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WildStar explains how MMO servers work
Welcome, class, to MMO Servers 101! Your professor today is Carbine Studios Lead Network & Database Engineer David Ray, and he's here to give a technical overview of how MMOs set up and run their servers. Please take notes. While Ray won't reveal all of Carbine's secrets, his explanation should be sufficient if you're curious as to how an average MMO sets up its backend. If you're expecting an article that reveals WildStar's server rulesets, specific regions, or other practical player concerns, then this is not for you. However, it is a frank and fascinating look at the guts of the ship that runs MMOs, and considering that Ray has worked on both the space shuttle and other MMOs, we suspect that there's a good chance he knows what he's talking about.
Free character moves offered to select US servers
Higher population servers getting you down? Isle of Thunder too crowded to get anything done? You're in luck! Blizzard is offering free character moves from and to select servers as follows: Source Realm --> Destination Tichondrius --> Blackrock Illidan --> Mannoroth Stormrage --> Trollbane Blizzard notes that due to the unpredictable nature of free transfers, they may close down any Free Character Moves at any time and without warning if the target realm becomes full. So, if you plan on moving realms with friends or a guild, be sure to coordinate plans. These transfers are like Blizzard's paid character services, they're one-time, and one-way. If you change your mind after the free character transfer, you'll have to shell out the $25 USD to go elsewhere. As it stands, the free character moves have already begun, but will end on Thursday, March 21. If you'd like to get started, head over to Blizzard's Free Character Migration FAQ.
Rumor: Maxis insider claims SimCity servers not essential
Though EA's official stance on SimCity's persistent Internet connection has been that it's absolutely required for the core game to function, a report from Rock, Paper, Shotgun claims that is not the case. An inside source who asked to remain anonymous told RPS the online servers are "not handling any of the computation done to simulate the city you are playing."According to the source, the servers are coordinating social messages between cities in a region, as well as "cloud storage of save games, interfacing with Origin, and all of that. But for the game itself? No, they're not doing anything."Even when the servers go down, certain cities have stayed online and playable for a period of time, suggesting off-site computation is not entangled in the main gameplay loop. The RPS source claims servers are also being used to repeatedly check for instances of hacking and cheating – and the game's verification messages to servers are creating queues and hampering responsiveness.Finally, the source casts doubt on EA's claims that a single-player version of this SimCity would be impossible to produce. "It wouldn't take very much engineering to give you a limited single-player game without all the nifty region stuff." EA's current public reasoning about why the game needs to stay online has done little to quell frustration voiced over the game's tremendous launch issues.Joystiq has contacted EA for comment regarding the source's claims.
Camelot Unchained is all about pride
When you play Camelot Unchained, Mark Jacobs wants you to be proud. Not just about your decision to play his game, but about every individual choice you made in playing that game. He wants you to have pride about your race, pride about your server, pride about your guild, possibly even pride about your choice of keyboard. That's the entire point of the latest development blog post: pride and the elements that build up to player pride. Jacobs argues that there are two sides to making every part of a character a source of pride. In many cases, such as with races and factions, it's important that the lore be appealing and resonant with players. In other cases, such as classes, it's more important that each feels powerful and unique while still feeling as if it needs something more. The entry goes into detail on several points about pride, ranging from factions to servers, and if you're eyeing the game in anticipation, it's worth looking through the points of pride.
EA adding more SimCity servers over next two days
In order to help get more people connected to SimCity during a launch period plagued by intermittent (at best) access and data loss, EA has begun adding more servers for the online-only game."What we are doing is deploying more servers over the coming two days which will alleviate many of the ongoing issues," senior producer Kip Katsarellis said on the EA forum. "We are also paying close attention to all the bug reports we are receiving from our fans. We've already pushed several updates in the last few days. Our live ops team is working 24/7 to resolve issues and ensure that bug fixes roll into the game as quickly as possible."On Tuesday, EA expressed its confidence that Origin services would be "stable" for international launches occurring later in the week. Despite that confidence, the Oceanic servers crashed at launch today.
