Auction Houses vs. Market Wards

[Alhanelem]

- Its a whole unimmersive cluster F*ck that takes up server processing power

They don't take up the "server power" you think they do. Retainers are just a bunch of numbers, bits and bytes. The server doesn't have to render the characters and retainers themselves, only their locations. An auction house is also on its own server machine, because it is something constantly used by many players and requires a lot of resources- this is not different because of retainers.

The market wards are on their own server machine. Each "world" or "server" we call it is actually made up of several machines. Nothing that happens in the wards affects any other part of the game.

Any "lag" you are experiencing is not really lag at all, but rather low frame rate- something that will be addressed in 2.0 with its more efficient rendering engine. This is a pet peeve of mine- low frame rate is not "lag." When your frame rate drops, the game doesn't slow down (It can't, since it's an online game)- it drops frames. Lag is a delay in response- only a network problem can do this.

[Shougun]

They don't take up the "server power" you think they do. Retainers are just a bunch of numbers, bits and bytes. The server doesn't have to render the characters and retainers themselves, only their locations.

The market wards are on their own server machine. Each "world" or "server" we call it is actually made up of several machines. Nothing that happens in the wards affects any other part of the game.

Any "lag" you are experiencing is not lag at all, but rather low frame rate- something that will be addressed in 2.0 with its more efficient rendering engine.

Every time someone wants to purchase something they enter the market - a whole swath of retainers are pooled.

I know the server doesnt render shit -_- thats obvious.

And the wards crashing all the time because people are pooling all the items stored in the server, and also the characters in that that server. Rather inefficient, it would be worth it if it added immersion.

But as i said, retainers is a nasty cluster its is so ugly to look at. Random angles and lines of people with empty side shops because of server limitations, its like a riot and less like a market. This is the major reason why I think retainers are useless. It just makes the markets look stupid and you have to walk through the stupid to sell anything. (There are things they can do to tidy up and make the market seem more like a market though, so its not a hopeless case).

Perhaps the lag will be fixed, I look forward to that. Also look forward to being able to set up more players so there isnt as much ugly chunk popping when lots of players are around.