Agreed, I totally hate the shard world server system that many games have and they think it is acceptable because the previous games did it.
We have the technology to make a massive virtual world. So why are games segregating players into servers of 2k-5k players? Because its cheap and easy!!!
I commend Eve online for truely making an innovative game.
It isn't always an viable option, depending on the gameplay.
EVE-o is an special game - Each system is huge, planets, space stations, astroid fields with NPC spawns.. And it's quite fast to produce another one. But when you travel around in the systems, they're very much alike.
Imagine if many of the fantasy MMORPGs took this route. A good example would be World of Warcraft, since many developers dreams of filling their empty pockets. WoW roughly have 40-50 times as many players as EVE-o. Fitting all of them into one world, would require.. Alot of work. How would the areas look? It would ofcourse take an EVE-o aproach - You see, EVE-o's areas consist of 99% nothingness and 1% astroids, planets, stations, NPCs, gates and so on. World of Warcraft could create a desert. Walk for 4 hours, and there'll be an oasis with a few mobs. Head the other way for four hours, and there'll be a small settlement. Then you will have to create a world big enough to hold 7-8 million players. Wouldn't work in a fantasy world, since many people actually enjoy the unique structures, objects, monsters and so on they find throughout the world. EVE-o is a niche game, aiming for a different crowd. The current state of EVE-o doesn't offer much to any explorer type at all. So you accept mediocrity because it is satus quoe.
Wow was not designed to support players on one world server, that is why it cannot. Eve was, that is why it can.
Two completely different games. Wich one is innovative and wich one is mediocre?
Please don't act like a sheep and rely on Wow sales numbers to support your oppinion. The fact is there are games with better features out there. I am merely commending a game like Eve for pushing the envelope instead of dumbing itself down to appeal to the masses. You're totaly missing my point.
EVE-O and World of Warcraft are two ENTIRELY different genres of MMORPG.
One exist of the vast space, with a few objects here and there.
The other consists of a continent, fully fleshed out with textures everywhere.
Following your line of thougth here, World of Warcraft would be a much better game if they would have created one very very very very very very very large desert where there was only something to do every 10th hour of walking. Did you know that hyperdrive isn't normaly associated with fantasy games? That is sci-fi for you there, bud. Read my post again. I believe I said that they are "two completely different games".
My point was that any game can handle what it was designed to do. And designing an fantasy world to hold 8 million people is simply not possible, unless you want to create a world without character.
Take a visual moment - You're now able to land on every planet in the EVE-o univers, and each is totally unique, it's own kind of mobs, it's own kind of NPCs and structures, it's own kind of terrain.. Sounds like something anyone in this world could pull off?
Eve has about 120k-ish subscribers? Maybe more. Of which usually there are about 15-20k online, and at peak sometimes 35k on weekends.
WoW has 8.5 million subscribers. How many of these are actually playing at any one time in total on all the servers? (That's not a rehtorical question, I really don't know) but i'm gonna assume it's not even 5% because WoW has a much more casual audience.
Given that Blizzard earns around 85+ million Euros per month, compared to about 1.2 million for CCP, i'm pretty sure that if CCP can build a mega-server with that sort of budget to house 35k people, then Blizzard can actually start re-investing that money into the game and build a server which can support an average of 300-400k people. I mean with that sort of budget, PER MONTH.
Although tbh i don't know if throwing hundreds of millions at a problem like that would actually solve it. Maybe it's technically impossible. But tbh I reckon Blizzard just doesn't want to dish out the money. This isn't about the servers capable of holding that many players, it's about delivering a fantasy game that have enough content..
But let's see. If Blizzard earned 85+ million Euros a month(Which they dont. The raw number is probaly around 120.000.000$. Blizzard is a part of Vivendi Universal, and that's where the majority of the money goes too. Blizzard is also considerably bigger, got more GMs, more developers, more buildings.. Well, just more expenses), then blizzard would be capable of delivering a server hub capable of holding 3.000.000 players.
If the average player in WoW spend about 5% of their time ingame, then he'd spend 72 minutes a day logged on. It would take him 260 days of playing, with that schedule, to hit lvl 60(Average around 13 days of gametime). The average player spends about 2-3 months leveling a character to 60. So it would only be fair to guess that around 15% of the players are online at once. Alright my WoW player numbers were off quite a lot, but then I was only guessing
Even so, with 120 million bucks (which is actually 88 million euros, and I had said 85+), they have massive profits. All the GMs, buildings, developers (they don't use those much) etc. won't cost them more than 1 million per month. That's guaranteed. Those are all negligable expenditures.