Anarchy Online set to finally merge servers
How do you get together after 12 years of separation? That's a question the Anarchy Online community is going to have to answer tomorrow as the game undergoes a server merge, bringing together two communities that have been apart for more than a decade. PvP will be chaotic, the state of community relations will be chaotic, cats and dogs will be living next to one another... you get the idea, general mass hysteria. Both servers will be brought offline at 5:00 a.m. EST on February 26th. The maintenance required to merge the two servers is expected to run for 24 hours, with the usual caveat that it may run longer depending on any issues encountered during the process. Afterwards, players will be able to log in to the new combined server and start welcoming their new neighbors... or start shooting them in their faces for property rights. As we said, general mass hysteria. [Thanks to David for the tip!]
Turbine's servers down 34 hours and counting, studio comps players
A period of global maintenance for Turbine's servers is now pushing well into its second day of downtime for all of the studio's games. Dungeons and Dragons Online, Lord of the Rings Online, and both Asheron's Call titles have been offline since 6:00 a.m. on February 14th. The servers were scheduled to be brought back online after 24 hours, but as of the time of this writing, they are still down as the studio works on issues that "cropped up during the night." The downtime was to overhaul the billing system and other back-end projects. LotRO CM Sapience posted this update at 4:20 p.m. EST: "We are working to resolve ongoing issues with our system maintenance. At this time we do not have a specific estimate for when the game servers will be available. Our goal is to make the games available as soon as possible. However we would like to advise players that the service may continue to be unavailable this evening. We will continue to provide updates as we have them. "As a thank you for your understanding and patience during this downtime, all Premium and VIP players who have logged into their account in the past 30 days (as of 6:00 a.m. EST on 2/14/2013) will receive 250 Turbine points. In addition, all VIP players who have logged in during the same period will have their accounts credited one day of VIP time for each day of downtime, plus one additional day. All points and additional time will be granted automatically as soon as our regular service is restored and stable."
PSA: Halo 2 PC multiplayer servers going offline Feb. 15
Online multiplayer matches in the PC version of Halo 2 are about to get a lot lonelier than they already are, as Bungie will be pulling the plug on Friday, February 15. Matches over LAN will still be possible of course, but as far as playing through Bungie's servers, that's all she wrote. "We've been monitoring the population for months," the announcement reads, "and it's been peaking consistently at approximately 20 players or less." So! If you're one of the 20 people left in the whole of existence that are still playing Halo 2, allow us to officially welcome you back to society. You'll be pleased to know that several other Halo games have been released in your absence.
Guild Wars 2 will soon offer paid server transfers and guesting
Paid server transfers and the ability to "guest" to other servers have been in the cards for Guild Wars 2 for, like, ever. Well before launch, players knew that those would eventually be features of the game. Until today, though, we never knew precisely when they'd come about. ArenaNet's Martin Kerstein has given us the final word: Both features will be coming in with the January patch on the 28th. They're part of a series of improvements and updates the company plans to make throughout early 2013. Guesting gives players the ability to join friends on other servers to participate in pretty much everything but World vs. World. Server transfers will cost an unknown number of gems and be limited to once every seven days, so make sure you're on your desired home server before the patch hits on the 28th. Head on over to the official announcement for a full guesting how-to.
Allods Online Russia opens up subscription-based server
The Russian branch of Allods Online made an interesting move and opened up a subscription server for an otherwise free-to-play MMO. The catch and selling point of the server is that its players won't be able to access the cash shop at all. Every character will be on an even playing field in terms of perks and boosts. Certain quality of life items will be available for gold or as quest rewards, but no one will be able to just buy perks outright. You can read the full FAQ here. (If you don't read Russian, we suggest a translator.) [We don't speak Russian, so thanks to intrepid tipster Tandarighttanon for bringing this to our attention.]
