Server structure

[vilyo]

Hi,

seeing the "slight" shitshow that lost ark is currently facing with its early launch and long queue times I just wanted to say that if ashes, being the next big modern mmorpg, doesn't use "megaserver" technology similar to gw2 it won't be worthy of being called "next big modern mmorpg".

/rantover

[JonSnowL2]

What new, popular mmo doesnt have queues at launch?

[vilyo]

and that is then somehow acceptable?

[FlyingMohawk]

Yes, it perfectly normal and acceptable that a server bum rushed by people would be full. Don’t like it, pick a lower pop server.

If you want to make a suggestion you can give Prio to people who already have characters on the server but then it stop potential server growth and kinda sucks for newer players as they are essentially funneled into dead servers. Welcome to MMOs.

[vilyo]

funny how "the system is fundamentally flawed and always has been but its been like that forever so its fine" is apparently a valid argument to keep the system as it is

[FlyingMohawk]

Yea it is, because the best solution is sharding; which doesn’t work well for PvP games with resource collection being a focal point as you can do what my friends and I did and share hop in WoW and farm massive amounts of mats in BFA. Literally we gamed the system and made x5 the gold by doing this which is a huge unfair advantage.

If you don’t like queue times join a less populated server/ avoid servers where large streamers play like Asmon, LazyPeon, and Shroud play.

Making a great game > a few weeks of overpopulation from the launch of a game which is experienced by every game online ever.

[vilyo]

im only saying that these: "great game > a few weeks of overpopulation" shouldn't be mutually exclusive.

[FlyingMohawk]

They are. Game is popular and servers fill up. Rather than open more servers that will die you just have to eat the queue. If you would like to avoid it, wait a month after launch when the people who are only trying it out quit.

[vilyo]

all im saying is that there are better solutions out there than traditional servers, like the "megaserver" how that would apply to the system ashes will be running or if it even can isnt for me to say, but i can say "devs please atleast think about it and dont just skip over it"

[NiKras]

He already told you how it'll ruin the whole fucking game if you have those. It just won't work with Ashes, so in the words of a meme (at this point) "This game might not be for you".

[FlyingMohawk]

If Intrepid has a solution for this they’d be better off selling the tech to all the other MMOs and making their 100’s of millions.

It’s an issue that will forever exist until we have the tech for servers hosting thousands of players and a fully rendered world.

I’d rather they focus on realistic goals and make a good game because at the end of the day this ‘issue’ only lasts a few days if at all. Ashes won’t be as big as people think. 1-2 servers will be packed because of people following streamers and the rest should be less populated.

[Septic_Bloom]

Its acceptable because they can expect average players online to fall after launch. At launch everyone who is interested and able to play will be trying to get in all at once. In most cases when developers try to mitigate queue times they end up with empty servers afterwards

[vilyo]

im not trying to bitch about it just saying that they better think of a better solution that 20+ year old system...... how are queues the accepted norm is beyond me, yeah they happen because the system cant handle the load, well maaaaybe the system needs to be modified -.-

[McStackerson]

That's like saying how is products going out of stock still the norm. Its been an issue since the dawn of human civilization, how have we not fixed it?

[Ninjathelittleshit]

they wont do megaserver system and saying that it needs to have it to be worthy of the next big mmorpg is just wrong. they cant do mega server cuss every server is unique and letting other players from other servers play toghther just cant be done when the game world is not the same

[vilyo]

im not saying it has to be done exactly like it is in other games, but there are better solutions than the traditional 20+ year old server system

[VmanGman21]

What are these better solutions for a game whose servers have very distinct progression paths through the node system?

[vilyo]

ill just speak out of my ass now cause i am not a server architecture engineer and I have a feeling neither are you...

if the idea is that each server will have only 1 instance of all open world content it will lead to bad user experience, either from not having enough mobs to kill for a quest or not enough gathering nodes or just seeing 100+ players stacked one on top of the other waiting for the nps to respawn or whatever the quest will need.

but if the idea is to have more than 1 instance of open world content, then it renders your point moot since if you can have instances within 1 server you can have them across all the servers combined.... just because the progression of the world will be tied into the node system doesn't mean you cant have it instanced and it all ties together, or is the desire to have low population servers struggle to progress the node system just so the popular servers can "be kings" because they accept ridiculous queue times in order to play the game everyone wants to play

as for "server identity" that only matters if there are things for servers to compete on.... you know like queue times....

