We are working on several Multiplayer concepts (MMPOG > 10000 users). To finish our cost planning we need further informations about hardware requirements (servers, network, operators). Is somebody out there who has experiences in that? Does anybody know which and how many servers are used from Ultima Online, Everquest, Asherons Call, Planetarion etc. Especially the type of servers, network-traffic, implemented database-systems, how many operators support the servers .... Are there any professional ''server homing comanies'' that have experience in hosting Online-Games? Many questions. But each bit of info helps us to put our concepts into action. Thanks in advance Webseal

Just build the fastest computer you can. I''m going with a 1G Athlon. www.aberdeeninc.com has the best prices I''ve seen. I can build the system I want for $500 maybe a little more. Some of the parts I already have. Like a graphics card and monitor and case.

There''s a store in my area that sells cases for $30 with a 300watt power supply.

The real deciding factor is how much bandwith you''re going to require of the EU and how many characters the server can process without lagging.

Price, I''d figure $600-$1000 a server. The plan for the game I''m working on is to just add a server as needed. 1500 max players per server.

Ben

Ultima Onine has two definations of "servers". For example, "Atlantic Server" is a mini server farm which supports one world. They have about 20 of those server farms.
Each Server farm contains 4 "servers" (which is our defination of server), or each world is made up by 4 servers. Therefore, they use 4 machines to support each world, which contains about 2000 players online at the same time. Note these servers are pretty old so that modern systems can do these support with less servers.

Each Everquest world is made up by about 50 servers, I believe, which supports less than 2000 players once.

Asherons call is a different story. It uses a Server Farm that dynamiclly assign server boundries. I haven''t heard how many servers are in that server farm yet. I do notice that Asherons Call has the best connection performance in all three, though the game play is the worst.

None of the above game can support 10000 users in the same world/server farm yet. They all made this number figure during design though they had to drop it after beta test.

For the hardware requirement, it does not only depend on number of players you are going support, also depend on Message Size/Frequence, and DataBase. For the hardware we can access now, i''d recommand using a few servers with the following specs:
1G Hz processor (I''d choose Intel for this one)
384 - 512M memory
40G Hard drive.
Other requirements are easy to deal with since the server does not need to run Super Graphics.
$1500 - 3000 is good enought to cover one server, and one server should handle 1000+ clients without trouble. One system is too light to Cover 10,000+ unless you get a Mini Computer (like AS400) with Oracle and high bandwidth connection to handle the database and sockets.

another thing is the that server does not have to run MSWindow since it only does data processing. (MS Window is not that stable, right?)

Just some thoughts.
Turtlenet

Prior to my DSL modem not working I had WinME running my web server for 60+ hours without a problem. It''s still never crashed on me and it runs 24/7.

I''ll have my new modem probably monday so I''ll have a better idea of how stable it is by the end of next week.

If you have an extra HD to install Linux on I''d give it a shot to try it out. You can always swap drives. I still have Win 3.11 on a 120mb drive that I can use in my AMD 700.

I use DPlay so that''s why I use Windows. I have no complaints about either OS.

The main reason Windows crashes is because of the crappy computer it''s on. Or all the crappy software that''s installed.

The motherboard and your power supply are pretty much the key to your system working properly. And not overworking any additional hardware especially your video card.

Ben

I have no idea really, but is dual processors a good idea?

I don''t believe it''s necessary. The server handling the MMORPG I''m working on is a simple windowed app with just DirectDraw and DirectPlay. I could remove DirectDraw and use Win32 or MFC to display any information I want available. In the end I plan to write a special client to remove that burdon from the server.

It runs at well over 100fps on a AMD K6-3 333 w 128megs of ram and an ATI All-In-Wonder card. My AMD 700 with a Viper II and 160megs of ram crashes when I try to run it. It doesn''t quite finish the draw and then stops. It may just be going too fast.

As long as it stays above 60 (the fastest the client can run) there''s no problems. It''s set up so that none of the clients or the server have to be exactly in sync. There may be 1500 people connected but not every person is being updated every frame.

