Yet another game without a single seamless server?

[Satoshi]

Literally 2000s, why do the developers still keep splitting their communities between servers? I can see doing it with 2-4 region-related servers to avoid language-related and ping issues. But splitting them any further? I don't want to:

1) Spend a few hours scrolling the forums trying to find the right one for me
2) Accidentally choose a server and then discover that it got captured by one ethnic group (i.e., Andoes as the main Germany server, for example)
3) Level up and then find out that my friend is also playing the game, but they're playing on another server, so we can't play together because we both don't want to lose our progress
4) Losing the opportunity to engage with the rest of the community
5) Always required to be in touch with the development, monitoring possible server or character migrations
6) Be afraid that at some point the online of this exact server would drop and I would have to choose between practically losing all my achievements and migrating to another server or biting my tongue and continuing playing on an almost empty server

100% genuine dialog between people in late 2022:

Person 1: "Oh hi, you play that cool new Tower of Fantasy game?"
Person 2: "Oh yeah I do, it's pretty cool!"
Person 1: "Wanna play together?"
Person 2: "Yeah, sure! What server are you playing on, again?"
Person 1: "Uhh it's Anomora, I think?"
Person 2: option 1: "Ooh too bad, I'm on Blumous, I guess we won't be able to play together :( Let's continue ignoring each other since we just missed the only mutual interest in all these years, shall we?"
Person 2, option 2: "YOU ANOMORA SCUM DON'T EVEN TALK TO ME AGAIN IT'S BLUMOUS SUPREMACY!"

[Cypherous]

Originally posted by Satoshi:

Literally 2000s, why do the developers still keep splitting their communities between servers?

You very clearly don't understand the complexities involved here, hardware can only do so much and the record for concurrent players on the same server is held by an MMO called EVE Online and it literally took them a decade of work to manage those kind of numbers with a massive cluster of servers, it really doesn't work for most games, can you imagine trying to sit in a hub town in an MMO where you currently have 12,000 people logged in, its not only the server that will have issues but any client trying to render all those models is going to run at about 1 frame per week

[freedomfletch]

Originally posted by Cypherous:

Originally posted by Satoshi:

Literally 2000s, why do the developers still keep splitting their communities between servers?

You very clearly don't understand the complexities involved here, hardware can only do so much and the record for concurrent players on the same server is held by an MMO called EVE Online and it literally took them a decade of work to manage those kind of numbers with a massive cluster of servers, it really doesn't work for most games, can you imagine trying to sit in a hub town in an MMO where you currently have 12,000 people logged in, its not only the server that will have issues but any client trying to render all those models is going to run at about 1 frame per week

And even then, when you get those massive fleet battles in EVE, the game literally forces your fps down below 30fps to be able to handle it.

[Cypherous]

Originally posted by freedomfletch:

Originally posted by Cypherous:

You very clearly don't understand the complexities involved here, hardware can only do so much and the record for concurrent players on the same server is held by an MMO called EVE Online and it literally took them a decade of work to manage those kind of numbers with a massive cluster of servers, it really doesn't work for most games, can you imagine trying to sit in a hub town in an MMO where you currently have 12,000 people logged in, its not only the server that will have issues but any client trying to render all those models is going to run at about 1 frame per week

And even then, when you get those massive fleet battles in EVE, the game literally forces your fps down below 30fps to be able to handle it.

Thats not a forced things, the client just generally struggles with that many people, the slowdown you're referencing is called Time Dilation which slows down the server simulation in order to crunch all the required numbers, they added a non-graphical toggle to the client to help during fights where you have 3000 ships in the same place

[Platapoop]

Originally posted by Cypherous:

...can you imagine trying to sit in a hub town in an MMO where you currently have 12,000 people logged in, its not only the server that will have issues but any client trying to render all those models is going to run at about 1 frame per week

why not just have channels like Runescape?

[Cypherous]

Originally posted by Platapoop:

Originally posted by Cypherous:

...can you imagine trying to sit in a hub town in an MMO where you currently have 12,000 people logged in, its not only the server that will have issues but any client trying to render all those models is going to run at about 1 frame per week

why not just have channels like Runescape?