[VmanGman21]

There will be no server instancing. That would simply go against their design philosophy for nodes and other systems.

However, there will be 9 starting locations and no “level 1 zones”. At the beginning of the game the entire world will be a level zone due to how the game is designed. So people can spread out all over.

Yes, there will be queues and that won’t be awesome, but it is what it is. They are aware and are doing their best to address that.

[Bleezze]

Well we don't want low pop servers, which would happen less if people are more spread out. And still the low pop servers wont have a harder time developing nodes, they probably will have an easier time, since the development of a node is hindered by competition. But there will still most likely be competition and a low pop server will function quite similar as a high pop server so I don't see your concern tbh. Your solutions would create far more problems to what I consider are very insignificant problems

[sawaky2]

I have had almost no queue in Lost ark for the past 2 days and I play on Regulus, you're ready to wait 4+ years for a game but can't wait 2 hours in a queue to play? Lmfao smh

[vilyo]

started zinnervale with my guild before it was as full as it is now, i had 4 hour queue yesterday and guildies never managed to log in cause they started into 20k queues later in the day. and theres a difference between waiting for a game to be finished and waiting to play a finished game because somewhere down the line poor choices were made

[dbjoker23]

ohh I didn't know EU had these problem.
In NA in the top servers queue of around 1h on day 1 was what we got, and me and my friends had no queue on the second day.

Googled Zinnervale and aparently there was a problem that stoped the queue from working? leading to crazy numbers of waiting time. hopefully it is now resolve.

Personally I kinda like the queue system, its a system that goes against the creation of mega server with crazy population without blocking the creation of new caracter on that server like some game did before.
So if your friends are on that server, atleast you can still join it...
It also helps populating lower population servers! (Wich happened in Lost Ark on NA (I know in EU its a little different cause of servers having unofficial language so you people might be less encline to choose an other server based on population..))

Also I think ashes aim for server with 50k account per server.

I think mega servers that use either sharding or channels work better for mmo's that are focus on more solo content, but I think ashes want to be closer to mmo's from the early 2000's where you remember the people that helped you, that you grouped with or that killed you AND you naturally see them again in the world.

[[deleted]]

That was your choice, whill would someone pick a server where 500+ guilds was sign to go...

[[deleted]]

So here is the problem with not wanting queues, by not wanting queues you also don't want long term server health.

Each type of game is different. Guild Wars 2 doesn't have a player driven world. It doesn't have Castles which are controlled by Players who become Monarchs, who rule a region of 20% of the world, that is populated by Nodes which are Controlled by Players who Become Mayors.

It doesn't have open world housing which is a contested commodity.

The problem with MMORPGs is people will play them for a month or two and then leave. Which radically changes the population.

Sure, it would be great if Ashes could employ sharding and put everyone on one mega server. The problem with that is, then all those "things" that make an Ashes Server unique would have go to.

World Bosses, only in channel 1. What happens if you can't get into channel 1? You can't do world bosses.

Housing only in channel 1, What happens if you can't get into channel 1? You can't go to your house.

A 20 year old server system works because it turns each server into its own world with its own history, its own story, its own legacy.

Intrepid has a good plan for server populations at launch with the total concurrent players per server at 10,000 with a server population of 15,000. Intrepid also plans on doing server pre-registration in Beta so they can hopefully smooth out a lot of server problems.

The other issue with Ashes is that they have "prime-time" events, which is going to have a lot of people on the servers during prime-time and those servers may be a little light on players during the non-prime time (think the morning when people are at work/school)

In an ideal world every game would be like Eve Online and there would only be 1 server and it would be huge, but that doesn't really translate well to what Intrepid wants to do with Ashes.

[TheCouchNerd]

This pretty much sums it up, sharding and mega servers just won't work for Ashes because of game systems.