Agreed, I totally hate the shard world server system that many games have and they think it is acceptable because the previous games did it.
We have the technology to make a massive virtual world. So why are games segregating players into servers of 2k-5k players? Because its cheap and easy!!!
I commend Eve online for truely making an innovative game.
It isn't always an viable option, depending on the gameplay.
EVE-o is an special game - Each system is huge, planets, space stations, astroid fields with NPC spawns.. And it's quite fast to produce another one. But when you travel around in the systems, they're very much alike.
Imagine if many of the fantasy MMORPGs took this route. A good example would be World of Warcraft, since many developers dreams of filling their empty pockets. WoW roughly have 40-50 times as many players as EVE-o. Fitting all of them into one world, would require.. Alot of work. How would the areas look? It would ofcourse take an EVE-o aproach - You see, EVE-o's areas consist of 99% nothingness and 1% astroids, planets, stations, NPCs, gates and so on. World of Warcraft could create a desert. Walk for 4 hours, and there'll be an oasis with a few mobs. Head the other way for four hours, and there'll be a small settlement. Then you will have to create a world big enough to hold 7-8 million players. Wouldn't work in a fantasy world, since many people actually enjoy the unique structures, objects, monsters and so on they find throughout the world. EVE-o is a niche game, aiming for a different crowd. The current state of EVE-o doesn't offer much to any explorer type at all. So you accept mediocrity because it is satus quoe.
Wow was not designed to support players on one world server, that is why it cannot. Eve was, that is why it can.
Two completely different games. Wich one is innovative and wich one is mediocre?
Please don't act like a sheep and rely on Wow sales numbers to support your oppinion. The fact is there are games with better features out there. I am merely commending a game like Eve for pushing the envelope instead of dumbing itself down to appeal to the masses. You're totaly missing my point.
EVE-O and World of Warcraft are two ENTIRELY different genres of MMORPG.
One exist of the vast space, with a few objects here and there.
The other consists of a continent, fully fleshed out with textures everywhere.
Following your line of thougth here, World of Warcraft would be a much better game if they would have created one very very very very very very very large desert where there was only something to do every 10th hour of walking. Did you know that hyperdrive isn't normaly associated with fantasy games? That is sci-fi for you there, bud. Read my post again. I believe I said that they are "two completely different games".
My point was that any game can handle what it was designed to do. And designing an fantasy world to hold 8 million people is simply not possible, unless you want to create a world without character.
Take a visual moment - You're now able to land on every planet in the EVE-o univers, and each is totally unique, it's own kind of mobs, it's own kind of NPCs and structures, it's own kind of terrain.. Sounds like something anyone in this world could pull off?
Eve has about 120k-ish subscribers? Maybe more. Of which usually there are about 15-20k online, and at peak sometimes 35k on weekends.
WoW has 8.5 million subscribers. How many of these are actually playing at any one time in total on all the servers? (That's not a rehtorical question, I really don't know) but i'm gonna assume it's not even 5% because WoW has a much more casual audience.
Given that Blizzard earns around 85+ million Euros per month, compared to about 1.2 million for CCP, i'm pretty sure that if CCP can build a mega-server with that sort of budget to house 35k people, then Blizzard can actually start re-investing that money into the game and build a server which can support an average of 300-400k people. I mean with that sort of budget, PER MONTH.
Although tbh i don't know if throwing hundreds of millions at a problem like that would actually solve it. Maybe it's technically impossible. But tbh I reckon Blizzard just doesn't want to dish out the money. This isn't about the servers capable of holding that many players, it's about delivering a fantasy game that have enough content..
But let's see. If Blizzard earned 85+ million Euros a month(Which they dont. The raw number is probaly around 120.000.000$. Blizzard is a part of Vivendi Universal, and that's where the majority of the money goes too. Blizzard is also considerably bigger, got more GMs, more developers, more buildings.. Well, just more expenses), then blizzard would be capable of delivering a server hub capable of holding 3.000.000 players.
If the average player in WoW spend about 5% of their time ingame, then he'd spend 72 minutes a day logged on. It would take him 260 days of playing, with that schedule, to hit lvl 60(Average around 13 days of gametime). The average player spends about 2-3 months leveling a character to 60. So it would only be fair to guess that around 15% of the players are online at once. Alright my WoW player numbers were off quite a lot, but then I was only guessing
Even so, with 120 million bucks (which is actually 88 million euros, and I had said 85+), they have massive profits. All the GMs, buildings, developers (they don't use those much) etc. won't cost them more than 1 million per month. That's guaranteed. Those are all negligable expenditures. I've no idea how much Blizzard spends per month on their employees, electricity, rent and so on.. But 1 million is never the less 1,1% of their budget(If we're speaking euros here), which isn't exactly negligable. Wouldn't be unlikely if Vivendi took 50% of the 85 millions. Then we're down to 42,5 millions/month, and the monthly expenses rises to 2,2%.
