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Solo_Han

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  1. I see you've heard of EA before then?
  2. I have... Spoken to their customer services on two separate occasions, never had an issue. They charge the earth for bags, but that's another story. Point is, I book a flight, that flight is delayed, they contact me in advance when possible to let me know it will be delayed, what my rights as a consumer are, and what my options are. I'd call that pretty good customer service.
  3. I expect it to be from high ~> low, only. Then pay for anything else. Which, obviously to everyone who isn't BW, won't work. Also, lets look at this with a water and jars scenario. Water = players, Jars = servers. You have 10, 1 litre jars. You have 2 litres of water. At the moment, TOR has: 1 jar full 1 jar half full 8 jars 3/100 full, a little less than 1/25th full. Now, if you now share out all of the water from the full jar, to other, barely filled jars, you end up with: 1 jar half full 9 jars 4/25th full. As this example shows. You can have all the jars in the world, and move the water around all you want. At the end of the day, if you've got too many jars, or not enough water, you're still not going to want to wander around the desert with them in your bag. The only way to solve the problem is very simple, you either: a) Get more water. or... b) Remove some jars. Getting more water, I'm sure, is BW's main objective, but outside of their control for the most part. Which leaves option b) as the only viable option. Which BW has stated they're not really considering at the moment. The result is that we're going to be going thirsty for some time to come.
  4. I realise that, but purchasing or merging with a company that developed a game independently, is not developing one yourself. That was the point I was making. The people who make DAO, haven't made MMO's before. That's what I was getting at.
  5. This isn't exactly cracking PR... Nor is losing half a MILLION subscribers in 3 months.
  6. Couldn't agree more. I think it's becoming very clear that this is BW's first multiplayer game, and I think it's showing when it comes to communication with their online (and paying) community/customers. It's like picking up the phone to LG, and being told to **** off.
  7. All we've been told about server transfers is that they're coming. We haven't been told when, other than the vague 'summer-time' response. We haven't been told what they'll entail. Are these transfers going to occur like: High Pop ~> Lower Pop Lower Pop ~> Standard Pop Low Pop & High Pop ~> Standard Pop All Pop ~> All Pop We haven't been told if there are any special requirements that are necessary for customers to be eligible for free transfers. If I had booked a flight with Ryan Air, and they were rearranging my flight, I'd expect, as a paying customer, to be given answers to any and all questions I wanted to ask. I would also not expect their response to be, effectively, "go somewhere else if you don't like it", as any company that does that is unlikely to last. Simple admission that there is a HUGE issue would at least be a start. I asked for that two months ago, a simple admission. Great PR.
  8. Yes and no... Yes, there's more math. No, it's not that hard with modern day machinery. We're not living in the world of COBOL, with mainframe computers, and RAM sticks as big as your face. EvE was released in 2003. They achieved this. 9 years on, technology has come a long, long way. Pentium 4's were the average consumer CPU at that time. Xeon based servers were still unbelievably expensive. nVidia PhysX didn't even exist at the time... The year is now 2012. Quad core processors are now standard in the majority of gamers rigs, and most OEM manufactured offerings. With 8gb+ of RAM, sporting an incredibly powerful, sum eating MACHINE of a graphics card. Let alone with CUDA technology, tessellation, improvements in directX... The maths based calculations are based CLIENT SIDE. They're nothing to do with the servers. All the servers do is convey information. If a server had to do all the maths, games like Aika, that offer 1,000 vs 1,000 RvR battles would grind to a halt, especially when looking at a distributed remote client base of 2,000 workstations. When you jump and land again on the ground, or click a button and do damage to mob, all that information, all that maths is being done on YOUR PC. Not on BW, or anyone else's servers... You can tell this, without knowing anything about remote network infrastructure, simply by looking at MMO hacks. Because all the files reside on your computer, apart from the raw data about your character (items, HP, stats, etc.), then you can edit them (if you can decompile them, or patch them with an assembler). If you have the knowhow, there's no reason you can't make your character fly around the maps. You'll simply send a vector to the BW servers, and they'll display that vector to everyone else who's rendering that scene. Things like buildings, foliage, etc., has nothing to do with the servers. If the servers didn't exist, you'd still see them, and be able to run around, just like you would in a single player game. It really isn't out of the question to expect a modern day server, or WELL designed server cluster to handle 1,000's of simultaneous users in the same workspace. The problem isn't so much the hardwares' ability to cope with it, nor really the ability to program it. The real problem comes with jumping to overpopulation in hubs, lack of raw materials, etc. The things I've outlined here are exactly why SWG, WoW, Ultima Online, etc., private servers can operate, legally. You've already purchased a copy of the game files. The server itself just has to respond to any calls it receives. To setup a private TOR server, you wouldn't use ANY BW code, at all. It would be illegal to do so infact. All the server would do is respond to the calls made by the client(s), and the game on the clients machine will know what to do. http://www.galaxiesreborn.com/ - Explains this incredibly well... Anyway, bottom line, having one huge server for millions of people is probably stretching it, but having one for 10,000+ simultaneous players isn't reaching into the land of make believe, by any stretch of the imagination. On the contrary, it exists at the moment, with eastern companies with much smaller budgets than TOR, and has done for some time.