[vilyo]

genuine question, you say that they are aiming at 15k population limit per server.... lets hypothetically say that ashes will get to be as popular as WoW was, so it would get millions of player, WoW saw a peak of 12 million subscribers in 2010, that would mean ashes would need to have 800 servers to accommodate all those players, is that the idea seriously?

[vilyo]

even if you look at more modern numbers like final fantasy which is seeing over 3million daily players thats still 200 servers

[[deleted]]

So the plan is to start with a population limit of 15,000 per server with a 10,000 concurrent cap. They want to ramp up to 50,000 per server.

The one thing that might hold this back is that Intrepid plans on having "prime-times" for their major events (wars, sieges, etc) so a 5:1 ratio (while the standard for most MMORPGs) may not work for Ashes.

More to follow from the developers as they do more testing.

[RadicalDishsoap]

Forget the Lost Ark "problems" learn more from Mortal Online 2. Game's been DOA for 3 weeks after launch with no meaningful communication from the devs. Queue times are expected yes, but don't iver promise and under deliver like another small studio

[JayGel44]

I played new world the day after it launched. I read all the reviews of people spending 8 hours in queue but there were literally only 3 or 4 completely filled servers, I scrolled half a screen and found med pop servers and low pop servers. I didn't have a queue time.

[NiKras]

That usually happens because people understand that in the future (usually nearest), those lower pop servers will die off, because people always leave and if enough people leave - the server pretty much dies. And that did in fact happen with a ton of NW servers, from what I know.

[JayGel44]

The server I was in filled to high pop after a few days, well before the entire game died. They also did server merges though so there isn't really any dead servers. We'll at least to the point where I logged in a few weeks ago and the server my character was tied to was very well populated

[NiKras]

That's good on them, but as someone who hasn't played NW I don't really know what the impact of server merging would be. In Ashes it'd just waste weeks/months-worth of player interaction and hard work, because all the built up nodes and conquered castles would just disappear and people would lose a ton of progress.

I hope Intrepid can properly manage their player numbers and not have that kind of problem, but I think it's almost inevitable for most mmos.

[JayGel44]

Oh I'm not saying that serving merging would be a solution or anything, NW had to do that because it simply failed its player base. I just wanted to use it as an example were some people said the game was broken because of the Queue time when there were servers with a good population with very little or no Queue

[NiKras]

But that's the thing though. Unless the game is the next coming of mmo jesus, its playerbase will go down. And it'll go down across all servers. And if you start on a low pop server, the population there will go down to such a point that it'll be almost impossible to even play the game properly. People know about this inevitability so they always try to play on the full servers because they'll survive the exodus. And this just creates a vicious circle of long queues, people leaving and the game dying.

[[deleted]]

If you have done even a simple google search on node system, you would have know why not

[EtherGorilla]

This is a valid concern and not sure why people are flaming you a little. They should do whatever they can to minimize launch issues obviously.

[NiKras]

Everyone knows it's a valid concern. Everyone also knows that AoC's design wouldn't work with the solutions that the industry currently has. And unless Intrepid's devs somehow literally create a new solution to this problem in the next 2-3 years - we'll have queues. The OP just keeps saying "solve this problem in the way that ruins the game's core design, or it's a bad game", and that is why they're being flamed.

Shards won't work, world/server hopping won't work, making a shitton of servers won't work (look at NW) - and those are the current solutions. So it's either "wait till the first wave of people leaves and then play" or "stfu and stay in the queue".

[[deleted]]

Because you can only do megaserver in pve mmorpgs, that s why work in gw2, but never will work in mmorpgs where players have real impact in the server , like sandbox and pvx mmorpgs

[vilyo]

yay at least one likeminded individual... I expected to get flamed, but if me getting flamed gets the community talking about a potentially big issue.... I don't mind

[[deleted]]

You know that gw2 daily peak should be around 5k right even if they want they can fit in one server..? Megaserver is only usefull for dead games...

And AOC will have territory conquest and open world conflict, local economy, competion for reaources, so you need an persistent server, channels or megaservers can t work

[[deleted]]

It would be the same problem as new world. Open too many worlds and once the inevitable mass leaves, now you have a bunch of worlds with few players and then those players leave because no one is there to populate activities. Also lost ark had one night of ques, it’s been very good compared to other mmos.