If they had no other expenses than that, Blizzard would have earned themself 988.800.000€ during the last 3 years. I belive i saw an announcement stating Blizzard had earned 800.000.000$+, not that long ago.. So we aren't that far off at least.
Keogh:
World War II Onlines world is primarily the same texture used over and over again. The same buildings used over and over again. Don't get me wrong, i love that game.. But it's an empty world, inhabited only by players(Usually around 600-1000 in prime time, when i was playing iirc) and static defense AI. World War II Online doesn't try to create an world at all, nor do they try to create an true battlefield. The setting is almost irrelevant, since everything is focused on the gameplay instead.
Besides, speed trees are an quick and easy solution - Change the settings on the tree, put it in. Then copy it all over the world. Do a couple different trees, and you'll have a relatively varied enviroment. But i don't expect to see speed trees in the far north, nor in that burned out village.
Ok, a couple points on this topic. The first one is that EvE does a really good job of “appearing” to be one continuous world. The technical marvel here is simply the use of the stargates to divide the world into tiny areas which of course are run on different databases. The whole emptiness of space thing that was pointed out by someone else makes these databases super small compared to the type of texturing and landscapes you would see in a world like WoW.
I do like the idea of more people in a single server but of course the problem is that everyone will want to collect in a single area for trade/commerce, causing the hardware requirements for both the company and the subscriber to be pretty high. Games in the past have used multiple servers to handle the same continuous landscape. I remember the old days of UO crossing a server line would remove your criminal flag. However it is of course a cost issue, as the databases get larger and larger it becomes more difficult to search through them, adding an extra 100k entries (characters, items etc.) could need twice the hardware that a separate database would need for the same entries.
Agreed, I totally hate the shard world server system that many games have and they think it is acceptable because the previous games did it.
We have the technology to make a massive virtual world. So why are games segregating players into servers of 2k-5k players? Because its cheap and easy!!!
I commend Eve online for truely making an innovative game.
It isn't always an viable option, depending on the gameplay.
EVE-o is an special game - Each system is huge, planets, space stations, astroid fields with NPC spawns.. And it's quite fast to produce another one. But when you travel around in the systems, they're very much alike.
Imagine if many of the fantasy MMORPGs took this route. A good example would be World of Warcraft, since many developers dreams of filling their empty pockets. WoW roughly have 40-50 times as many players as EVE-o. Fitting all of them into one world, would require.. Alot of work. How would the areas look? It would ofcourse take an EVE-o aproach - You see, EVE-o's areas consist of 99% nothingness and 1% astroids, planets, stations, NPCs, gates and so on. World of Warcraft could create a desert. Walk for 4 hours, and there'll be an oasis with a few mobs. Head the other way for four hours, and there'll be a small settlement. Then you will have to create a world big enough to hold 7-8 million players. Wouldn't work in a fantasy world, since many people actually enjoy the unique structures, objects, monsters and so on they find throughout the world. EVE-o is a niche game, aiming for a different crowd. The current state of EVE-o doesn't offer much to any explorer type at all. So you accept mediocrity because it is satus quoe.
Wow was not designed to support players on one world server, that is why it cannot. Eve was, that is why it can.
Two completely different games. Wich one is innovative and wich one is mediocre?
Please don't act like a sheep and rely on Wow sales numbers to support your oppinion. The fact is there are games with better features out there. I am merely commending a game like Eve for pushing the envelope instead of dumbing itself down to appeal to the masses. You're totaly missing my point.
EVE-O and World of Warcraft are two ENTIRELY different genres of MMORPG.
One exist of the vast space, with a few objects here and there.
The other consists of a continent, fully fleshed out with textures everywhere.
Following your line of thougth here, World of Warcraft would be a much better game if they would have created one very very very very very very very large desert where there was only something to do every 10th hour of walking. Did you know that hyperdrive isn't normaly associated with fantasy games? That is sci-fi for you there, bud. Read my post again. I believe I said that they are "two completely different games".
My point was that any game can handle what it was designed to do. And designing an fantasy world to hold 8 million people is simply not possible, unless you want to create a world without character.
Take a visual moment - You're now able to land on every planet in the EVE-o univers, and each is totally unique, it's own kind of mobs, it's own kind of NPCs and structures, it's own kind of terrain.. Sounds like something anyone in this world could pull off?
