One Server or Many Servers?

[Morreion]

The Daily Grind: One server vs. many servers (Massively)

...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.

I'm ambivalent on this question. I like communities small enough that I know many of the players well and this happens when there are many servers, but a single thriving large community has its good points. I'd only specify that if a game has a single server that the world be huge enough to accommodate modest regional communities within the world. That would perhaps be a perfect balance. Imagine being from your own 'country' and being able to visit other 'countries' full of other communities far away.

[Regolyth]

I see both good reasons and bad to have one server. On the up side, it's only one server that needs maintenance and everyone who plays, plays together. You don't have to worry about splitting up guilds or groups of friends who like this server over that. You also don't have to worry about population imbalances.

However some of the good things are also problems, like if the server goes down, you can't log on to another to play. Also, there's the cross realming aspects for different factions (although I don't think this is as big of an issue as people make it out to be). Another bad thing is server types, like free-for-all versus normal rules.

Also, what if you hit your population cap on your one server after a year or two? A cap where you have no other choice but to make a new server. No one will want to go to that one server over the one that played on for the last year. Unless you offer transfers. Even then, most people won't move.

I think this situation would be better handled with a small number of servers, rather than 10+ like we're used to. Maybe three to five servers.

[dotty]

After having played several games with the many server build, I am fast growing to love the one server design. Everything I do and gain is still with me no matter where I travel to. I can easily bounce from one community to another and back again. It's also much easier to help friends walk into a brand new world when you know where they will be.

Jan 26, 2010 11:17:19 GMT -5 Morreion said:

I'm ambivalent on this question. I like communities small enough that I know many of the players well and this happens when there are many servers, but a single thriving large community has its good points. I'd only specify that if a game has a single server that the world be huge enough to accommodate modest regional communities within the world. That would perhaps be a perfect balance. Imagine being from your own 'country' and being able to visit other 'countries' full of other communities far away.

I have this now. Both the large and small communities all mingling around on one massive server. AND the literal countries to travel around and visit. The other day I went to the see the Eiffel tower, and spoke with a few of the french, traveled some more and found the twin towers still standing proudly over the city of NY, and than went 'home' to my small medieval community to sing songs and beat on drums around a campfire.


And for Reg - The way this particular system is built, there is no population cap. Ever.

If the worst happens and the main server goes down - it only means you cant teleport to another community, buy items, or log into the world. Logins would be the only problem, and yes it happens occasionally. If you are already logged in, you can still walk from place to place and chat with your friends. More frequently, a single piece of land is over loaded or has glitches and that one tiny piece of land is restarted.

Server updates? Oh no! Long wait times every week? Noooo.. A rolling restart is done throughout the world. This means when you get a message the land you are on is about to restart... you move to another one.

I was once in a single building that covered just the corner pieces of 4 different 'lands'. A rolling restart came through and it was a traveling game to get the crowd of 40+ people to walk off the 1 corner that was restarting to one of the other 3, watch 1/4 of the building vanish into an empty void, pop back into existance, and than walk back onto the piece that had restarted already and watch the other 3 vanish one at a time. Barely an interruption in the show we were there to see for an important server update.

[Regolyth]

Jan 26, 2010 13:56:15 GMT -5 dotty said:

And for Reg - The way this particular system is built, there is no population cap. Ever.

I don't mean a cap as in a population cap put there by the designers to limit the number of people on a given server (usually for management purposes). I mean a population cap in the sense that the server has reached the limits of the computers it's housed on. A computer can only hold so much information (granted that the amount of space that is required to house character information is rather small).

However there's still the server stability. If the game only has a thousand subscribers, you don't have much to worry about. However if the game has 5,000 subscribers (that are actively logged in at the same time), then your servers are probably being pushed to their max, and about to break.

DAoC currently only has one server and the game has picked up quite a bit of a following recently I hear that it has over 4k people on during primetime, and it's starting to get really laggy. DAoC is getting laggy because the limits of it's server capacity is being reached. No amount of upgrading is going to solve this. It's just a physical limitation of current technology.

It works on the same basis as cable. If you have cable broadband, you could have an extremely fast connection. But that's all dependent on where you live, and your neighbors. If you live in an apartment complex, and have cable, then you're sharing a connection with everyone else in that area. You're all running through the same line to get to your ISP (provided you're all on the same ISP, which 90% of the time you will be).

The pipeline of information is only so big, and you're trying to cram a hundred or more people down that same pipe. Some people might just be surfing the web, which isn't pulling/pushing much information through that pipe. Others might be gaming, which is a little more taxing. Still others are downloading music or whatnot, and are severely pushing the system. This results in a slower connection for everyone connected. This is why if you get online during the day, you have super fast downloads and connection speeds. However if you get during primetime, your connection is really slow and you time out occasionally (depending on how good your wiring and ISP is).

This is what I mean by server capacity, not the artificial limits imposed by designers. Eventually with too many people on the same server, the game will just become laggy, at which point the developer needs to open another server to alleviate the strain.

Sorry to go off on a tangent like that. I don't know what got into me.

[dotty]

Jan 27, 2010 10:23:25 GMT -5 Regolyth said:

I don't mean a cap as in a population cap put there by the designers to limit the number of people on a given server (usually for management purposes). I mean a population cap in the sense that the server has reached the limits of the computers it's housed on.

I know what you meant, and I still stand by what I said. There is NO population cap in Second Life as a whole.

The population caps that do exist are on the individual pieces of land (This is where your computer limits come in). 'Mainland' pieces can hold 40 people, 'Islands' can hold 80+, and the new cheaper islands can hold 20. The 4 piece building I spoke of earlier was on mainland, so it could house 40x4 in one small area. If an event in SL is packed full of people, yes it's possible you can't join in that particular event. Find another among the millions available. Logging into SL itself, there is no cap.