Unless your server is a system hog you don''t need more than one processor and not even a real fast one at that. People have 486s running Linux and a web-server. That''s basically all your server is. It''s just keeping track of and forwarding information to those connected to it.

Do a dial-up test play around for 10 minutes and then check how much data was transfered on the modem with just you using the server. Figure out the per second average then multiply by how many people you want connected at once. There''s your kbytes per second. Multiply by 8 and you have the DSL speed you need.

For needed processor speed see how long it takes to process the average player command using GetTickCount within the loop. Multiply by how many players you want to allow. Divide a thousand by that number and that''s your FPS with that many people connected.

desiredFPS*CurrentProcessorSpeed/currentFPS=estimatedProcessorSpeedNeeded

If it''s rediculously high for either one of the above like it doesn''t exist yet, optimize your server or get more realistic on how many can connect at once.

Ben

I believe the primary cost in running a 10,000 player system would be bandwidth not the server hardware. ie The cost of all the systems posted here added togather will be the monthly ISP bill.
I think I read somewhere that EQ has an OC12. (AT&Ts backbone is an OC48)

Servers that run these sort of things run $10,000+. RAID5 hotswap drives, dual Xeons (thats an ECC intel chip), & 512 to 1GB ECC ram...
And the big MMOGs use several systems per world, as mentioned above.

Magmai Kai Holmlor
- The disgruntled & disillusioned

A lot of this really has a lot to do with back-end design, and I would think the engineers would be able to project how many servers they'll need to support 10,000 users. The previous poster was right in saying that it's all about bandwidth, but that's not only to the internet (which will likely be an OC3) but internally between the servers as well. There are some other people you might want to ask... like Anarchy Online and WW2 Online... both are implemented as a single huge world rather than a collection of clones.

Oh, as for database systems... Asheron's Call uses a proprietary system but some of the information is stored in MS SQL Server (it's hosted by Microsoft so no surprise there). I'm not sure about the others. In my experience, Oracle will perform the fastest (if the database design was done carefully enough) and be the most reliable, but it really needs an admin to handle daily maintenance. MS SQL Server will be a tad slower (though SQL 7 has really gotten pretty good -- don't upgrade to a more recent version until sp3... they typically have memory leaks and stability problems before then) and potentially less stable (because it runs on NT as opposed to UNIX) but will run pretty much unattended. For business applications, I've set up SQL Servers with a bunch of scheduled tasks and alerts (for regular maintenance, backup, and to handle any typical problems) and they just ran unattended for months without a single problem... I think our warehouse is going on a year without being touched. Asheron's Call went down a few times as a result of SQL Server problems, but from the descriptions I attribute them to admin incompetence more than problems with the actual software.

Edited by - kensai on January 21, 2001 12:06:55 PM

Anyone know how much bandwidth a single user takes up in a MMORPG? If a server farm serves 10,000 players, assumming its a t3 connection, 3.75 KB/sec for a player is this in the ballpark?

Also, as someone else mentioned, the cost of the bandwidth would be the majority of the cost for a MMORPG network. So to maximize profit, bandwidth reduction would be one of the major goals for any potential MMORPG. If you could get ussage down to 1 KB/sec that would triple your possible number of players for the same given bandwidth, assuming you use 3 KB/sec originally.

-ddn

The amount of data going from the player to the server in my game is usually less than 10bytes per action. Depending on framrate that''s about 20bytes per second usually less. And you''re not always sending something and it doesn''t always require a packet back from the server.

If 10,000 people were connected and everybody got everybodies actions and everybody were doing a steady 20bytes per second, it would require the EU have a 1562.5kbps line.

My server could easily handle everything that was thrown at it with a Cable Modem on a good day. The average EU doesn''t have a prayer. The EU with a 56k modem could handle 358 players if the connection stayed high.

Meaning the EU can only recieve the information for 358 players per second. 358 players couldn''t populate the screen at one time anyway since the frame rate would be 0.

Theoretically I''m set with a 256kbps line to handle 1600+ players at once on one server. I set the server program for 1500. If I wanted to up my server''s bandwidth and allow 10,000 I would need 29.29MB of ram dedicated to player information.

Depending on how big your numbers are your results may vary.

Ben