  9. WoW is having its loot changed in MoP. There won't be rolls anymore, instead when you kill a boss it will automatically roll against yourself to see if you receive a piece of gear, that's always specific to your personal class and build. Can you say: "bu-bye ninja's"? Also, mob stealing isn't an issue in GW2, where everyone is grouped as soon as you get near each other, and everything gets shared fairly by simply generating a little more loot, or again, automatically picking who gets what. These systems are NEW, REVOLUTIONARY... TOR's are OLD and UNINSPIRED. Voice acting is great, story is great, but it's like a film in so many ways. You don't watch the same movie everyday, over and over again do you? In terms of gameplay mechanics, there are other games out there that play basically the same, only better, and have much more content to boot, as well as some form of community on the majority of servers, let alone dev's that a) have a clue, and b) listen. Not to mention having EA looming over you.
  10. It's not that hard... I've done it everyday for the last 7 years. Piece of piss nowadays. Of course, some people are brighter than others, and some people are on different pay brackets to others. I can't help but feel BW have gone for the 1,000 monkeys writing Shakespeare is better than having Shakespeare himself, and pay a little more for the privilege. They should appoint someone to be a community liaison. Forgive me if they already do, but I sure as hell don't know who they are, and they don't seem to address problems, and fail to even comment on most issues raised. I reported a bug about a month ago. Simple thing, that the /channellist commands didn't work. Still don't work. Simple enough fix, just return the data from your table/array, ordered by name. It's an entirely text based command, so nothing else is needed. Shameful.
  11. Recently started playing EvE, and have to say, I'm having a great time. Everywhere you go there are people, EVERYWHERE. Always worrying if someone is going to scan you down and destroy your ship you spend 3 weeks to earn. Great stuff. In regards to it not being possible, I don't think much is possible with this engine. It really is a piece of $h1t...
  12. People bang on and on about 1.3 million this, and 1.3 million that. I don't work for BW, or EA, nor am I an investor in either company, so I don't give a crap about how many SUBSCRIBERS there are. I care about how many PLAYERS there are. Around 180 servers, worldwide. Average server population at their peak time, is reckoned to be about 400-500 on the majority of servers (based on my own research across EU realms). That's an AVERAGE - Taking into account the highs and lows of all servers. Which means a: Low of: 400 x 180 = 72,000 Playerbase and a... High of: 500 x 180 = 90,000 Playerbase These are the numbers I care about... That's not a huge number. EvE online has a much smaller subscription base, but houses one huge server, which averages between 35-45,000 playerbase at any one time. That's really healthy for the kind of game it is. Talk about subscription figures all you want. Doesn't make it any less lonely, or any easier to get a group. I figure probably ~7% of subscribers opted for a 6-month subscription when the game came out, which would still be ongoing.
  13. Ahh yes... However, there is zero community on 95% of the servers... So, there's nothing to destroy. This appeals to the casuals, I'm a casual, and it's who EA and BW want to attract. Hardcores will carry on playing regardless, only quitting when they get bored. People like myself are the casual, and the majority. We are fickle, and don't want to work to play the game the way we want to. We have little time to spend playing video games, and want to use that time to play, not spamming a chat channel. Good move, but too late I fear. Dead servers will still face the same problem of no one to play with. If anything it will just divide dead servers of 60 players in total to trying to do WZ's and FP's, so people will cancel each other out, and no one will be able to do anything. Oh well. Play EvE instead. At least CCP communicate with their customers on a daily basis.
  14. Nope... FIFA 11 is the largest selling sports game ever made apparently. Not largest ever. Largest is Wii Sports, with 71 million sales... It was bundled with the every copy of the Wii sold though, so that's not really fair. The Sims (16 million shipped) - http://www.tmcnet.com/usubmit/2005/feb/1114806.htm In terms of a series it's the largest selling, but not as an individual title. I think Tetris is probably the largest selling game of all time if you want to look at it objectively. I mean, everyone and their dogs owns a copy of that in one form or another. Be it on the gameboy, mobile, PC, whatever.
  15. I remember reading somewhere that FIFA 10 was the largest selling computer game of all time. Not sure if that was exactly it, but yeah, HUGE market.
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