Because those channels are just for chatting, they will still be individual server instances and it still won't be 1 big seemless world

[Josedx9]

I don't see a problem with having servers divided by region, but I think (if it's possible) that the accounts registered in the game are stored on their own server so that if you want to move to another server other than the one you use, simply you connect to it without losing your progress at all.

Something similar to what Valve and Team Fortress 2 do, there is a server specifically dedicated to storing account inventory information

[Nope]

Originally posted by Josedx9:

I don't see a problem with having servers divided by region, but I think (if it's possible) that the accounts registered in the game are stored on their own server so that if you want to move to another server other than the one you use, simply you connect to it without losing your progress at all.

Something similar to what Valve and Team Fortress 2 do, there is a server specifically dedicated to storing account inventory information

They said you can transfer server, for a cost, limited on the same region only
Cross region transfer is a no

[Satoshi]

Originally posted by Cypherous:

Originally posted by Satoshi:

Literally 2000s, why do the developers still keep splitting their communities between servers?

You very clearly don't understand the complexities involved here, hardware can only do so much and the record for concurrent players on the same server is held by an MMO called EVE Online and it literally took them a decade of work to manage those kind of numbers with a massive cluster of servers, it really doesn't work for most games, can you imagine trying to sit in a hub town in an MMO where you currently have 12,000 people logged in, its not only the server that will have issues but any client trying to render all those models is going to run at about 1 frame per week

There's already a solution to this problem that is used in TES Online for example. Only a fixed number of players can be visible within an instance. If you and your friend weren't lucky to login in a single instance, simply joining the party will link you together. This is seamless for the player and deals with the overpopulation problem, technically still keeping everyone on a single server, just with dynamic instances.

If they don't feel like coding the system too much it could be simplified further to the manual "instances" that are yet again not an edge technology. I think I saw them in some MMORPGs before, or from some pretty old multiplayer games like APB or even something way older like Crossfire. Then let the users choose them manually if they wish, for example, the instance #2305 for you and your friend, keeping your progress between the instances. This has its own issues if a game relies on PvE player/player competition elements like grinding the resources for production, but fixable with the more advanced system like above, and even as is it is still better than the "hard" servers imo.

[Satoshi]

So instead of playing the game the wanderers now have to deal with huge queues and hop around the servers trying to find the one that has a shorter queue, so user-friendly HUH!

[Cypherous]

Originally posted by Satoshi:

Originally posted by Cypherous:

You very clearly don't understand the complexities involved here, hardware can only do so much and the record for concurrent players on the same server is held by an MMO called EVE Online and it literally took them a decade of work to manage those kind of numbers with a massive cluster of servers, it really doesn't work for most games, can you imagine trying to sit in a hub town in an MMO where you currently have 12,000 people logged in, its not only the server that will have issues but any client trying to render all those models is going to run at about 1 frame per week

There's already a solution to this problem that is used in TES Online for example. Only a fixed number of players can be visible within an instance. If you and your friend weren't lucky to login in a single instance, simply joining the party will link you together. This is seamless for the player and deals with the overpopulation problem, technically still keeping everyone on a single server, just with dynamic instances.

If they don't feel like coding the system too much it could be simplified further to the manual "instances" that are yet again not an edge technology. I think I saw them in some MMORPGs before, or from some pretty old multiplayer games like APB or even something way older like Crossfire. Then let the users choose them manually if they wish, for example, the instance #2305 for you and your friend, keeping your progress between the instances. This has its own issues if a game relies on PvE player/player competition elements like grinding the resources for production, but fixable with the more advanced system like above, and even as is it is still better than the "hard" servers imo.

TESO also is a dead game without 30,000 people trying to login and be in the same place at the same time, pretty sure their entire active playerbase would fit in to a single WoW realm lol

[Cypherous]

Originally posted by Satoshi:

So instead of playing the game the wanderers now have to deal with huge queues and hop around the servers trying to find the one that has a shorter queue, so user-friendly HUH!

Depends how characters are handled, there is a fee to move your character between servers in a region so you won't be able to "hop around" as you'll be on a completely different character