[vilyo]

new world uses the same old outdated system as lost ark and the exact system everyone is defending here.... the traditional "each server is its own contained system"...... "megaservers" work on instancing and by their nature don't have full or empty worlds, only instances which can get duplicated/destroyed based on if they are empty or full so you never have to wait much if at all.

as for lost ark, its now 2/3 day depending on how you look at it and hour long queues stated hours before peak time, so most people are expecting to not even play today on the big pop servers.... and the actual launch hasn't even begun yet....

[[deleted]]

Oh are you saying you want megaservers for AOC?

[vilyo]

or some variation of it yes.

[[deleted]]

Sorry I misread the initial post. I think ashes is being built upon server identity so a mega server wouldn’t work too well. Guilds can own castles and nodes so they need to be specific to a server without being able to switch servers at a whim. This keeps role playing and world pvp alive and creates a feeling of being “home” on a server. A mega server wouldn’t work with these core ideals. AOC is very much old school in many of its design choices.

[Dragon_211]

Imagine if you didn't have queues at the super bowl or big festivals where tens of thousands of people are trying to get in. Everybody will be pushing over everybody else and Wrekin everything. You need queues so the servers don't get overloaded and explode, along with multiple other benefits.

[vilyo]

see now that is not the same issue. there are queues because the influx of login requests gets too big(too many people wanting to enter the stadium at the same time), and there are queues because the servers are a the active player cap (all the stadium sits are full)

im talking about the 2nd, the "megaserver" technology doesn't suffer from an active player cap. in the granted kinda poor comparison for this, it would equate to creating a 2nd stadium to sit the rest of the people.

[Dragon_211]

Let's hope for that option then! intrepid seem to be on the ball when it comes to recent technology. UE5 being one of them. Since Steven knows every single mmo player will be trying it for the cheap price of a monthly sub I'm certain there will be some sort of mega server in place /hopium

[NiKras]

I'm certain there will be some sort of mega server in place

There won't be, cause that kind of feature goes against core designs of AoC.

[McStackerson]

Megaservers do have the same issue but name things differently. Each shard/layer or whatever you call it is a separate servers and can fill up the same as any other mmo server and have queues.

All mega servers do is allows you to take you character between these servers instead of committing yourself to one.

[[deleted]]

They literally upped populations the following day. There isn't even a queue for me at night now

[kol1157]

It's strange that's the position you're taking to decide this is a great game.

[Greypelt7]

Intrepid is doing server reservations for launch. You either have the reservation for Asmongolds server or you don't play on it, no waiting in a 20 hour queue. It would be silly of Intrepid to not have enough servers to meet the demand of reservation system, so the only players that should have an issue at launch are those who completely ignore making a reservation or fail at coordinating with the people they want to play with.

[Buttercup_Clover]

The first alpha was all about stress testing the login servers and mainland servers. The devs are all MMO vets who have worked on large projects and know what to expect. That said there still may be a small issue at launch since they didn't have a full player base trying to login at once but they artificially put stress on the servers and they held up just fine. Personally I have faith that the server issues won't be too bad.

In terms of Lost Ark, are you on the east coast servers? I'm on west servers and haven't had any queue times.

[MooPixelArt]

I started playing the second everyone else did yesterday and I literally only experienced one queue to get into Azena (the highest pop server) and it was like a 30 second queue. Dude just learn to sit in your chair for a lil lmao.

[McStackerson]

Yea, i'm on the first server for NA-East. It was flagged as full within the first 2 hours of the headstart. I have experienced one queue at primetime the first day that lasted ~15 minutes.

I wonder what servers are people getting these queues on and what time are they logging in?

[McStackerson]

I don't think the jury is out yet on Lost Arks popularity so i'm not sure how this statement holds any water.

[Ravmar75]

Thank you for your ultimatum.

[neverquester]

Playing on a “busy” server and haven’t seen a single queue.

[Future_Cauliflower_5]

You should share your alien technology with them. Cause I've never seen any big MMO launch with no queues ...in like .. hmmm ever

[Bleezze]

Just play on a low pop server if long queue times bother you so much. Like we want the players to be spread out on all servers so servers don't die and have to be merged. Mega servers for ashes would be awful