BrintoSFJ Posted November 18, 2014 Share Posted November 18, 2014 When asked about pvp and gsf queue problem we have been informed that engineers are working hard to give us something better than cross server to address the issues. So since then i have been thinking about what kind of tech we are going to get. it is actually more interesting to me than the actual content update since this will address a great problem and will be a huge QoL improvement. Let's look at some of the games that addressed low population, group finder queue, pvp queue and lack of participation in any kind of group oriented content with tech upgrade recently :- GW2 : went ahead and implemented megaserver. created some issues, for example : now open world group content/event are too easy since over 100 players are engaging in them. some people now complain that "server pride" is nearly gone but overall the tech saved "empty world" situation very nicely. Wildstar : It had the smoothest release of all mmorpg as far as i have seen but their constant nagging about how this game is only made for "old school hardcore" player and then just being and upgraded version of WoW quickly lost them more than 90% of the players. they just went for megaserver tech. no idea how they are doing though. Some games that have addressed issues with tech and im[lemented those new tech at least a year ago are :- WoW : Cross realm system. what they did basically is found out which servers are populated by players from same region and linked them, not only they linked servers(realm) they also linked auction houses on those realms, linked pvp and dungeon queue on those realms for faster pop, linked the community so that players from one server can befriend players from another server linked to it and travel to the other server and play together, players from different server can create guild together. result is very high rate of queue pop even in dead of night, whether it is pvp or pve, many zones are no longer empty and community interaction is stronger than before. it was a great QoL improvement. Rift : even before WoW implemented cross realm, Rift was already on a similar tech. Trion linked servers from same time zone so that players from those servers can play together, trade, use auction house etc. but one major thing in Rift's system is that social system is not linked, auction house is not linked; if someone from server A wants to use auction house on server B that person has to use server hop but 1st they have to come to major hub or capitals. this system is good for group content running but when it comes to social aspect it sort of lagging. EQ2, EQ, DCUO : they all use megaserver tech with mob sharing in place. not much to talk about except that DCUO and EQ only have 2 mega server each for NA and EU zone where EQ2 have several. Now what i am thinking here is that out of all of those system above which one eaware will go for. Personally i think it would be cool if they linked all east coast server together and all west coast server together and do it like WoW, linking east coast and west coast servers together will be a bad move because then people will start suffering unusual latency. Now understand that these server tech are not unique for each publisher, there is "wow clone" or "copied from gw2" or "copied from soe" here, these tech are invented and categorized by IBM and other network related companies, game companies just use the tech as they want and implement them as they like. Me bringing up this topic and saying that i would like swtor do it like WoW does not mean i want a "wow clone". After all that is said, what do you guys think? what do you guys expect them to do? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DomiSotto Posted November 18, 2014 Share Posted November 18, 2014 Unique names are server-dependent. Will they be able to resolve the conflicts with the server links? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Oyranos Posted November 18, 2014 Share Posted November 18, 2014 (edited) the cheapest solution... lol The only thing I can speculate is, a user choice warzones. Before the game added you randomly and it took so long to get the people signed for a specific warzone. Now if you and the other players preffer a specific arena or warzone most, this arenas will add you almost imediatelly in the battle. Because of the high demand. there is nothing else I can think about. So its nothing special, its more like what world of warcraft is (without the cross server). Edited November 18, 2014 by Oyranos Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Heezdedjim Posted November 18, 2014 Share Posted November 18, 2014 (edited) It's cross server. They're saying "it's not cross server" because they came up with some euphemism for cross-server that they think may fool people who rage about how cross server is the devil. It's like "megaservers"; a server merge by any other name is still a server merge. You can merge without calling it a "merge," but at the end of the day it's still a bunch of people playing in a single "server" that used to not. The bottom line is, the only way to "improve queue times" is to get more people in the queues. And the way you do that is . . . letting people queue together tomorrow who cannot queue together today. They can call it whatever they want, but it all amounts to the same thing. Technically, it may be, as some have suggested, something more like a "shadow server," where they leverage their server transfer mechanism behind the scenes to do on-the-fly character copies and real-time character synchronization between your current "home" server and an invisible new single region-wide "shadow server" that is used solely to host group queues. You could say that this isn't "cross server" in the sense that when you queue you're actually playing a shadow copy of your character on a completely different server, rather than your "real" character on your visible home "server." But it amounts to the same thing; it lets people from different servers queue together in a transparent way, on the fly. Functionally, to end users, it's cross server, even if it isn't. For PvP, it also might include something like the ability for players to create private or public custom matches of their own, that other players then could browse and join (e.g., like the PvP "server browser" does in GW2). That alone would go a long way to solve the complaints of PvP players, particularly if you could choose to run matches with a specific map and game mode instead of random, or set restrictions for class and level or gear rating; set up private invite-only matches, etc. Edited November 18, 2014 by Heezdedjim Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BrintoSFJ Posted November 18, 2014 Author Share Posted November 18, 2014 Unique names are server-dependent. Will they be able to resolve the conflicts with the server links? They can do what WoW or Rift does : use a tag. for example : Domisotto #Jedi Covenant and Domisotto #EbonHawk. it will take some work but they can do it if they want. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BrintoSFJ Posted November 18, 2014 Author Share Posted November 18, 2014 It's cross server. They're saying "it's not cross server" because they came up with some euphemism for cross-server that they think may fool people who rage about how cross server is the devil. It's like "megaservers"; a server merge by any other name is still a server merge. You can merge without calling it a "merge," but at the end of the day it's still a bunch of people playing in a single "server" that used to not. The bottom line is, the only way to "improve queue times" is to get more people in the queues. And the way you do that is . . . letting people queue together tomorrow who cannot queue together today. They can call it whatever they want, but it all amounts to the same thing. Technically, it may be, as some have suggested, something more like a "shadow server," where they leverage their server transfer mechanism behind the scenes to do on-the-fly character copies and real-time character synchronization between your current "home" server and an invisible new single region-wide "shadow server" that is used solely to host group queues. You could say that this isn't "cross server" in the sense that when you queue you're actually playing a shadow copy of your character on a completely different server, rather than your "real" character on your visible home "server." But it amounts to the same thing; it lets people from different servers queue together in a transparent way, on the fly. Functionally, to end users, it's cross server, even if it isn't. For PvP, it also might include something like the ability for players to create private or public custom matches of their own, that other players then could browse and join (e.g., like the PvP "server browser" does in GW2). That alone would go a long way to solve the complaints of PvP players, particularly if you could choose to run matches with a specific map and game mode instead of random, or set restrictions for class and level or gear rating; set up private invite-only matches, etc. i understand where you are coming from, there are cases where companies just merge all empty server and call it megaserver without using megaserver structure. Megaserver is a totally different tech than regular server as far as functionality goes. and as for cross server, i can tell you about what WoW and Rift is like, for both of them connected servers are actually sharing same space, same bandwidth and probably same machine, technically that means players are actually in one functioning server but are separated by different tags and phases in which case phase is a server and tag is the name of the phase/server. or that is how both Blizzard and Trion describes their tech. Cross server tech is literally having 2 or more different physical servers being connected while joining an instance. But anyways i wonder what we will get.. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Savej Posted November 18, 2014 Share Posted November 18, 2014 According to a cantina answer BW didn't use "better than x-server" to describe their idea - that was ad-libbed by players. I haven't checked to confirm. But I am keeping my expectations very low. From what I've seen, most of the players opposing x-server turned out to be idiots and most of the devs opposing it were fired. So... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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