sharding
Latest
EVE Evolved: EVE Online vs. Elite: Dangerous
Like many EVE Online players, I grew up playing early sci-fi games like Elite and its sequel Frontier. In fact, CCP's recently released stats on the distribution of ages within the EVE community shows a peak around 29 years old, meaning that most players grew up in that same gaming era. A big part of what initially drew me to EVE Online was the prospect of playing the same kind of massive trading and space exploration game with other people, and for over 10 years it's scratched that sci-fi sandbox itch. I've watched EVE grow from a relatively unknown game with around 40,000 subscribers and laggy cruiser skirmishes into a vast game where thousands of players wage war for territory, profit, or just the adrenaline rush of PvP with something valuable on the line. Now that Elite: Dangerous is finally here, I want to see whether it can scratch the same sandbox itch as EVE and to what extent the two games can be compared. Both feature customisable ship fittings, open-world PvP with a criminal justice system, and real financial loss on death, for example, but the end result is two very different gameplay styles. And both also have that same intoxicating notion of exploring the unknown and try to make you feel like you're in a living world, but they take very different approaches to world design, content, and travel. Elite may not be a full-fledged MMO, but with a sandbox made of 400 billion procedurally generated stars and an open play mode that seamlessly merges players' games together, does it matter? In this edition of EVE Evolved, I compare my experiences in Elite: Dangerous to my experiences in EVE Online and look at their differing strategies with regard to server model, active and passive gameplay, and the new player experience.
EVE Evolved: Will Star Citizen or Elite harm EVE?
Publishers haven't been willing to put a lot of money behind a sci-fi sandbox for some time, but upcoming games Star Citizen and Elite: Dangerous seem set to revive the genre thanks to the power of crowdfunding. Star Citizen in particular has collected a world record $19.6 million in pledges so far from almost 258,000 individuals, eliminating the need for publishers and heavy investment entirely. Though both games are designed to be a primarily singleplayer or small-scale multiplayer adventures, their respective developers have already promised shared online universes and sandbox gameplay that could give EVE Online a run for its money. The past decade has shown EVE to be one of the most resilient MMOs on the planet. It's survived several major scandals, barely noticed the release of giant World of Warcraft, and has somehow maintained its subscription-based business model in a market rapidly being overtaken by free-to-play titles. Even at its lowest point, the game managed to survive the 2011 monoclegate scandal and the subsequent fallout that saw CCP Games lose 20% of its staff worldwide. EVE's subscriptions and concurrent user numbers have historically been unaffected by the release of new MMOs or sci-fi titles, so why should Star Citizen be any different? In this week's EVE Evolved, I look at how EVE Online has lived with very little direct competition until now and ask whether Star Citizen and Elite could be among the first games to directly draw players from EVE.
The Daily Grind: Would you pay extra for a filtered community?
Earlier this week we asked if there was a game you'd like to play but for its awful community. The topic got a lot of replies, and the usual MMO suspects turned up in many of the comments. The thread got us to thinking about customizable communities, server rulesets, and creative uses for instancing technology, and though no MMO firm has offered players control over their community experience as of yet, it's certainly doable. Funcom executive producer Craig Morrison mentioned the possibility in 2011, and for today's Daily Grind, we'd like to know how you'd feel about being able to carve off pieces of a game world specifically for your friends, your guild, or your niche community (roleplayers-only, PvPers-only, etc.). Would you pay extra for dedicated communities or filtering technology? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
The Soapbox: The industry's obsession with shards
Disclaimer: The Soapbox column is entirely the opinion of this week's writer and does not necessarily reflect the views of Massively as a whole. If you're afraid of opinions other than your own, you might want to skip this column. The MMO genre is now over a decade old, and in that time we've seen countless innovations in game design, graphics technology and hardware infrastructure. Some of these innovations have become so essential that without them a game looks cheap, old or backward. A functional market or auction mechanic now replaces the old meet-and-trade style barter of some early MMOs, for example, and an MMO without copious map or chat tools is seen as grossly incomplete. The limits of what is possible have been pushed gradually forward, and yet certain ideas that were formed in the genre's infancy still seem to stick to new titles like glue. Sharded server models made a lot of sense in the early 2000s, when server hosting was expensive and the teams working on the server code were small. Those limitations have been rapidly shattered in recent years, but still new MMOs shard their communities into small groups. There are even alternative server models out there that are just as cost-effective as the sharded model but are devoid of the negative side-effects of smashing the community into hundreds of pieces. Read on as I take a look at why developers rely on the sharded server model, the problems surrounding splitting communities and what alternative server models are out there.
The Daily Grind: One server vs. many servers
Ok, so the picture above is a total lie and games that run on one server don't really run on one server, but you get our point. With the MMO genre slowly evolving, newer games are beginning to adopt the "one server" architecture idea instead of running multiple shards of a world, each equipped with their own name and specific population of characters. Of course, both sides have their ups and downs. "Sharding" your world, a term that derives right from the lore of Ultima Online, lets you deal with a smaller community, make close friends, and have a more "shared" massive experience. However, should you not play on the same world as your friend, you're never going to get to see them! One server, on the other hand, lets you meet everyone who plays the same game as you. Simply by switching instances you can have an easier time finding a mob to spawn or a clear area to camp. However, some say that this detracts from the community of a game, as instances aren't as personalized. Or, in the case of EVE Online, you're one pilot stranded in the lone universe. So what's your opinion on this war, dear readers? Comment and let us know!
