servers
Latest
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.
Dell to launch quad-core servers and desktops
While we previously saw the first round of quad-core machines, we've yet to see one from a mainstream big name retailer. Dell's taken the lead on this one and is now offering servers and workstations with quad-core processors under the hood; both are expected to be available in early 2007. Dell claims, according to CIO, that the new chips can deliver 63 percent better computing performance, and 40 percent better performance per watt than previous builds. Of course, given those Core 2 Duo MacBook Pro benchmarks that that only brought a 10 percent increase over the previous Core Duo chips, we're guessing that those new quad-core figures are a bit exaggerated. Read - The RegisterRead - ReutersRead - CIO
Guild Watch: Execute Order 66!
Guild Watch is back again (just like Tag Team) with the latest, greatest, and most dramatic of news from around the WoW guild spectrum. This week's roundup of Drama, Downed, and Recruiting guilds starts right after you click the link below.Oh, and if you're wondering where you should send information if you want a guild to be featured here (make sure to include your guild name, website (if you got one), server and faction), the address is: wowguildwatch@gmail.com. We want to hear about everything you want to tell us!
Europeans disgruntled by unreliability
As usual, this Wednesday is maintenance day for European players, and it also marks the second in a batch of hardware upgrades for selected servers -- upgrades which have already caused an extended extended maintenance. These upgrades are long-overdue by many players' reckonings, with plenty of stories of fatal lagspikes during raids or other adventures flooding the forums.Reader Hammer writes in with a few other complaints of note (thanks!): The main wow-europe.com website is frequently down, with many parts of the site either bad links or inaccessible -- including the all-important Account Management section. Several servers are repeatedly experiencing problems and random downtime; poor Draenor is an example. Here's hoping the upgrades help with this. The new forums may look good, but they're often down -- for example, when the EU login server was broken for several hours yesterday, nobody could get on the forums to find out more. The forums, designed for European players, run on American time, adding extra confusion. We Europeans may have been sitting smugly through US players' tales of woe for the last few months, but it looks as if the game's popularity has caught up with itself on our continent as well as across the pond. So, it's not just the Americans and Australians who have material for complaint; Asian players haven't spoken up yet, but we'll give them time.
Location Switch Automator action
Location Switch is an Automator action that adds some painfully missing features to Mac OS X's built-in Locations option (y'know, that feature you never touch in the Apple menu?). Location Switch can a whole host of application preferences and settings based on which location you chose, such as sound volume, SMTP servers, default printer, etc. Before you use it, however, the action requires some customization on your part, so check out the accompanying ReadMe file for instructions, and open the action in Automator to give it your personal touch.Location Switch is available free from Automator World, but if you enjoy it, consider sending its creator, Charles Schoenfeld, a donation at his site.[via Hawk Wings]
T-Mobile: no MinuteWatching for you
If you're a wireless customer, it goes without saying that being able to micromanage your usage is a great thing. It also goes without saying that if you're a wireless carrier, it's not. As many of us have found out the hard way, it doesn't take much overage to double your bill, and carriers rely on that exactly that kind of carelessness to make some extra coin month to month. We told you about MinuteWatcher not long ago, a nifty free service for keeping an eye on your calling and predict future usage based on trending, and apparently T-Mobile doesn't think much of it; in fact, besides blocking MinuteWatcher's servers, they've gone ahead and amended their terms of service to specifically prohibit such services. For a company typically known for showing its customers much love, T-Mobile's move doesn't show a lot of tact -- but then again, nothing speaks louder than the almighty overage minute.
HP dons white hat to hack customers' servers
Usually the term "hacking" has some rather negative connotations, so it almost seems counterintuitive to pay someone good money for breaking into your system, but that's exactly what HP is offering to do for its corporate customers with a new service called HP Active Countermeasures, or HPAC. As you'd imagine, HP's hackers won't do anything malicious once they break into a client's server -- propagating a worm, for instance, would seem to be bad for business -- but they will use a combination of buffer, heap, and stack overflows to exploit a system in much the same way that black hatters cause Internet terror on a daily basis. Specifically, the company will employ one of its own servers to launch attacks using eight to ten scanning clients for every 250,000 devices that are part of the program, and offer customers a temporary patch until they're able to hire a dedicated security firm for shoring up any vulnerabilities. Pricing is promised to be "aggressive," with firms using less than 20,000 IP addresses expected to pay only a few dollars per user per year for the privilege of learning how shoddy their security really is.[Via The Inquirer]
Dell-AMD partnership is supposedly official
Ever since Dell began relaxing its anti-AMD policy by incorporating Opteron processors in its server line and selling Athlon chips through its online store -- not to mention that little Alienware purchase -- there have been rumors that consumer desktops and laptops would also be outfitted with non-Intel CPUs for the first time, and now The Inquirer is reporting that a final agreement has been reached that will bring these very products to life. At a meeting which apparently took place at Michael Dell's Texas residence, the two camps reportedly concluded their courtship and began planning a series of AMD-powered machines --to be advertised as "Windows Vista Premium Ready" -- that will be available in time for the Back-to-School sales events. nVidia is said to be the manufacturer of choice for the upcoming Athlon boxes, while ATI will continue supplying graphics solutions for Intel-powered configurations and some AMD notebooks. One theory behind the deal says that even though Intel is in the midst of introducing a new architecture, most of the first-run Merom (mobile Core 2 Duo) chips have already been committed to Apple and Lenovo, so Dell needed a way to ensure that consumers wouldn't be kept waiting endlessly for back-ordered products. We're not sure about any of that, but we do know that we like having as many choices as possible when it comes to PCs, so we're sure hoping that The Inq's source is on the money here.