Eve has about 120k-ish subscribers? Maybe more. Of which usually there are about 15-20k online, and at peak sometimes 35k on weekends.
WoW has 8.5 million subscribers. How many of these are actually playing at any one time in total on all the servers? (That's not a rehtorical question, I really don't know) but i'm gonna assume it's not even 5% because WoW has a much more casual audience.
Given that Blizzard earns around 85+ million Euros per month, compared to about 1.2 million for CCP, i'm pretty sure that if CCP can build a mega-server with that sort of budget to house 35k people, then Blizzard can actually start re-investing that money into the game and build a server which can support an average of 300-400k people. I mean with that sort of budget, PER MONTH.
Although tbh i don't know if throwing hundreds of millions at a problem like that would actually solve it. Maybe it's technically impossible. But tbh I reckon Blizzard just doesn't want to dish out the money. This isn't about the servers capable of holding that many players, it's about delivering a fantasy game that have enough content..
But let's see. If Blizzard earned 85+ million Euros a month(Which they dont. The raw number is probaly around 120.000.000$. Blizzard is a part of Vivendi Universal, and that's where the majority of the money goes too. Blizzard is also considerably bigger, got more GMs, more developers, more buildings.. Well, just more expenses), then blizzard would be capable of delivering a server hub capable of holding 3.000.000 players.
If the average player in WoW spend about 5% of their time ingame, then he'd spend 72 minutes a day logged on. It would take him 260 days of playing, with that schedule, to hit lvl 60(Average around 13 days of gametime). The average player spends about 2-3 months leveling a character to 60. So it would only be fair to guess that around 15% of the players are online at once. Alright my WoW player numbers were off quite a lot, but then I was only guessing
Even so, with 120 million bucks (which is actually 88 million euros, and I had said 85+), they have massive profits. All the GMs, buildings, developers (they don't use those much) etc. won't cost them more than 1 million per month. That's guaranteed. Those are all negligable expenditures. I've no idea how much Blizzard spends per month on their employees, electricity, rent and so on.. But 1 million is never the less 1,1% of their budget(If we're speaking euros here), which isn't exactly negligable. Wouldn't be unlikely if Vivendi took 50% of the 85 millions. Then we're down to 42,5 millions/month, and the monthly expenses rises to 2,2%.
If they had no other expenses than that, Blizzard would have earned themself 988.800.000€ during the last 3 years. I belive i saw an announcement stating Blizzard had earned 800.000.000$+, not that long ago.. So we aren't that far off at least.
Keogh:
World War II Onlines world is primarily the same texture used over and over again. The same buildings used over and over again. Don't get me wrong, i love that game.. But it's an empty world, inhabited only by players(Usually around 600-1000 in prime time, when i was playing iirc) and static defense AI. World War II Online doesn't try to create an world at all, nor do they try to create an true battlefield. The setting is almost irrelevant, since everything is focused on the gameplay instead.
Besides, speed trees are an quick and easy solution - Change the settings on the tree, put it in. Then copy it all over the world. Do a couple different trees, and you'll have a relatively varied enviroment. But i don't expect to see speed trees in the far north, nor in that burned out village.
Cool so we agree. That's a huge amount of pure profit per month tbh, and I reckon they could be spending it much more actively on developing improvements and perhaps merging servers somehow. Basically Blizzard is out there for the money, and they don't care much about anything else. Why is it that we see so many companies going towards the M$ approach instead of the google one. What's so good in having tons of money lying around doing nothing anyway?
Cool so we agree. That's a huge amount of pure profit per month tbh, and I reckon they could be spending it much more actively on developing improvements and perhaps merging servers somehow. Basically Blizzard is out there for the money, and they don't care much about anything else. Why is it that we see so many companies going towards the M$ approach instead of the google one. What's so good in having tons of money lying around doing nothing anyway?
What good would it do, to have more players logged onto the same server in WoW?
The basics of WoW is: If you got 40 players, you can explore all the PvE content of WoW. If you got 40 players from the opposing faction too, you can explore all the PvP content of WoW too.
Ofcourse they are in it for the money. What did you expect? Money is the name of the game. Money makes the world spin around.
Why doesn't top of the line actors get a salary of 4.000€/month? Why doesn't sports stars get a salary of 4.000€/month? Whatever entertainment branch you're looking at, people pull in plenty of money. Why does Bill Gates have all that money, being able to buy more or less anything he wants?
Besides, a positive number on the bank account is great for Blizzard. They can open up new studios, hire more crew if they need it, afford to take some chances when it comes to creating games.
Didn't Google buy YouTube for quite a big amount of money? They're not innocent either.
