items that came with it were so unpopular that players literally asked to be able to go back to when they could just stare at their ship in station and spin it in circles. Furthermore, that game has utterly lost its early glory... beautiful massive wars between skilled fighters have been replaced by blobs of gargantuan capital ships that just jump onto a battlefield and sit there pumping out fighters and damage.

 

It's quite sad really, because the old days of BoB and Huzzah Fed are long gone.

 

I dislike the DUST concept immensely.

[RachelAnne]

The funny thing is WoW is adding cross server zoning lol.

 

Yes this can be done, there other games that do it (EvE online), the problem is I feel the people at Bioware lack the know how to do it, This I gathered from them not being able to fix game stuttering & animation delays (Hi Project, Blade Storm), as much as I hate WoW this crap would NEVER and I mean NEVER go on over at Blizzard, those guys know there Programming and coding.

 

If they do however unlock the know how to do this Swtor will climb the rankings pretty quick because the core game is great ,it just lacks the experience of professional game programmers.

 

I know I sound harsh but I would be lying to myself if I said anything different.

 

Having 1 server but multiple zones is a pain in the *** for players. It suxx if half your guild is scattered in different zones and nobody can play with each other.

 

I played 1 MMO with such a system and it was terrible.

[Stovokor]

1. ) With current technology, there might be serious technical limitations of having everyone on 1 shard. To put in perspective, SWTOR total 1.4 mil population is roughly 5x that of EvE.

 

2. ) Other stumbling block would be concurrent user issue and performance. IIRC concurent user in EvE were in 30 k - 60 k range prior to Incarna. SWTOR would significantly dwarf this.

 

3. ) Lag - Having many players in one spot. EvE universe took on its current population dynamics over time with large groups inhabiting far flung reaches of the map. Basically the population is superbly spread out but there is always something going on. Due to traveling distance / restricted movement / scanning activities segregation occur between many subsets of the populations ( 0.0 empires, Industrialist corps , Roaming Groups, Mercenaries, Wormhole Crews etc ).Unless SWTOR would expand into various subset of far-flung activities to spread things out there is no way popular nodes would be able to handle more then a few hundred in one spot.

[Weddge]

While I agree that having a shardless SWTOR is probably close to impossible, shrinking the number of servers they have now to anywhere between 4-10 is a must. They have to acknowledge this and stop saying that their game has a healthy pop and therefor a server merge is not necessary. The game DOES have a healthy pop, but its spread too thin over too many shards. I know things like player names and legacy names being duplicated would be a problem, just give the players the option to either change these, or just have some duplicates running around. Would it be that big of a deal to have 2 Obee of the Whaan legacy running around on the same server?

[Weddge]

Would it be impossible to have 4 servers?

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[BraaxusKun]

Too bad not many played SWG, it was the most sandbox game ever

[celldoom]

If they think they can Charge me to transfer all my characters to the Fatman server, my sub is cancelled.

This. I quit WoW because i can't transfer for free (among other things), character transfer should be free in any game with a sub.

[HaniObaid]

I agree. I love the game very much too, and think they should have 1 server per continent:

 

1. North America

2. South America

3. Europe

4. middle East + Africa

5. East Asia + Australia + New Zealand

6. no need for Antarctica yet, maybe next year...

Edited May 11, 2012 by HaniObaid

[Lord_Ravenhurst]

1. ) With current technology, there might be serious technical limitations of having everyone on 1 shard. To put in perspective, SWTOR total 1.4 mil population is roughly 5x that of EvE.

 

2. ) Other stumbling block would be concurrent user issue and performance. IIRC concurent user in EvE were in 30 k - 60 k range prior to Incarna. SWTOR would significantly dwarf this.

 

3. ) Lag - Having many players in one spot. EvE universe took on its current population dynamics over time with large groups inhabiting far flung reaches of the map. Basically the population is superbly spread out but there is always something going on. Due to traveling distance / restricted movement / scanning activities segregation occur between many subsets of the populations ( 0.0 empires, Industrialist corps , Roaming Groups, Mercenaries, Wormhole Crews etc ).Unless SWTOR would expand into various subset of far-flung activities to spread things out there is no way popular nodes would be able to handle more then a few hundred in one spot.

 

So how do you think EvE will manage Dust 514? It's already the most community hyped PS3 upcoming game and it's even a free DLC, so the concurrent user numbers in the EvE sandbox will rise significantly.

Also, when you travel in TOR from planet to planet, why not travel between servers on the fly? This can all happen in the background. There is no such thing like a single server, it could just appear as one, putting everyone in the same realm if you travel somewhere.

The instancing could start if there is a number of players reached which can no loger be handled, or perhaps even a high populated area could be moved to be processed by other resources. In any case, Future planets would need to be significantly bigger and more spread out to host those numbers of players. Well now we reached the level of SWG size planetary concepts again...