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Swtor Adding Mega Server Technology

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  • BardusBardus Member Posts: 460
    Originally posted by thamighty213
    Originally posted by Wicoa

    Under any other name this is just server merger's.  The hero engine cannot handle more than a few people in the same zone let alone 1000s on a mega server.

    Nor can the cryengine but AIon pulled it off,  nor can the unreal engine but DCUO pulled it off.

     

    Think of a game engine in the same manner as a car engine.

     

    Give a stock Ford Focus engine to me and it would remain a stock engine give it to the Focus rally team and it becomes a 400BHP+ monster with the only thing original of it being the block.

    Nice analogy. I'm not faulting Hero at all. I know TOR took the engine as their own long before Hero had the engine any where near ready. For TOR the engine is Hero by name only. I don't have a clue what TOR did to that engine and I don't think they do either. It's like all they had was the Focus engine's block and tried adding only after market parts to complete the engine and no one knows how to set the timing. It hasn't been hitting on all cylinders at all and I'm stopping way short from blaming the engine before looking for operator error.

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  • seldomseen13seldomseen13 Member Posts: 16
    Originally posted by thamighty213
    Originally posted by Wicoa

    Under any other name this is just server merger's.  The hero engine cannot handle more than a few people in the same zone let alone 1000s on a mega server.

    Nor can the cryengine but AIon pulled it off,  nor can the unreal engine but DCUO pulled it off.

     

    Think of a game engine in the same manner as a car engine.

     

    Give a stock Ford Focus engine to me and it would remain a stock engine give it to the Focus rally team and it becomes a 400BHP+ monster with the only thing original of it being the block.

    Although I do not have the programming knowledge to address the veracity of this statement, I can assure you theres no way I would let the swtor team anywhere near the engine of my truck.

     

    It just seemed to me as I leveled in swtor that many of the design decisions must have been made to accomodate the limitations of the sorta hero engine.  I wouldnt expect the engine to thrive in a heavily populated server, but I could be wrong. By eliminating Ilum, at least they got rid of the open world pvp which we know it couldnt handle. Just the thought of a truly massive battle in Ilum lags my whole block. I would guess if the engine could handle massive, the game would be more massive

  • thamighty213thamighty213 Member UncommonPosts: 1,637
    Originally posted by seldomseen13
    Originally posted by thamighty213
    Originally posted by Wicoa

    Under any other name this is just server merger's.  The hero engine cannot handle more than a few people in the same zone let alone 1000s on a mega server.

    Nor can the cryengine but AIon pulled it off,  nor can the unreal engine but DCUO pulled it off.

     

    Think of a game engine in the same manner as a car engine.

     

    Give a stock Ford Focus engine to me and it would remain a stock engine give it to the Focus rally team and it becomes a 400BHP+ monster with the only thing original of it being the block.

    Although I do not have the programming knowledge to address the veracity of this statement, I can assure you theres no way I would let the swtor team anywhere near the engine of my truck.

     

    It just seemed to me as I leveled in swtor that many of the design decisions must have been made to accomodate the limitations of the sorta hero engine.  I wouldnt expect the engine to thrive in a heavily populated server, but I could be wrong. By eliminating Ilum, at least they got rid of the open world pvp which we know it couldnt handle. Just the thought of a truly massive battle in Ilum lags my whole block. I would guess if the engine could handle massive, the game would be more massive

    It isnt always the engine at fault though,    It could be a poor art decision at the core of it.

     

    I'll provide an example from a game I worked on,  we struggled to get more than 50 players on screen without massive performance hits,  this didnt really have much to do with the engine but rather with the art directors decision to have 13000 poly's in our models (thats 4.5 x the amount of a WOW character to give you some context.

     

    If anything the simple fact our programmers then could limit the engine to only show 50 on screen was a great help.

     

    I don't disagree that the Hero engine wasnt a great decision though I'm not convinced that building the most expensive game in history was a wise decision on a unproven engine which NO developers within the company had any experience of.

     

    Not a TOR fanboi far from it I havent logged in days but I can certainly say some strides have been made to make it perform considerably better,  My i7 740QM 8GB Ram GTX 460m laptop no longer crawls to a standstill on fleet can run everything on high now whereas previously it crawled to sub 10 FPS in fleet.

    At the moment its single biggest issue is population and I play on The Red Eclipse the 2nd busiest EU server,   end game pop is fine but good luck getting groups for leveling Flashpoints.

