Will we ever get truly Massive multiplayer environments ? Currently the games that claim to be massive split their players up into groups of 2,000 or so by having different servers. A game with 100 zones and an online population of 20,000 would typically be split across 10 servers, giving a zone population of about 20 players. This approach is very handy because you only have to develop a game to handle 2,000 not 20,000 players and you can expand and contract the world very easily by adding or removing servers. Clearly for the game above to maintain the player to real estate relationship and be a “one world” game, either the number of zones would have to increase 10 fold, or the size of the zones increase by 10 fold. I don’t think it is economically viable to have 1,000 distinct zones so they would have to grow larger. This raises a number of issues around in game transport and communication. I personally would like to see one massive world where getting from one side to the other involved many playing sessions to achieve. An out of game web based lobby/mailbox/message service to communicate with real life friends. In game communication split into localised shouting talking distance and within game context technology communications: Sci-fi might have hand held video phones or even telepathy others would have to make do with a post box at the town or the ability to nail a message to a tree.

I think so. BUT our processors, and our network technology in general is definitely going to need a huge boost for that. As it is, "servers" that handle 2000 people for MMOGs now usually are groups of 10 servers. So, I think that we''ll definitely need better stuff!! =D

-=Lohrno

Really ? is that true?
I was thinking that a provider that can handle 20,000 connections across it''s 10 servers has the capability to handle 20,000 connections regardless of server configuration. I thought it was the game that restricted the in game population, Indeed I was thinking it all boiled down to the client graphics card limitations.

Really ? is that true?
I was thinking that a provider that can handle 20,000 connections across it''s 10 servers has the capability to handle 20,000 connections regardless of server configuration. I thought it was the game that restricted the in game population, Indeed I was thinking it all boiled down to the client graphics card limitations.

What''s the point of having 20,000 people crammed into a small world?

What''s the point of having 20,000 people put into a large world?

In the first case, the game will suck from overcrowding. The second will add nothing since they''ll never see those 20,000 people.

They both would force the client PC to be as powerful as the server PC and have at least a T1 line to handle all the players.

Breaking it up lowers the client side system requirements and makes the game more enjoyable by giving more breathing room to players and allowing people to actually get to know each other.

Ben

IcarusIndie.com

[The Rabbit Hole | The Labyrinth | Programming | Gang Wars | The Wall]

I believe Anarchy Online was supposed to handle 50k+ players in each world (it was so full of bugs though so I doubt they got 50k people to subscribe). One of the reason that other games only have 2k people per server is to cut down on the content that has to be created. A world for 20k people is generally much larger than a world that only has to take 2k and thus requires more content to be created.

quote: Original post by KalvinB
What''s the point of having 20,000 people put into a large world?

[It] will add nothing since they''ll never see those 20,000 people.

I disagree. More players means a wider range of players, which in turn can lead to higher quality guilds, player-created content, and so on. The crowded areas will be more crowded and the emptier areas will seem more empty by comparison.

Of course, all these issues bring extra problems you need to consider, but I do see some advantages.

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I agree with Kylotan that there are certainly games that can benefit from tens of thousands of players rather than just a few thousand, especially if the necessary expansion of the world is carefully tuned and not linear. For instance, there could probably be ten times more hunting ground, but possibly not that many more cities. In EverQuest, some cities used to be dead at certain hours of the day (during my daytime, since I am not in America).

I also think it is more desirable to have just one world where all the conflicts, exploration, events, and achievements are taking place. Accomplishing something in EverQuest was not as rewarding when others had always done it before on other servers (I played on a PVP-teams server where we always accomplished things last since neither team had access to the abilities of all the races and since one always had to fight off the other teams to get things done).

I like playing with small numbers of people, it lets me enjoy the world I''m in and not be wandering through crowds that increase my lag and ruin my framerate. I play Dark Age of Camelot and, if there are 1500 players on the server, there are about 4-500 people in my realm. (Game Note: there are 3 realms and the main interaction is fighting each other). So there aren''t a lot of people around any one area, but there''s also not k3wl d00ds hanging around being, well, themselves, if you know what I mean. It lets you get into the game more if there aren''t 10000 people camping the Big Bad Beast to wait for it to spawn.

quote: BUT our processors, and our network technology in general is definitely going to need a huge boost for that.

Not really. Processors are jumping by around 50% every 10 months and realistically clusters are amazing things when implemented across Gigabit Ethernet. Looking forward, many of the clustering bottlenecks are also going to be disappearing within the next 2-3 years and that is very good for MMOG clusters.

Anyway, don''t look at what they''re doing today. EQ has around 2500 user support in a world who''s infrastructure was built back in the late 90s (98 IIRC), when Pentium Pros were the sh*t. Think of EQ supporting 2000 users with a dual 450 on 100BT, now think of what you could support with a dual Prestonia or dual Sledgehammer, with it''s superior memory access and CPU communications structure. 3Ghz, or the equivalent and very high speed communications make a cluster start operating more and more like one really big, nasty machine.

quote: I disagree. More players means a wider range of players, which in turn can lead to higher quality guilds, player-created content, and so on. The crowded areas will be more crowded and the emptier areas will seem more empty by comparison.

I think that good forward planning will potentially make this a largely moot point. Dynamic worlds will require more frequent re-exploration, as what critters were in an area might not be the same ones that were there now.

The important things that you will see though is that there will have to be population/area management. You also can''t simply add more wide expanses of boredom (almost all of the EQ expansion zones) that most of the players wouldn''t even consider wasting any time in. It might be a nearly monumental task, but for the mostpart there are definitely ways around the problems that you will encounter with population expansion. One idea is to create larger areas of civilized land. The big problems with Kunark, Vellious and Luclin are that the areas are for the mostpart, very ''wild''. No merchants, no cities, nearly nothing except more dungeons. The result? Most players stick around in the older areas of Antonica unless they''re on a raid.

Give players reasons to play in certain areas, make political dynamics of each area different and give them politically related quests that if they don''t do will have different effects upon the world as a whole. Add new races that aren''t largely disconnected from the rest of the game world. Make areas that don''t require you to head to the distant corners of the world or make a special 2 hour trip just to get there. These are the large failings of Kunark, Luclin and Vellious as expansions. They have large areas that are basically created for certain groups of characters (very high level) and nearly nothing for the casual gamer. Very little expansion of the storyline. Very little, if anything for the lower level characters.

Expand the world and keep the balance between civilized areas and uncivilized ones in place.