You could do it on a fantasy server, not sure on 8 million but maybe a million per server. It does take a few things though
1. Get the idea of developer made content out of your head. You can't fill that much of a world with content by just the devs alone. You have to have player built cities and villages in the game. With that many players you can start to use them as a game resource.
2. Don't try to fill the world. you can put in a few easter eggs around the world besides that leave the game as forests and grasslands, It will probably look better than WoW in many cases. main reason is you have longer distances to change terrain type. the game world would probably stay a tad bit more realistic.
I'd say its possible, but you couldn't use WoW's game model at all as its based too much on the devs providing 99% of the content. the game will have to become more of a sandbox alowwing the players to help fill the world with content with the devs assisting.
Comments
EVE-o is an special game - Each system is huge, planets, space stations, astroid fields with NPC spawns.. And it's quite fast to produce another one. But when you travel around in the systems, they're very much alike.
Imagine if many of the fantasy MMORPGs took this route. A good example would be World of Warcraft, since many developers dreams of filling their empty pockets. WoW roughly have 40-50 times as many players as EVE-o. Fitting all of them into one world, would require.. Alot of work. How would the areas look? It would ofcourse take an EVE-o aproach - You see, EVE-o's areas consist of 99% nothingness and 1% astroids, planets, stations, NPCs, gates and so on. World of Warcraft could create a desert. Walk for 4 hours, and there'll be an oasis with a few mobs. Head the other way for four hours, and there'll be a small settlement. Then you will have to create a world big enough to hold 7-8 million players. Wouldn't work in a fantasy world, since many people actually enjoy the unique structures, objects, monsters and so on they find throughout the world. EVE-o is a niche game, aiming for a different crowd. The current state of EVE-o doesn't offer much to any explorer type at all. So you accept mediocrity because it is satus quoe.
Wow was not designed to support players on one world server, that is why it cannot. Eve was, that is why it can.
Two completely different games. Wich one is innovative and wich one is mediocre?
Please don't act like a sheep and rely on Wow sales numbers to support your oppinion. The fact is there are games with better features out there. I am merely commending a game like Eve for pushing the envelope instead of dumbing itself down to appeal to the masses. You're totaly missing my point.
EVE-O and World of Warcraft are two ENTIRELY different genres of MMORPG.
One exist of the vast space, with a few objects here and there.
The other consists of a continent, fully fleshed out with textures everywhere.
Following your line of thougth here, World of Warcraft would be a much better game if they would have created one very very very very very very very large desert where there was only something to do every 10th hour of walking. Did you know that hyperdrive isn't normaly associated with fantasy games? That is sci-fi for you there, bud. Read my post again. I believe I said that they are "two completely different games".
My point was that any game can handle what it was designed to do. And designing an fantasy world to hold 8 million people is simply not possible, unless you want to create a world without character.
Take a visual moment - You're now able to land on every planet in the EVE-o univers, and each is totally unique, it's own kind of mobs, it's own kind of NPCs and structures, it's own kind of terrain.. Sounds like something anyone in this world could pull off?
Eve has about 120k-ish subscribers? Maybe more. Of which usually there are about 15-20k online, and at peak sometimes 35k on weekends.
WoW has 8.5 million subscribers. How many of these are actually playing at any one time in total on all the servers? (That's not a rehtorical question, I really don't know) but i'm gonna assume it's not even 5% because WoW has a much more casual audience.
Given that Blizzard earns around 85+ million Euros per month, compared to about 1.2 million for CCP, i'm pretty sure that if CCP can build a mega-server with that sort of budget to house 35k people, then Blizzard can actually start re-investing that money into the game and build a server which can support an average of 300-400k people. I mean with that sort of budget, PER MONTH.
Although tbh i don't know if throwing hundreds of millions at a problem like that would actually solve it. Maybe it's technically impossible. But tbh I reckon Blizzard just doesn't want to dish out the money. This isn't about the servers capable of holding that many players, it's about delivering a fantasy game that have enough content..
But let's see. If Blizzard earned 85+ million Euros a month(Which they dont. The raw number is probaly around 120.000.000$. Blizzard is a part of Vivendi Universal, and that's where the majority of the money goes too. Blizzard is also considerably bigger, got more GMs, more developers, more buildings.. Well, just more expenses), then blizzard would be capable of delivering a server hub capable of holding 3.000.000 players.