WoW Rookie: Sharding etiquette
New around here? WoW Rookie points WoW's newest players to the basics of a good start in the World of Warcraft. Send us a note to suggest a WoW Rookie topic, and be sure to visit the WoW Rookie Guide for links to all our tips, tricks and how-to's. UPDATE: Most groups use the automatic Disenchant option available in the loot roll box as of Patch 3.3. This week, we're going to help you understand a practice that varies wildly from group to group, server to server and even expansion to expansion. "In the past few months, I've run into a situation with people who are (or who I think are) new players who happen to be 80," reader Sarabande writes to WoW Rookie. "To them, the idea of DEing BoP items for shards is completely alien (and to at least one, he just rolled greed on everything 'just to see if he could get it')." Should your group roll for unwanted or unneeded drops when an enchanter is on hand to disenchant them? What's accepted in one situation might be scorned in another. Because there's no single way to handle the situation, it's important for new players to be aware of the options. It's also important to understand the reasons why players feel so strongly one way or another about this issue. Because there's no single "correct" method, the savvy player respects the group consensus.
Why you should be playing EVE Online: One server, one universe
"Why you should be playing ..." is a freeform column from Massively.com intended to inform you about our favorite parts of our favorite games. We want you to know why we're playing them, so you can know what to play. It's been dead for too long, but now it's back. The ultimate opinion column, "Why You Should Be Playing," is making a triumphant return to the pages of Massively! For those unfamiliar with this feature, this is the space where the Massively staff gets to tell you why we play our favorite games. We try to spread the love of MMOs unknown so you get to see some of the great features of MMOs you may not play.Today's feature has all guns locked on EVE Online and the power of the Tranquility server. EVE has a vast universe of countless star systems and now even sports gigantic areas of uncharted space, but did you know that all of that world is housed on multiple servers that act as one?
Champions Online has no server shards
Nearly every MMO on the market has them: server shards. Whether they're named after game characters or places they all present the same problem -- limiting a player's options. Whenever a new MMO comes out, friends must discuss and agree upon which server to choose and it's not always the smoothest discussion. Enter Champions Online, who is going the way of Guild Wars: No servers, but instead a large list of all the current instances of the particular zone you're attempting to enter.Suddenly, the other reasoning behind the new naming system tied into player's account names becomes clear. It's nice to know -- via the same Dev Diary -- that the game UI will auto-complete names based on accounts you've spoken with prior. We're going to need all the help we can get there, considering the thousands upon thousands of players we could potentially be IMing in-game.
Are disenchanters getting robbed by rolls?
Sardonis sent us a note the other day, with an interesting, if probably controversial, point inside: when we're in instances, Skinners take their skins, Miners take their ores, and Herbalists take their herbs (or of course they rotate around if there's more than one). At the end of the instance, we don't sit down and /roll on all of the herbs or ores that people have picked up. So why do we do it, Sardonis asks, with disenchanting shards?Good question. My first response was that everyone needs enchants, and everyone can use those mats. But if everyone can get their friendly guild enchanter to enchant something, can't you get your Leatherworker to use skins, or your Blacksmith to use ores? Of course, you could argue that Leatherworkers can get skins from anywhere, but disenchanted blues only show up in instances. If it's an item that required five (or even 25) people to get, everyone should have a chance at it. There are herbs and ores in instances, true, but those can be found elsewhere as well -- they don't need a group to get them. And what about Rogues who unlock chests in instances -- sure, we need them to open the chests, but they need us to get them there.You can get blues through questing and drops, though, too, so who knows who deserves what. Sardonis is at the point where he won't even say he's a disenchanter -- he'll just do a greed roll like everyone else, and if he gets the item, then he'll DE it. The tradition seems to be that we all roll when we've all helped drop some boss loot, but it's true that we'd never get the shards if it weren't for DE'ers. Maybe they do deserve to take what they make.
Is MMO terminology invading database programming?
Raph Koster couldn't help but wonder when he read the blog post entitled, "Lessons Learned: Sharding for startups," if he had a hand in creating that terminology. Sharding, as this blog post put it, was a method of running databases parallel to one another and making sure that the program could look in the right one for the information it needed. All of the older MMO users in the audience, however, know that this was not the first time the term "sharding" was used with parallel databases.Raph had coined the phrase "sharding" years before during the inception of Ultima Online. The story writers were looking for a way to tie in the concept of multiple servers running parallel copies of the same world into the lore of the Ultima universe. It was at that point where they got the idea that each server was the reflection in one of the many pieces of the shattered Gem of Immortality from Ultima I -- a shard world. So, is MMO terminology leaking into mainstream database programming? Raph has the whole story over at his blog, where he traces the origins of the term "shard," how it may have gotten used over at Flickr thanks to Game Neverending, and expanded into a term of it's own right. Check out the story, it certain brings back memories of the old days.