    This may not even be a population issue SWTOR just does a horrible job of congesting the population so you could have the 4 guys you need for a flashpoint but 1s on his ship,  1 on that planet, 1 on fleet, 1 collecting datacrons,  and with zero means to communicate.

  • GorillaGorilla Member UncommonPosts: 2,235
    Originally posted by NorseGod
    Originally posted by Gorilla

    Am I the only EA sceptic here that thinks that this is a really cunning way to put a positive spin on server merges?

    I guess I may not be as I did not read the whole thread having only a passing interest in SWTOR nowadays.

    It's worth checking out the posts.

    Done I'm tiring of D3 so thought I'd waste some time. there was I thinking I was 'special', apparently not. :)

  • ignore_meignore_me Member, Newbie CommonPosts: 1,987

    it's a catch 22. With optimization and engine performance where it is, mega-servers will lead to mega-lag. It's terrible but it's unfortunately true.

     

    http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=427878 

    Survivor of the great MMORPG Famine of 2011

  • MixxathonMixxathon Member UncommonPosts: 28
    Originally posted by Greyhooff

    SWTOR "super server" = SWTOR normal server + more than 10 people actually playing.

     

    Oh, I get it! You do not like SW:TOR so you speculate wildly to make your point.

     

  • GreyhooffGreyhooff Member Posts: 654
    Originally posted by Mixxathon
    Originally posted by Greyhooff

    SWTOR "super server" = SWTOR normal server + more than 10 people actually playing.

     

    Oh, I get it! You do not like SW:TOR so you speculate wildly to make your point.

     

     

    Or perhaps you should realise all this talk of "mega servers" is nothing more than PR spin to avoid having to say what it really is: "mega server merges".

    [mod edit]

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  • echolynfanecholynfan Member UncommonPosts: 681
    Originally posted by Chrisbox

    Agreed, if they can do this it will save the game.

    Only thing that will save this game is if they add in some "mega-content" along with the Mega-Servers" :)

    Currently playing SWTOR and it's MUCH better than it was at launch.

  • RocketeerRocketeer Member UncommonPosts: 1,303

    Im afraid noone of you grasps exactly how this whole thing developed.

    See we all thought EA fired those 200 people working on SWTOR, but thats not what they did, they actually got sold(wether to other devhouses or illegal organ trader rings in turkey is unknown at this point). And from the profit they bought brand new technology, the stuff of dreams like dual core CPUs etc. Also developing games is like sailing a ship over the ocean, by firering(selling!) all those people on the "ship", and thus getting rid of ballast, they are actually picking up speed! So expect content and new technologies to come ever faster, BW and EA are truly at the cutting edge of technology with SWTOR. As a small peak into the future i can share with you that they are already working on ULTRA Servers behind the scenes. Ah what an advanced world we are living in.

  • JoeyMMOJoeyMMO Member UncommonPosts: 1,326
    Originally posted by ignore_me

    it's a catch 22. With optimization and engine performance where it is, mega-servers will lead to mega-lag. It's terrible but it's unfortunately true.

    http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=427878 

     There are sooooo many servers that don't ever get above light load these days that they could easily cut the number of servers by 5 and still not get above very heavy load. The mega server thing is most likely only PR-spin to try to cover up the fact that population is dropping fast for those that prefer to believe that. It seems to be the new PR speak, with improved server technology we can reduce the number of servers!

    The new servers won't be a lot more mega than the current ones. They will try not to direct more players towards the new servers than they can handle on those servers. The lag shouldn't be worse than it is now on the few current servers that still have a healthy population. It should be a good thing for the people playing on nearly empty servers though. Nobody likes to pay monthly for an empty online game.

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  • WalterWhiteWalterWhite Member UncommonPosts: 411

    I didn't realise that there were enough players to warrant a super server:/

  • WarjinWarjin Member UncommonPosts: 1,216
    Originally posted by Scummyman

    I didn't realise that there were enough players to warrant a super server:/

    You do know Swtor is still the second largest sub based MMO in the World right?

    1. WoW with 10.3ish

    2. Swtor with 1.3ish (2 would of been Aion Global but now it's free to play and most of those subs were in Asia)

    http://www.mmodata.net/ Proof.