If the average player in WoW spend about 5% of their time ingame, then he'd spend 72 minutes a day logged on. It would take him 260 days of playing, with that schedule, to hit lvl 60(Average around 13 days of gametime). The average player spends about 2-3 months leveling a character to 60. So it would only be fair to guess that around 15% of the players are online at once. Alright my WoW player numbers were off quite a lot, but then I was only guessing
Even so, with 120 million bucks (which is actually 88 million euros, and I had said 85+), they have massive profits. All the GMs, buildings, developers (they don't use those much) etc. won't cost them more than 1 million per month. That's guaranteed. Those are all negligable expenditures.
EVE-o is an special game - Each system is huge, planets, space stations, astroid fields with NPC spawns.. And it's quite fast to produce another one. But when you travel around in the systems, they're very much alike.
Imagine if many of the fantasy MMORPGs took this route. A good example would be World of Warcraft, since many developers dreams of filling their empty pockets. WoW roughly have 40-50 times as many players as EVE-o. Fitting all of them into one world, would require.. Alot of work. How would the areas look? It would ofcourse take an EVE-o aproach - You see, EVE-o's areas consist of 99% nothingness and 1% astroids, planets, stations, NPCs, gates and so on. World of Warcraft could create a desert. Walk for 4 hours, and there'll be an oasis with a few mobs. Head the other way for four hours, and there'll be a small settlement. Then you will have to create a world big enough to hold 7-8 million players. Wouldn't work in a fantasy world, since many people actually enjoy the unique structures, objects, monsters and so on they find throughout the world. EVE-o is a niche game, aiming for a different crowd. The current state of EVE-o doesn't offer much to any explorer type at all. So you accept mediocrity because it is satus quoe.
Wow was not designed to support players on one world server, that is why it cannot. Eve was, that is why it can.
Two completely different games. Wich one is innovative and wich one is mediocre?
Please don't act like a sheep and rely on Wow sales numbers to support your oppinion. The fact is there are games with better features out there. I am merely commending a game like Eve for pushing the envelope instead of dumbing itself down to appeal to the masses. You're totaly missing my point.
EVE-O and World of Warcraft are two ENTIRELY different genres of MMORPG.
One exist of the vast space, with a few objects here and there.
The other consists of a continent, fully fleshed out with textures everywhere.
Following your line of thougth here, World of Warcraft would be a much better game if they would have created one very very very very very very very large desert where there was only something to do every 10th hour of walking. Did you know that hyperdrive isn't normaly associated with fantasy games? That is sci-fi for you there, bud. Read my post again. I believe I said that they are "two completely different games".
My point was that any game can handle what it was designed to do. And designing an fantasy world to hold 8 million people is simply not possible, unless you want to create a world without character.
Take a visual moment - You're now able to land on every planet in the EVE-o univers, and each is totally unique, it's own kind of mobs, it's own kind of NPCs and structures, it's own kind of terrain.. Sounds like something anyone in this world could pull off?
Eve has about 120k-ish subscribers? Maybe more. Of which usually there are about 15-20k online, and at peak sometimes 35k on weekends.
WoW has 8.5 million subscribers. How many of these are actually playing at any one time in total on all the servers? (That's not a rehtorical question, I really don't know) but i'm gonna assume it's not even 5% because WoW has a much more casual audience.
Given that Blizzard earns around 85+ million Euros per month, compared to about 1.2 million for CCP, i'm pretty sure that if CCP can build a mega-server with that sort of budget to house 35k people, then Blizzard can actually start re-investing that money into the game and build a server which can support an average of 300-400k people. I mean with that sort of budget, PER MONTH.
Although tbh i don't know if throwing hundreds of millions at a problem like that would actually solve it. Maybe it's technically impossible. But tbh I reckon Blizzard just doesn't want to dish out the money. This isn't about the servers capable of holding that many players, it's about delivering a fantasy game that have enough content..
But let's see. If Blizzard earned 85+ million Euros a month(Which they dont. The raw number is probaly around 120.000.000$. Blizzard is a part of Vivendi Universal, and that's where the majority of the money goes too. Blizzard is also considerably bigger, got more GMs, more developers, more buildings.. Well, just more expenses), then blizzard would be capable of delivering a server hub capable of holding 3.000.000 players.
If the average player in WoW spend about 5% of their time ingame, then he'd spend 72 minutes a day logged on. It would take him 260 days of playing, with that schedule, to hit lvl 60(Average around 13 days of gametime). The average player spends about 2-3 months leveling a character to 60. So it would only be fair to guess that around 15% of the players are online at once. Alright my WoW player numbers were off quite a lot, but then I was only guessing
Even so, with 120 million bucks (which is actually 88 million euros, and I had said 85+), they have massive profits. All the GMs, buildings, developers (they don't use those much) etc. won't cost them more than 1 million per month. That's guaranteed. Those are all negligable expenditures. I've no idea how much Blizzard spends per month on their employees, electricity, rent and so on.. But 1 million is never the less 1,1% of their budget(If we're speaking euros here), which isn't exactly negligable. Wouldn't be unlikely if Vivendi took 50% of the 85 millions. Then we're down to 42,5 millions/month, and the monthly expenses rises to 2,2%.