Paid Character Transfer Confirmed
Looks like Elizabeth's earlier report on paid character transfers was right on the money, as today's report on UkGamespot confirms. They have an interview with Blizzard developer Shane Dabiri, who sheds some more light on the process, including official details for pricing & realm transfer rules.Dabiri also touches on some of the reasons for the transfer regulations, and addresses some other related questions, including the oft-mentioned cross-realm battlegrounds. So, if you're planning on switching realms when transfers become available, check it out & find out all you need to know!
Model jet plane tech will help cool HP servers
Not content with just making its servers bulletproof, HP also wanted to pack more of them into a given space than anyone else on the market, but to do that, the company had to find a way to dissipate the massive amounts of heat generated by super-dense server clusters. With traditional fan cooling not up to the task, HP found a rather unusual solution to the problem courtesy of one of its executive's pursuits outside of work: VP Rob Noblett's model jet airplane hobby. With the help of engineer Wade Vinson, Noblett realized that the electric-ducted fans he and fellow hobbyists had been using to achieve high speeds more safely could probably be modified to provide the air movement HP was seeking to cool the high-powered servers on its drawing board. After re-engineering the fans to optimize them for cooling instead of thrust, engineers were able build a model called the Active Cool Fan that is both smaller and more energy efficient than traditional fans, even though it's said to force out air as fast as a leaf blower. These powerful new fans are scheduled for inclusion in HP's next generation of BladeSystem servers, which will be sure to attract more than a few large companies sick of the maintenance required on servers that frequently overheat and shutdown.
NPR starts a gaming podcast
National Public Radio in the U.S. has started a fortnightly podcast on the topic of video game culture called Press Start. Kyle Orland, the guy that runs VGMWatch, is one of the hosts of the show along with Ralph Cooper, an ex-NPR staffer and current stand-up comedian, and Robert Holt, NPR's server guy who also reviews games for All Things Considered. Their first show, which runs for a short but sweet 15 minutes, covers that time old topic "video games as art". Some choice quotes:Kyle - "You really need to know what art is before you can determine whether video games are art".Ralph - "I feel like a lot of video games, at least right now, they're not really trying to make statements".Rob - "When I was in Grand Theft Auto... I was driving through the city and listening to the radio and I drove over a hill and I saw... this huge moon rise over the horizon, I was just in it at that point. I just knew that this was not your normal game. Of course, I could have just been beating up hookers..."If you're up for some interesting and to-the-point video game culture commentary but want to skip on the usual "I like to hear the sound of my own voice" crap from the host(s), then make sure to add Press Start to your player of choice (iTunes link, My Yahoo! link, generic podcast RSS feed).
Brits Bash WoW Woes
With all the issues regarding player connectivity & realm stability lately, it was just a matter of time before even the oh-so-polite British had to stand up & say something. This weekend's edition of BBC news online ran an article detailing all the damage caused by the lag monster on their side of the pond, and how it's not only homegrown gamers who are unhappy.Maybe they should stage a good old-fashioned soccer riot; that'll might really get Blizzard shaking in their boots...
WoW Server Problems Under Scrutiny
If you're a WoW subscriber and you're reading this, there's a good chance that you're either at work, or unable to log into the game. Ok, that's taking it a bit far, but it's no secret that the WoW servers have a pretty bad reputation for reliability these days, and although the problem has seen improvements in some respects, overall, I think most players would agree that the issues don't seem to be improving at a steady enough rate, especially with all the problems that have followed the last two patches.ZDNet has an article on the problem, spurred in part by the outages of this past weekend. The article contains statements from both gamers & industry professionals who cast some light on the challenges faced by Blizzard in the face of overwhelming subscriber numbers & a market with basically zero competitors on the same playing field, and by frustrated players who just want to use the service they pay for.Personally, I sympathize with Blizzard to a degree, but I sympathize with my wallet more...
Login Servers Down...again?
I had thought maybe it was just me who has been getting the 'Unable to Connect' message for the last half-hour, but it looks like plenty of other folks have had the same problem this evening, so it seems the login servers are indeed down once again, at least on this side of the Atlantic, as of 9:30 PM CST.So, if you happen to be reading this while you're in the game, for god's sake...don't hit that logout button! And let us know, dear readers, what kind of luck you're having out there...
Blizzard Europe on server problems and more
The folks over at Eurogamer have managed to sit down with Shane Dabiri and John Lagrave to talk about the technical side of things. There have been login issues with many European realms for some time now; I've experienced unexpected outages, sudden queues caused by a lower player cap, and thirty-minute delays between entering my password and seeing my characters.According to Blizzard, it's a problem of concurrency -- with additional players signing up over the holidays, the servers are under more stress, but they're working on new, improved hardware and network infrastructure. These things don't happen overnight but as a player affected by these issues it is nice to know that something is being done.Other tidbits from the interview include the unveiling of "some exciting stuff" at E3 and the fact that expanding outside the PC is "not something we're planning on doing at this point". Also, if you're wondering when the Lunar Festival is going to clear off, that's February 14th -- just in time for the planned Valentine's events.