New GameSpy owners Glu Mobile shut down multiplayer servers without notice
Players of quite a few old PC games, including Neverwinter Nights, Microsoft Flight Simulator X, SWAT 4, Hidden and Dangerous 2, and Star Wars: Battlefront, are reporting that the GameSpy-powered multiplayer servers behind those titles and more have been shut off without notice. The GameSpy service was sold to publisher Glu Mobile from IGN a little while ago, so it's that company that's apparently responsible for shutting down these servers.Another one of the games affected was Sniper Elite, and developer Rebellion says its hands are tied: Glu wants to charge a lot of money to turn the servers back on, and Rebellion doesn't have the resources to transfer the multiplayer on this old title to another service. Rebellion points out that fans of the game did get seven years of service for free. And while GameSpy's matchmaking is down, players of some of these games can still connect up online manually by IP.Angry players have taken to GameSpy's old Facebook page to register their wrath, but there's no official response just yet.
IBM manufactures light-based 'nanophotonic' chips to let the terabytes flow
IBM's taken a large step toward computer chips that use photons instead of electrons by manufacturing the first 90nm silicon-based optical processing modules. It did so using the CMOS nanophotonics technology we first saw back in 2010, creating tranceivers capable of 25Gbps transfer speeds. By multiplexing a large number of those streams to a single fibre, "terrabytes of data" per second could flow between distant computer systems," according to IBM. The 90 nanometer light circuits should allow data-hungry servers or supercomputers to scale up rapidly in speed "for the next decade, and at the desired low cost," according to the researchers. It's now primed for commercial development, meaning we could see an end to bottlenecks in systems "a few centimeters or a few kilometers" apart from each other. Check the PR for the detailed technical skinny.
Battle Dungeon goes offline due to piracy
Battle Dungeon is a tactical strategy multiplayer game for iOS that arrived on the App Store about a week ago, but it's no longer there. The developer announced on its website that it has pulled the game from the store due to piracy. The US$4.99 game (also supported by in-app purchases) experienced so many online players playing pirated copies that the developer, Hunted Cow, says that it couldn't keep the crowded servers running with the money coming in, and had to pull the plug. They're offering refunds to anyone who bought the game outright, and money back for any in-app purchases. TUAW checked in with the developers directly about this, and they told us that the team is considering its options right now. They say that "hopefully we'll be back in business very soon." The original website post said the game would be down "for the foreseeable future," but the devs now say to expect an announcement on what's next as soon as possible. We've heard about problems with app piracy before -- it's relatively easy for almost anyone to grab an app from the App Store, and then use widely available programs and exploits to share that app with people who haven't purchased it. That seems to be what's happened here. But fortunately for Hunted Cow, there are also a few ways to fight piracy (especially with a title that requires online play), so odds are that we'll see this game back up and running much more legitimately very soon. [via Touch Arcade]
What does community mean in World of Warcraft?
When I first started playing World of Warcraft, in late 2004 on the server Azjol-Nerub, I knew the people in the guild my wife introduced me to and that was about it. Via that guild, I eventually met people who brought me to another guild, one that raided fairly heavily. That guild moved to Norgannon, becoming one of its top raiding guilds up until the end of Wrath of the Lich King when it moved servers and factions, and I didn't go along for the ride. I instead moved to Cenarion Circle, then Sisters of Elune. In all of this, my sense of community in the game has always been very heavily guild focused. This means that when people talk about having developed a sense of server community via pugging Stratholme or Shadow Labyrinth back in the day, they're talking about a game I never played. When I was pugging in early BC, before I started raiding again, I was miserable dealing with non-guildmates who often wouldn't listen, demanded a tank with more AoE than a warrior, refused to CC or refused to do so on the targets I asked, and were otherwise often awful. This isn't to say I didn't have any good pick up groups in those days, but if I wanted to get anything done I often had to wait for guild groups. One of the reasons I heralded the advent of the Dungeon Finder was that instead of bothering my guildies so I could get some runs in, I just queued up. No more "LF Tank and 2 CC for Shattered Halls, Paladin tank preferred" or whatever the flavor of the month is. Not that we were running Shattered Halls anymore by that point, of course.