If they had no other expenses than that, Blizzard would have earned themself 988.800.000€ during the last 3 years. I belive i saw an announcement stating Blizzard had earned 800.000.000$+, not that long ago.. So we aren't that far off at least.
Keogh:
World War II Onlines world is primarily the same texture used over and over again. The same buildings used over and over again. Don't get me wrong, i love that game.. But it's an empty world, inhabited only by players(Usually around 600-1000 in prime time, when i was playing iirc) and static defense AI. World War II Online doesn't try to create an world at all, nor do they try to create an true battlefield. The setting is almost irrelevant, since everything is focused on the gameplay instead.
Besides, speed trees are an quick and easy solution - Change the settings on the tree, put it in. Then copy it all over the world. Do a couple different trees, and you'll have a relatively varied enviroment. But i don't expect to see speed trees in the far north, nor in that burned out village.
Ok, a couple points on this topic. The first one is that EvE does a really good job of “appearing” to be one continuous world. The technical marvel here is simply the use of the stargates to divide the world into tiny areas which of course are run on different databases. The whole emptiness of space thing that was pointed out by someone else makes these databases super small compared to the type of texturing and landscapes you would see in a world like WoW.
I do like the idea of more people in a single server but of course the problem is that everyone will want to collect in a single area for trade/commerce, causing the hardware requirements for both the company and the subscriber to be pretty high. Games in the past have used multiple servers to handle the same continuous landscape. I remember the old days of UO crossing a server line would remove your criminal flag. However it is of course a cost issue, as the databases get larger and larger it becomes more difficult to search through them, adding an extra 100k entries (characters, items etc.) could need twice the hardware that a separate database would need for the same entries.
EVE-o is an special game - Each system is huge, planets, space stations, astroid fields with NPC spawns.. And it's quite fast to produce another one. But when you travel around in the systems, they're very much alike.
Imagine if many of the fantasy MMORPGs took this route. A good example would be World of Warcraft, since many developers dreams of filling their empty pockets. WoW roughly have 40-50 times as many players as EVE-o. Fitting all of them into one world, would require.. Alot of work. How would the areas look? It would ofcourse take an EVE-o aproach - You see, EVE-o's areas consist of 99% nothingness and 1% astroids, planets, stations, NPCs, gates and so on. World of Warcraft could create a desert. Walk for 4 hours, and there'll be an oasis with a few mobs. Head the other way for four hours, and there'll be a small settlement. Then you will have to create a world big enough to hold 7-8 million players. Wouldn't work in a fantasy world, since many people actually enjoy the unique structures, objects, monsters and so on they find throughout the world. EVE-o is a niche game, aiming for a different crowd. The current state of EVE-o doesn't offer much to any explorer type at all. So you accept mediocrity because it is satus quoe.
Wow was not designed to support players on one world server, that is why it cannot. Eve was, that is why it can.
Two completely different games. Wich one is innovative and wich one is mediocre?
Please don't act like a sheep and rely on Wow sales numbers to support your oppinion. The fact is there are games with better features out there. I am merely commending a game like Eve for pushing the envelope instead of dumbing itself down to appeal to the masses. You're totaly missing my point.
EVE-O and World of Warcraft are two ENTIRELY different genres of MMORPG.
One exist of the vast space, with a few objects here and there.
The other consists of a continent, fully fleshed out with textures everywhere.
Following your line of thougth here, World of Warcraft would be a much better game if they would have created one very very very very very very very large desert where there was only something to do every 10th hour of walking. Did you know that hyperdrive isn't normaly associated with fantasy games? That is sci-fi for you there, bud. Read my post again. I believe I said that they are "two completely different games".
My point was that any game can handle what it was designed to do. And designing an fantasy world to hold 8 million people is simply not possible, unless you want to create a world without character.
Take a visual moment - You're now able to land on every planet in the EVE-o univers, and each is totally unique, it's own kind of mobs, it's own kind of NPCs and structures, it's own kind of terrain.. Sounds like something anyone in this world could pull off?
Eve has about 120k-ish subscribers? Maybe more. Of which usually there are about 15-20k online, and at peak sometimes 35k on weekends.