To shard or not to shard
As massive as we like our MMOs to be, the realities of modern networking have made sharding, the creation of identical game worlds hosted on separate servers, a practical necessity. Last week, Awen, Jumpgate Evolution community manager, elaborated on why the NetDevil team was looking at sharded server architecture. Understandably, players maintain that the ideal MMO minimizes sharding to allow players to interact with the greatest possible population of other users.As Awen explains, this isn't exactly possible with Jumpgate Evolution. While their spaceserver architecture--which is similar to EVE Online in that different regions of space can be hosted on different hardware and scaled to the server load--is technically capable of handling most of the challenges of going unsharded, the central-state server on which all the non-combat activity is managed, does have a physical limit. In a game that is focused on real-time space simulation, their focus is on minimizing latency, and that's why they're going to use sharding.
Breakfast Topic: How do you distribute 5-man loot?
I've noticed something a bit unexpected and confusing over the last few months: apparently, the way my server generally deals with loot in 5-mans is strange. Rather than rely on the in-game roller, we pass on all loot, and let people call need on a piece. Then we all roll need or greed on the stuff. If there's an enchanter in group, they can disenchant the loot for the winner on a greed roll and hand over a shard. Lately, though, since Blizzard started allowing server transfers, it seems a lot of the new 70s have come in and told us that this method is a bit weird. Why don't we just use the in-game rolling system? Why should enchanters be expected to automatically be willing to shard gear for non-enchanters without compensation? These are questions that are really alien to most of our server community, but there they are. So, I thought I'd ask you, dear readers. How do you deal with 5-man loot on your servers or groups? Do you just use the built in roll system? Do you use Master loot? Do you pass and discuss? Is it generally expected that an Enchanter will gladly shard loot for everyone in the group, or is it expected that an Enchanter only need shard his own loot?
Insider Trader: Some disenchanted evening
Insider Trader is your inside line on making, selling and using player-made products.A handful of my guildies and I rerolled early this week on a new-to-us server for a new-to-us type of game play (and yes, I'm exhausted from the whole "Just let me do this last turn-in over here, oh and here are the last six mobs for that collect quest, and then I gotta train, and then top off a few points in fishing ..." thing until 2 a.m. – I'll be needing all the Night Dragon's Breath Dip I can get to make it through the tail end of the work week). I can verifiably report that we have indeed discovered the promised land: a mature, friendly and humorous server population. (And no, I won't tell you which server we chose. This community is mine, all mine!) Although our intrepid little group plans to group all the way up together almost exclusively, I'm sure we'll be picking up the occasional PuGger. But somehow, I don't think we'll run into many problems with loot whiners -- the players here seem to have specced for level-headedness.On some servers, though, the atmosphere's not so holly-jolly. Mole hills blow up into mountains (and indeed, volcanos) before you can say "Who's in on this drop?" Today, Insider Trader takes a look at an issue that's left many an enchanter completely scratching his head: who disenchants items nobody needs during an instance run – and who gets to keep the results?
The problem of "sharding" in WoW
Alice from the great gameblog Wonderland loves playing WoW, and posts about it all the time-- I especially like the "The other me is Epic, I'm just an alt" shirt from her latest post. But, she says, "the problem with WoW" is those darn servers it seems we're all dealing with. She's got friends across almost all the servers, including US, EU, and even Oceanic, and yet she can't visit them without paying a fee again and again. In fact, she says Blizzard just changed the client software on the US and UK clients, so that you can no longer access one server from a different client-- you have to buy two seperate clients to access the US and EU servers. For players like me, who only play in one country, it's not really an issue, but for Alice, who just moved to California from England, it's, as she says, "rubbish."But that doesn't mean I don't have my own problems with Blizzards' (and MMORPGs in general, since most of them are "sharded" in some way) servers-- my friend started his characters on different server than I was on, and so since I joined him, I've now got sixties spread across different servers, and I've got to pay $25 to transfer each character-- if and when Blizzard opens transfers to my already overpopulated server. And then there's the problem of queues in general, which everyone, it seems, is dealing with in larger quantities.So what's the solution? There may not be one. Free transfers from server to server would keep players happy, but would also freak out in-game economies, bunch populations up (more queues), and cost Blizzard even more time and staff hours to do (which means less spent on development and keeping servers up). It might be nice, as Alice suggests, to put everyone on one big server, but I doubt Blizzard has the technology to do so at this point-- even if it was technologically possible to put all seven million players in a world where they could interact with each other, doing so would require much more of a code overhaul than letting flying mounts run free, and that's not happening either. For the world of Azeroth as we know it, it's unlikely Alice's problem will ever really get solved.Which leaves room for competitors to step up, I guess-- EVE, Guild Wars, and even MySpace are all listed as alternatives to this problem of "sharding". If an upcoming MMORPG has a great solution to these problems (and a match to the cool style and gameplay of WoW), I'd like to hear it.