    People act as if Swtor is on the same bracket as the other MMO's, it's not it's in the big leagues when it comes to MMO subs, so in other words unless you are playing WoW, Swtor still out subs any other MMO in the World by a country mile.

     

  • jtcgsjtcgs Member Posts: 1,777
    Originally posted by Warjin

    You do know Swtor is still the second largest sub based MMO in the World right?

    ok now name me another MMORPG that LOST over 1 million subs after 5 months after release...

    go on...name one.

    I can...SWTOR.

    2.4 million units sold, 1.3 million subs retained with a 30 free day offer...

    “I hope we shall crush...in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country." ~Thomes Jefferson

  • WarjinWarjin Member UncommonPosts: 1,216
    Originally posted by jtcgs
    Originally posted by Warjin

    You do know Swtor is still the second largest sub based MMO in the World right?

    ok now name me another MMORPG that LOST over 1 million subs after 5 months after release...

    go on...name one.

    I can...SWTOR.

    2.4 million units sold, 1.3 million subs retained with a 30 free day offer...

    Lol name me any other sub based MMO that even HAD a million subs other then WoW?

    They only had 1.7 subs now down to 1.3, yes they sold 2.4 units and by sold that could mean small stores that payed for many copies of Swtor but havn't resold or gold farmers that do buy more then one copy incase one gets ban, to tell you the truth I really don't know, but what I do know is they only had 1.7 active subs at any given time.

  • zononzonon Member UncommonPosts: 28

    Wow, they have over 1 milion subs for SWTOR, really good indeed!

    /Z

  • CujoSWAoACujoSWAoA Member UncommonPosts: 1,781

  • Ice-QueenIce-Queen Member UncommonPosts: 2,483
    Originally posted by Scummyman

    I didn't realise that there were enough players to warrant a super server:/

    Guess if you have huge egos and can't admit the truth you invent something up, like Mega servers. All the dead servers they have, this is just what it is, a server merge. PR spin to save face as they close down dozens and dozens of servers. Helps them feel better when they're left with just a few servers of people, I guess. No one is fooled by this except those poor die hard SWTOR fans left.

    image

    What happens when you log off your characters????.....
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFQhfhnjYMk
    Dark Age of Camelot

  • EletherylEletheryl Member Posts: 152
    Originally posted by Warjin
    Originally posted by Scummyman

    I didn't realise that there were enough players to warrant a super server:/

    You do know Swtor is still the second largest sub based MMO in the World right?

    1. WoW with 10.3ish

    2. Swtor with 1.3ish (2 would of been Aion Global but now it's free to play and most of those subs were in Asia)

    http://www.mmodata.net/ Proof.

    People act as if Swtor is on the same bracket as the other MMO's, it's not it's in the big leagues when it comes to MMO subs, so in other words unless you are playing WoW, Swtor still out subs any other MMO in the World by a country mile.

     

    WoW have more than 10.3 mill of sub with the Asian Market, dont know how many subs they have in the west but probably less than 3 mill or so. Swtor is not even in the asia market yet. 

  • CrunkJuice2CrunkJuice2 Member Posts: 568

    "You do know Swtor is still the second largest sub based MMO in the World right?"

    id love to see how many actual subs this game has

    not counting the free trial weekend people who play for 2 days and quit.or the 6 month subscriptions who quit a month after they bought the game but didnt actually unsubscribe

    i bet its no where near the number they say they have now

     

  • SandboxSandbox Member UncommonPosts: 295

    Never did I know how right I was when i wrote the following  SWG post back in February:

    "In a year or so, maybe Lucas will realize that SWG pre-cu was the best MMO they ever got.

    200 - 250K subscriptions from a market ten times smaller than today's MMO market, and I'm not surprised if that number beats SWTOR next year.

    The fiasco with the CU and NGE will haunt Lucas and the Star Wars IP for long time.

    Just imagine if the time and money spent on CU and NGE had been used to fix the original game, in combination with the creative content updates applied when trying to save the NGE. What a game it could have been." """""

    http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/post/4788682#4788682

     

  • BlackUhuruBlackUhuru Member Posts: 770
    LOL... Mega Server Technology haha!

    More like Mega Server Merge, EA is pathetic!

    But I give them credit for trying to run a business with more PR staff then devs and coders.

    "It would be awesome if you could duel your companion. Then you could solo pvp".--Thanes

  • NorseGodNorseGod Member EpicPosts: 2,654
    Originally posted by BlackUhuru
    LOL... Mega Server Technology haha!