ARM chief tosses Moore's Law out with the trash, says efficiency rules all
ARM CEO Warren East already has a tendency to be more than a bit outspoken on the future of computing, and he just escalated the war of words with an assault on the industry's sacred cow: Moore's Law. After some prompting by MIT Technology Review during a chat, East argued that power efficiency is "actually what matters," whether it's a phone or a server farm. Making ever more complex and power-hungry processors to obey Moore's Law just limits how many chips you can fit in a given space, he said. Not that the executive is about to accept Intel's position that ARM isn't meant for performance, as he saw the architecture scaling to high speeds whenever there was a large enough power supply to back it up. East's talk is a bit long on theory and short on practice as of today -- a Samsung Chromebook isn't going to make Gordon Moore have second thoughts -- but it's food for thought in an era where ARM is growing fast, and even Microsoft isn't convinced that speed rules everything.
Google takes us inside their data centers, shows you where the internet lives (video)
Ever fancied a look inside one of Google's cavernous server farms? Given the security issues, the company isn't likely to just let anyone mooch around -- but understands if you're curious. That's why it's adding a special collection to its Street View data that lets you wander inside without a big trek to Iowa, Belgium or Finland. If you'd like to sample some of the delights, you can check out our gallery or head down past the break to get a video tour of the facility in Lenoir, NC. [Image Credit: Connie Zhou / Google]
Some fun uses for a remote Mac Mini server
MacStadium does remote Mac mini hosting, offering customers a fully connected Mac mini in a secure, controlled datacenter (just like the folks at MacMiniColo, who we've visited and written about before). If you have a Mac mini already, you can even send it to them for hosting, or you can rent or buy one yourself right from the company. Having a remote server all for yourself can be very helpful, and using a Mac mini for the job can be one of the cheapest and easiest ways to do so. In fact, not only does MacStadium run hosting, but the company has also been putting up blog posts over the last month or so, going through a few different ways to make use of a connected mini for yourself. You could install a remote Minecraft server on it, for example, creating a world that you and your friends can log into anytime. Or you could set up something like Kerio Connect, which serves as a Microsoft Exchange-style way to share and send email, contacts and calendars across a number of different users. Obviously, these tutorials are for MacStadium's hosted minis, but they should work for any Mac mini you've set up to be accessed remotely. Apple's littlest Mac is relatively cheap but still very powerful and MacStadium's tutorials could be a start to help you get the most out of your remote mini.
Intel treats servers to mineral oil bath in year-long cooling test
If putting liquid cooling pumps, hoses and water inside a highly electrified computer case doesn't seem crazy enough, how about just dunking the whole kit and kaboodle into oil? That's what Intel did with a rack full of servers, and if the oil in question is of the non-conducting mineral kind, it's actually a very chill idea. After a year of testing with Green Revolution Cooling, the chip giant saw some of the best power usage efficiency ratings it's seen, with the oil-cooled PCs easily besting identical, air-cooled units. The company believes more adapted heat sinks could push the gains even further, and affirmed that the technology was safe and didn't affect hardware reliability. Cost savings could be enormous, as server rooms wouldn't need raised floors, air conditioning units or chillers -- if you don't consider oil spills and ruined clothing, of course. [Image credit: Green Revolution]
Microsoft delivers Windows Server 2012, puts the enterprise on cloud 8
Forget Windows 8, Windows Server 2012 is where it's at... if you're a corporate IT manager, that is. Microsoft has just posted the finished version of its suit-and-tie OS for immediate sale in download form. Not surprisingly given Microsoft's big cloud push, the emphasis with the upgrade is on improving how well the software scales for internet hosting -- the company wants one common backbone that can handle as little as a small e-mail server to large-scale Azure deployments and virtualization. Server 2012 is also defined by what you won't find: while the Metro-style interface from the platform's Windows 8 cousin shows its face in the Essentials version, it's noticeably stripped down and goes away in the more advanced tiers. The real shakeup for some might just be the new price points, which drop the cost by a large amount for offices that don't need more than a slice of what the all-out Datacenter edition has to offer. We'll admit that most of our attention as end users will be focused on what happens several weeks from now, but if you're one of those rare server operators that can't wait to start testing a new OS release almost immediately, you've got a head start on most of us.
