Mega Worlds -- Is it possible?

Hello,

I was thinking the other day about how some people show interest in moving to the 'EU' world of Ragnarok. And how others are showing that there is not many people on their world during certain time slots.

Then I was thinking about how 'Content Manager' will make it so we can span worlds to enter dungeons together.

Then I wondered: Why have multiple worlds to begin with?

I can understand the explanation of 'server' limits and capacities.. but.. why not just solve that problem?

Can it not be possible to come up with a solution where the number of people who can be in a world is 10x what we have now? Not saying it needs to support 100 million people. Let's just say, 10x more than we have now.

Whatever is the limitation server side can be solved through optimization or more hardware?

Whatever is the limitation on client side can be solved by scaling back what is shown/displayed?

Yes, I know we already lag or see no one in town when there is anyone on... but sad thing is that happens when there is just 5 people around, so there is a totally different limitation there.

I *KNOW* its possible to draw a screen with 100 people in it, so something like this should be do-able. And if they could do it, then it would solve a lot of 'there's no one around to do things with' problems we have?

Or... am I in lala land?

Thank you.

We can have mega servers, both DCUO and STO (the 2 I play) both have them, the problem is the cost of servers with that much capacity constantly streaming the live data, we wouldn't need servers 10x more powerful, we would need them atleast 15x more powerful because they are processing so much information.

Another problem is if there is an unprecidented rush of players, we could be facing login queues, atleast until they got upgraded.

Infact to accomodate the amount of traffic to the server thier entire infrastructure could need changing depending on the speeds of their netwoking devices.

It is possible but the costs will be through the roof, if we do see it, it will not be until SE know they can put the money into the server and 2.0 is a success (atleast 2 years from now).

If you are willing and able rather pay $40-50 a month subscription for that kind of service then yes. But you will soon find that you are playing the game alone.

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Originally Posted by Achtzen

If you are willing and able rather pay $40-50 a month subscription for that kind of service then yes. But you will soon find that you are playing the game alone.

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It wouldn't need this price hike, yes the server will cost alot to buy, but maintanance costs will be alot lower, also energy bills will also be lower, in all types of businesses now its becoming the norm to attempt to consolidate servers to lower long term costs like maintanace and energy costs, and this is the best way, all it would mean is SE would take longer to see a profit, but MMOs are long term visions it will take SE atleast 5 more years to see a profit from FFXIV so what will another 2 years do, if anything it will make them want the game to last.

Not with current server build. Ul'dah alone shoot my card temperature up that i usually just stays inside inn or mercentile houses. Beside, this is what cross-server content is gonna do anyway.

Mega World or Mega Server? Mega Server is simply increase capability of server hardware, whereas Mega World would be something that only EVE Online has.

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Originally Posted by MariyaShidou

Mega World or Mega Server? Mega Server is simply increase capability of server hardware, whereas Mega World would be something that only EVE Online has.

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there are two reasons that eve's one universe works

The game structure and the positively insane hardware they are running in there server farm.

Multiple reasons, mostly dealing with the sheer volume of people logged on at a time.

Mega worlds make open world content almost impossible to use and balance, and it's simply not feasible from a technological and monetary standpoint.

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Originally Posted by Wolfie

Multiple reasons, mostly dealing with the sheer volume of people logged on at a time.

Mega worlds make open world content almost impossible to use and balance, and it's simply not feasible from a technological and monetary standpoint.

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We do not have much open world content, so is that really a concern?
The open world content we have re-spawns every 5 minutes or so... is that really so bad?
We have so few people as it is, if we went 10x we probably would still find a bunch of empty areas.


And as for sheer volume... when we're dealing with 1000 people, that's.. not a lot. Even bumping that up to 10,000 is nothing that is massively huge and unmanagable.

Will it be super simple and trivial to do? No.
Is it absolutely impossible to do? I highly doubt it.
Would it address a lot of problems with lack of people (the driving force behind content manager): Yes.

"Feasible" in this context means what would they have to gain for the increased operational costs of creating mega worlds.

Granted, I don't know how the client and servers will operate in version 2.0, but right now they're all buckling with ~300 people sitting in one area (north Ul'dah).

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Originally Posted by Wolfie

"Feasible" in this context means what would they have to gain for the increased operational costs of creating mega worlds.

Granted, I don't know how the client and servers will operate in version 2.0, but right now they're all buckling with ~300 people sitting in one area (north Ul'dah).

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The operational costs of a mega server will be lower, there is one server to maintain rather than 10, so they will need less people working on that, the fuel bill will be lower, running the hardware in one box uses less than 10 boxes etc etc, its a big reason why companies are moving towards server consolidation now.

The implementation costs will be very high (new hardware and possible infrastructure upgrades). Operational costs is the cost to run and maintain the servers, implementation costs is what it takes to upgrade existing servers or buy new ones.

While it sounds nice. . . I would feel so overcrowded on a mega world D: I kinda like my servers on the sleepy-side (I'm so antisocial! lol j/k)

Sometimes it can suck farming karakul etc for crafting mats even with the smaller server sizes and I'd rather not have farming made into some dreadful task.

If we had cross-world content, like a dungeon finder type deelio that'd rock for those who can't find a party for instances etc, but I think it'd do more harm than good to have so many people on the one server><

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Originally Posted by Delsus

The operational costs of a mega server will be lower, there is one server to maintain rather than 10, so they will need less people working on that, the fuel bill will be lower, running the hardware in one box uses less than 10 boxes etc etc, its a big reason why companies are moving towards server consolidation now.

The implementation costs will be very high (new hardware and possible infrastructure upgrades). Operational costs is the cost to run and maintain the servers, implementation costs is what it takes to upgrade existing servers or buy new ones.

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As someone who right now is actively working on re-deploying large scale applications from beefy VMs to small Amazon EC2 clouds, this is totally wrong.

Vertical scaling does not work for server infrastructure because you don't factor in just "day to day" operational costs like electricity or "man power." You have to factor in failures, load balancing, overhead costs, etc.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amdahl%27s_law
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAP_theorem

PS: That CAP theorem relates to the CPUs and memory usage of beefy servers. A server with 32 CPUs is not better than 8 servers with 4 CPUs each.

In 5 years, it might be commonplace.

The in game world structure needs to be better.
If there's 300 people in ul'dah now, there would be 3,000 then.
There is plenty of empty space out there, but that's also because there's nothing of value in said space.
If for example, the markets can be consolidated and accessed from almost anywhere,
and the UI can allow for universal chat channels, like, for example, a party search channel, a sales channel etc etc,
Then it would be i think, far less of a mess than it would with the current world.

If they did do a "mega" server, the entire game would have to be instanced to keep the work load bearable for the servers. Different "phases" would be issued like in other games. It took DCUO less than a year to get its server numbers reduced to one per region/platform.