    More like Mega Server Merge, EA is pathetic!

    But I give them credit for trying to run a business with more PR staff then devs and coders.

    I'm lazy.

    Personally, I would just fix the game instead of having to come up with a new excuse for the media every week.

    But, again, I'm lazy. I can't stress that enough.

    To talk about games without the censorship, check out https://www.reddit.com/r/MMORPG/
  • RocketeerRocketeer Member UncommonPosts: 1,303
    Originally posted by Warjin
    Originally posted by Scummyman

    I didn't realise that there were enough players to warrant a super server:/

    You do know Swtor is still the second largest sub based MMO in the World right?

    1. WoW with 10.3ish

    2. Swtor with 1.3ish (2 would of been Aion Global but now it's free to play and most of those subs were in Asia)

    http://www.mmodata.net/ Proof.

    People act as if Swtor is on the same bracket as the other MMO's, it's not it's in the big leagues when it comes to MMO subs, so in other words unless you are playing WoW, Swtor still out subs any other MMO in the World by a country mile.

     

    Ehh looking at that lineage 1 and two both had far more subs going and held out a lot longer. So SWTOR at its peak had less subscribers than lineage 1 had in 2005 ... yeah im real impressed. Also that very site you list as "proof" still ranks aion higher than SWTOR in subscriptions.

    So really, besides WoW there are 3 games that had a higher peak than SWTOR, one of which is still higher and the other two did it while the total MMO subscription market(again, graph from the very same site you list as proof) was less than half of what it is today.

    Infact if you take the peaks that WHO and AoC had between 2008 and 2009, and take them as a percentage of the total MMO population back at that time, they would be comparable to a 1mil+ peak these days. So SWTOR, did a little better than WHO, while costing how much more? Comparing it to Aion, a game with no IP at all behind it is almost embarassing because that game peaked at 4 million subs in 2010, still had more than 2 mil subs beginning 2012, AND is considered a game that has pretty much failed and had to go F2P.

     

    And yeah i know SWTOR did not get released in the far eastern market, i also know the reason for it. Because it will tank even worse there than it did here, not to mention having to redo the whole VOs in like 2-3 new languages will cost far to much money to even consider for a game like this. Not to mention that the chinese ministeries will probably find some anti chinese propaganda in it and ban it unless they take out humanoids or LSs or something. Lord knows they managed with Avatar and that was basicly just pocahontas with giant smurfs.

     

    Edit: Hell even EvE Online has 400k subs, and thats a 9 year old INDIE game with about the highest monthly rates in the industry(in € EvEs sub is 15% more expensive than SWTOR). So what? Having 3 times the subs of a fricking Indie MMO is bragging rights now? Well not to me, not if you have EA and one of the biggest advertising campaigns in the history of MMOs behind you and literally every decent size supermarketed had your product on stand right in the entryway. Its a failure, and the fact that its surrounded by even bigger failures is neither an excuse nor should it make them feel better. A looser that looks down on other loosers is still a looser.

    Honestly, look where SWTOR started, the kind of backing it had. And now look where it is now, does anyone really think thats any good? They are still claculating wether they have made a profit with this or not. You know what? Those investors are real sorry now, cause if they had just bought apple shares instead of investing in swtor they would have trippled their money instead of worrying about breaking even. This game is a financial failure, you don't fire the devs(sorry restructure) of a successful game, and never once has a ... restructuring(sorry firering) of half your dev base lead to an improved product. Thats the kind of crap you pull shortly before server mergers and before going F2P.

  • CrunkJuice2CrunkJuice2 Member Posts: 568

    "it's in the big leagues when it comes to MMO subs"

     

    you mean the big leagues of making there sub count look better then it really is

     

    meaning,lets add 6 month subs instead of going by the standard 1 month sub model.but whatever,subs dont make a good mmo.quality content does,and swtor is lacking in both

     

     

  • ValentinaValentina Member RarePosts: 2,077
    Originally posted by Rocketeer
    Originally posted by Warjin
    Originally posted by Scummyman

    I didn't realise that there were enough players to warrant a super server:/

    You do know Swtor is still the second largest sub based MMO in the World right?

    1. WoW with 10.3ish

    2. Swtor with 1.3ish (2 would of been Aion Global but now it's free to play and most of those subs were in Asia)

    http://www.mmodata.net/ Proof.

