Dear SE, please unlock Balmung

[Raist]

You're wrong if you think that's the only criteria. Even your previous post didn't prove that people currently connected don't count. If anything all they proved was that concurrent connections are used AND simultaneous logins are counted. Meaning AFK people count in the concurrent connection category which makes sense since both metrics count as server congestion as they both consume server resources and network data.

Consider the AFK player.
Player A AFKs at the Toll. Due to the crazy amount of players around him the server must render him in a populated area for every player, and send to that AFK player all the character data for every player walking near by. This uses a considerable amount of data for one afk player.
Player B AFKs in his person room. Those are instanced meaning he is forcing the game to render an instance taking up resources for someone who isn't even online.
Player C AFKs in a quite corner of the world where people rarely travel. Doesn't force instances open and doesn't transfer more data than himself.

AFK players are not created equal in their impact on the server. To ignore them is to ignore the realities of server and network hardware.

You're just flat out wrong. AFK players absolutely use server resources and fit squares own statement about using "congestion" as their metric. Your quotes don't prove that AFK players as concurrent users don't count. Not one bit. Both logged in players AND simultaneous logins are measures of congestion and this is used out in the real world in other cases and not just in this game. Your posts grasps at straws that don't actually prove logged in players don't count.

Kiroh, this is why I was confused about your original post. The argument above is pretty common.

Nice way to cherry-pick a statement and completely ignore the entire schema....and it isn't grasping at straws either, but rather a more basic understanding of how it fits together.

I never said that currently logged in players don't count...I in fact stated they didn't have much impact to the login process, which was a documented problem, and is known to now be managed as a separate process via a separate service from the world service servers. Here is the quote:

It's not that much of an issue managing all those that are already logged in, as they are running on their own separate pool from what the lobby/login process has to work with.

The supporting statements to that effect are about the persistent connections (2 per player), and the examples about connection pools. Guessing you don't have much understanding of how that plays out...was really trying not to get deep in the weeds on the issue though. But, basically, database connections typically are not persistent but are frequently recycled. You connect, fetch/update, and when done discard. Even if it isn't done programatically, the pool itself will eventually drop the connection according to it's configuration--be that a hard aging-idle timeout, or garbage cleanup as the pool reaches a defined threshold and is approaching exhaustion. That is the beauty of using a pool to manage the connections (and can also be problematic too if developers are a bit too lazy)--you don't have to micromanage the connections because the servlet/server does it on the fly for you. Which brings it back to another point you seemed to have neglected.

The connection pools for servers are vast. There is an insane global pool at the server level, that gets segmented out amongst services/applications running on it. Even FREE servlets and database engines will default to thousands of connections, with headroom to go into tens of thousands per connector. As noted... the most basic single instance of MS-SQL defaults to over 32k connections in the pool. You can see similar stats (or higher) for any number of other database engines out there, that was just an easy example because it is a known specification. And this system is NOT one instance of one database running on one CPU in a single blade server either. It is a pretty complex array of servers in play here. So, there is likely lots of headroom for connections across the backplanes of their infrastructure.

The problem is with the gating INTO the world services. And yes, I keep saying "world service" because that is what it is. It isn't one server per world...as Yoshi has stated, areas can be on seperate servers--so a world is actually a group of servers working together to make up the world environment. Also, note what I stated earlier. Balmung is one of 13 world services managed by ONE lobby service.... that is hosted on ONE IP address. Each of those world services we know for a fact can potentially be hosted to the public on up to 3 IP addresses (have seen 3 documented for Midgard alone). That means that one IP address and one lobby service is managing all the logins for all the players across 13 worlds, hosted on as little as 13 IP's or as many as 39 (or possibly more). Hands down, that is a recipe for some form of bottlenecking in and of itself.

This is where the queuing is taking place...concentrating your player data at the point of login and then switching you to your assigned IP for your world service. You can even see it happening while you are loading into the game. There is a brief moment after you commit to launching your character that the lobby connection ramps up, then the world's IP connects and both are throttled briefly, then the lobby connection slopes downward to it's keep-alive state, and eventually disconnects. It is because that service is managing your initial pull of data and forwarding you to your assigned IP address for your world service.

From that point on, you are consuming only 2 persistent connections to your world service. Everything else that happens in regards to your player data stored on the database server that has not been cached into the world service takes place within a separate connection pool dedicated to your world service and the assigned database service(s) used during gameplay. You are no longer directly competing with the pool used for the login process 100% at that point--logins take place across a connection pool set up between the lobby server and the backends and another pool between the lobby server and the world service. Granted, there may be some odd concurrency if data needs to be fetched/updated between the world service and the backend database periodically--but those moments are very brief and the connections are released to the pool once the snippets of data are sent/received.

And they are snippets of data by the way. You can pack a lot of data into 32 and 64 byte DWORD's.. especially if some of that data is using bitmasks. Watch your bytes sent/received or track it with a network monitoring tool while you are standing in an isolated area like your room. Swap gears and such and see just how little data is shuffled back and forth. In the speed and scope of these backend connections, it is less then the blink of an eye.

[Mature]

I never understood the idea of having alts (and I still don't get it). I find the whole thing a big waste of time. it's a bit like having a game and playing it in 2 consoles. With the exact same mechanics and all. Totally pointless

[NinjaTaru72]

Well my final post in this thread. I just got my alt made. I am happy now to have the char. So tomorrow morning I will be crafting the character gear and leveling. Later everyone.

Well arnt you just wonderful, clogging up more space with a unless character that you'll use for 2 weeks before trying to make a new one then crying again on how you can't get in, when someone who actually has none and wants to play with a friend could have used the room.

[Mugiawara]

Well my final post in this thread. I just got my alt made. I am happy now to have the char. So tomorrow morning I will be crafting the character gear and leveling. Later everyone.

As a RPer. [Not in the game though.]
Do you even RP all your characters? Or do you just make a lot and let them
sit and rot all day after playing with it for 5 seconds.
I can't imagine you roleplaying 8 characters and all getting fair amount of time in on each.
I know people who RP on multiple accounts for instance and have 2 they play on the most, and 3 just here and there.
So glad you've reached the limit.

[Chihaya]

I am happy now

That happy feeling of making a 14 page flamebait thread

[myahele]

I never understood the idea of having alts (and I still don't get it). I find the whole thing a big waste of time. it's a bit like having a game and playing it in 2 consoles. With the exact same mechanics and all. Totally pointless

Yeah, I agree to you to a point. You can do anything with one character. With that said, I usually make alts so that I can see another race/gender's animations, etc before spending $10 on fantasia or to look at the other servers economy/culture before deciding to transfer. And then promptly delete them afterwards.

[Blackweaver]

As a RPer. [Not in the game though.]
Do you even RP all your characters? Or do you just make a lot and let them
sit and rot all day after playing with it for 5 seconds.
I can't imagine you roleplaying 8 characters and all getting fair amount of time in on each.
I know people who RP on multiple accounts for instance and have 2 they play on the most, and 3 just here and there.
So glad you've reached the limit.

Yes, actually I do. I am pretty casual when it comes to leveling. And right now I've got 7 alts, not 8. I will have 8 when Au Ra come out. I've got a concept for a dragoon au ra. All my characters are active and get some RP time. I just like having different flavors of characters to RP with. I've done this in other games. In fact in WoW, I had something like 22 characters, 11 alliance, 11 horde, and all had their own unique stories and RP time.