WoW has 8.5 million subscribers. How many of these are actually playing at any one time in total on all the servers? (That's not a rehtorical question, I really don't know) but i'm gonna assume it's not even 5% because WoW has a much more casual audience.
Given that Blizzard earns around 85+ million Euros per month, compared to about 1.2 million for CCP, i'm pretty sure that if CCP can build a mega-server with that sort of budget to house 35k people, then Blizzard can actually start re-investing that money into the game and build a server which can support an average of 300-400k people. I mean with that sort of budget, PER MONTH.
Although tbh i don't know if throwing hundreds of millions at a problem like that would actually solve it. Maybe it's technically impossible. But tbh I reckon Blizzard just doesn't want to dish out the money. This isn't about the servers capable of holding that many players, it's about delivering a fantasy game that have enough content..
But let's see. If Blizzard earned 85+ million Euros a month(Which they dont. The raw number is probaly around 120.000.000$. Blizzard is a part of Vivendi Universal, and that's where the majority of the money goes too. Blizzard is also considerably bigger, got more GMs, more developers, more buildings.. Well, just more expenses), then blizzard would be capable of delivering a server hub capable of holding 3.000.000 players.
If the average player in WoW spend about 5% of their time ingame, then he'd spend 72 minutes a day logged on. It would take him 260 days of playing, with that schedule, to hit lvl 60(Average around 13 days of gametime). The average player spends about 2-3 months leveling a character to 60. So it would only be fair to guess that around 15% of the players are online at once. Alright my WoW player numbers were off quite a lot, but then I was only guessing
Even so, with 120 million bucks (which is actually 88 million euros, and I had said 85+), they have massive profits. All the GMs, buildings, developers (they don't use those much) etc. won't cost them more than 1 million per month. That's guaranteed. Those are all negligable expenditures. I've no idea how much Blizzard spends per month on their employees, electricity, rent and so on.. But 1 million is never the less 1,1% of their budget(If we're speaking euros here), which isn't exactly negligable. Wouldn't be unlikely if Vivendi took 50% of the 85 millions. Then we're down to 42,5 millions/month, and the monthly expenses rises to 2,2%.
If they had no other expenses than that, Blizzard would have earned themself 988.800.000€ during the last 3 years. I belive i saw an announcement stating Blizzard had earned 800.000.000$+, not that long ago.. So we aren't that far off at least.
Keogh:
World War II Onlines world is primarily the same texture used over and over again. The same buildings used over and over again. Don't get me wrong, i love that game.. But it's an empty world, inhabited only by players(Usually around 600-1000 in prime time, when i was playing iirc) and static defense AI. World War II Online doesn't try to create an world at all, nor do they try to create an true battlefield. The setting is almost irrelevant, since everything is focused on the gameplay instead.
Besides, speed trees are an quick and easy solution - Change the settings on the tree, put it in. Then copy it all over the world. Do a couple different trees, and you'll have a relatively varied enviroment. But i don't expect to see speed trees in the far north, nor in that burned out village.
Cool so we agree. That's a huge amount of pure profit per month tbh, and I reckon they could be spending it much more actively on developing improvements and perhaps merging servers somehow. Basically Blizzard is out there for the money, and they don't care much about anything else. Why is it that we see so many companies going towards the M$ approach instead of the google one. What's so good in having tons of money lying around doing nothing anyway?
The basics of WoW is: If you got 40 players, you can explore all the PvE content of WoW. If you got 40 players from the opposing faction too, you can explore all the PvP content of WoW too.
Ofcourse they are in it for the money. What did you expect? Money is the name of the game. Money makes the world spin around.
Why doesn't top of the line actors get a salary of 4.000€/month? Why doesn't sports stars get a salary of 4.000€/month? Whatever entertainment branch you're looking at, people pull in plenty of money. Why does Bill Gates have all that money, being able to buy more or less anything he wants?
Besides, a positive number on the bank account is great for Blizzard. They can open up new studios, hire more crew if they need it, afford to take some chances when it comes to creating games.
Didn't Google buy YouTube for quite a big amount of money? They're not innocent either.
1. Get the idea of developer made content out of your head. You can't fill that much of a world with content by just the devs alone. You have to have player built cities and villages in the game. With that many players you can start to use them as a game resource.
2. Don't try to fill the world. you can put in a few easter eggs around the world besides that leave the game as forests and grasslands, It will probably look better than WoW in many cases. main reason is you have longer distances to change terrain type. the game world would probably stay a tad bit more realistic.
I'd say its possible, but you couldn't use WoW's game model at all as its based too much on the devs providing 99% of the content. the game will have to become more of a sandbox alowwing the players to help fill the world with content with the devs assisting.