    People act as if Swtor is on the same bracket as the other MMO's, it's not it's in the big leagues when it comes to MMO subs, so in other words unless you are playing WoW, Swtor still out subs any other MMO in the World by a country mile.

     

    Ehh looking at that lineage 1 and two both had far more subs going and held out a lot longer. So SWTOR at its peak had less subscribers than lineage 1 had in 2005 ... yeah im real impressed. Also that very site you list as "proof" still ranks aion higher than SWTOR in subscriptions.

    So really, besides WoW there are 3 games that had a higher peak than SWTOR, one of which is still higher and the other two did it while the total MMO subscription market(again, graph from the very same site you list as proof) was less than half of what it is today.

    Infact if you take the peaks that WHO and AoC had between 2008 and 2009, and take them as a percentage of the total MMO population back at that time, they would be comparable to a 1mil+ peak these days. So SWTOR, did a little better than WHO, while costing how much more? Comparing it to Aion, a game with no IP at all behind it is almost embarassing because that game peaked at 4 million subs in 2010, still had more than 2 mil subs beginning 2012, AND is considered a game that has pretty much failed and had to go F2P.

     

    And yeah i know SWTOR did not get released in the far eastern market, i also know the reason for it. Because it will tank even worse there than it did here, not to mention having to redo the whole VOs in like 2-3 new languages will cost far to much money to even consider for a game like this. Not to mention that the chinese ministeries will probably find some anti chinese propaganda in it and ban it unless they take out humanoids or LSs or something. Lord knows they managed with Avatar and that was basicly just pocahontas with giant smurfs.

     

    Edit: Hell even EvE Online has 400k subs, and thats a 9 year old INDIE game with about the highest monthly rates in the industry(in € EvEs sub is 15% more expensive than SWTOR). So what? Having 3 times the subs of a fricking Indie MMO is bragging rights now? Well not to me, not if you have EA and one of the biggest advertising campaigns in the history of MMOs behind you and literally every decent size supermarketed had your product on stand right in the entryway. Its a failure, and the fact that its surrounded by even bigger failures is neither an excuse nor should it make them feel better. A looser that looks down on other loosers is still a looser.

    Honestly, look where SWTOR started, the kind of backing it had. And now look where it is now, does anyone really think thats any good? They are still claculating wether they have made a profit with this or not. You know what? Those investors are real sorry now, cause if they had just bought apple shares instead of investing in swtor they would have trippled their money instead of worrying about breaking even. This game is a financial failure, you don't fire the devs(sorry restructure) of a successful game, and never once has a ... restructuring(sorry firering) of half your dev base lead to an improved product. Thats the kind of crap you pull shortly before server mergers and before going F2P.

    You don't know what you're talking about Rocketeer. lol. Lineage 2 did NOT have even close to 1 million SUBSCRIPTIONS when it was released. It had 1 million accounts created after a several month period after it launched. SW:TOR is by all means the fastest growing MMO, and the biggest debut for an MMO, ever. Period. Whether you like the game or not, that's just the indisputable fact, and those are the milestones that SW:TOR reached. Also, they've already localized the game for many foreign languages, and has already launched in an asian country as well as a few middle eastern countries with full localization supported. As for how SW:TOR is holding up right now, things don't look great but they probably also look far worse than they really are. They made a few mistakes in the design of the game, one of them is being rectified with 1.3, so by the time 1.5 hits I'm sure the game will be doing significantly better. As much as I love the subscription business model, I truly believe that it's time has come and gone, people will play new subscription MMO's for a couple of months and then they cancel their subscriptions mostly because they don't really want to add to any bills they have right now, people want to see where their money is going and the market is catering to a generation of customers who have grown up in economic hardship, and therefor can't really justify paying for a video game service like this anymore.

    The layoffs BioWare had to do, functionality speaking haven't even really effected the games continued development and their dev team is bigger than almost every dev team for an MMO out there right now, and as long as they can maintain 500k subscriptions then their game will continue to fall into positive profit margins for both BioWare & EA. I don't think they'll have trouble keeping 500k subs, but I do think that hybrid/freemium business models are the future for this genre and they'd be wise to move in that direction, as would any other AAA MMO title in the future. MegaServers are also the future of this genre, and I'm surprised they didn't launch with them in the first place, as I think other AAA MMO titles should be doing, as well.

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