This is just speculation but if i was in charge of this game at this point i would be giving serious consideration to a megaserver, PVE obviously, even as a PVPer who loves WPvP i can honestly tell you its dead out there, the few players i do find and attack die instantly or pop their legacy abilities nowadays. IMHO there really isn't any point in the WPvP element for a pvp server now i dont even fear stealth gankers but maybe if they made one of the daily planets contested to please us PVPers like section X or black hole, on a Megaserver im sure we would see more action there than anywhere any time on a full PVP server i would probably enjoy offering my services as a bodyguard for questers on my BH there to but really i can live without it in favor of populated instances where i can find groups but mainly get ques for solo ranked, form groups for team ranked, flashpoints and so on, they could even bring back 8v8 ranked given the combined population a megaserver would have. Obviously my first thoughts were cross server ques but as i said with the state of WPvP it makes more sense to me to just merge everything together for the benefit of the important aspects of the game.

I have heard of PVE server exploits that involve AOEs, obvi a no damage to players buff for unflagged questers is in order for that.

Wouldn't people get lag on a megaserver living far away? i play a US server from England, never seen latency to be a problem although i do see it in the animations occasionally the game seems to have a weird way of resolving it.

Shouldn't it be a PVE and PVP megaserver? yes im sure the every single person i attack, or beat sending me hate tells would love there own server just for that, you know what keep your world PVP warzones are more fun anyway.

Maybe if this game could actually handle real WPvP or hadn't deleted most lvl 50 toons in the last server merge while taking almost 2 years to start ranked seasons i would feel differently about it, but its just something that's been on my mind for a while now that i felt like mentioning

The Latency/Lag issues vary across the UK, it depends how close you are to the junction boxs for the phone company (this is true for fibre-optic too just not as bad).

Not saying it's a bad idea, but you would probably need two mega servers (one for Europe and one for USA)(Shame about the Asian servers dying).

The Latency/Lag issues vary across the UK, it depends how close you are to the junction boxs for the phone company (this is true for fibre-optic too just not as bad).

 

Not saying it's a bad idea, but you would probably need two mega servers (one for Europe and one for USA)(Shame about the Asian servers dying).

Would still be a massive improvement

Aside from the massive technical issues already alluded to, I don't think there's anywhere near enough interest in sustained World PVP for it to be worthwhile.

Edit: Maybe I'm misunderstanding you a bit. Either way, I don't think the servers Bioware has could come close to handling a 'megaserver' type population.

nah.

you'd get queues of people all wanting the same resource/mob/etc and the crying would be unbearable.

MMO megaservers are an illusion.

They are actually many serves clustered and with cross server data and communications to make it look like one megaserver. While it can make it look like you can go anywhere and do anything.. they suffer from the same sorts of performance challenges and issues that classic multi-shard server farms do.

As such.. this game WAS NOT designed with a virtual megaserver in mind, and as such the code rewrites to make is so would be prohibitive and would not provide the return on investment. You must architect and implement from the ground up for this sort of thing.

If it was in fact easy.. WoW would have done it years ago as their servers became more and more deserted locally. Instead.. they went with an faux approach where they allow clustering of players from many servers into virtual instances of zone content.

MMO megaservers are an illusion.

 

They are actually many serves clustered and with cross server data and communications to make it look like one megaserver. While it can make it look like you can go anywhere and do anything.. they suffer from the same sorts of performance challenges and issues that classic multi-shard server farms do.

Have you heard of a server called Tranquility? One server located in London, no instances or shards, and it happily handles hundreds (thousand + players do start impacting performance) of people in pvp all at once.

Have you heard of a server called Tranquility? One server located in London, no instances or shards, and it happily handles hundreds (thousand + players do start impacting performance) of people in pvp all at once.

It's not one server. It's an illusion. It's a farm of servers.

Each planetary system is essentially a shard in EVE. It's just that they are more closely coupled then shards in a typical old style MMO. EVE uses a persistent database layer wrapper around a server farm to make players think they are on one shard.

You know what is happening when you jump from system to system in EVE? You are jumping your data from one server to another. Which is precisely why it can be so laggy in one system and crystal clear in an adjacent one (population density = server side lag). They do have the ability to have more then one planetary system per server, and I think they can even move systems from server to server to load balance... but at the end of the day Tranquility is a large server farm, with the appearance of being one server. And yes.. it has the same issues and challenges of a standard MMO server farm.....a server goes bad and players in that server go off-line, and localized population density produces server side lag.

But hey.. don't take my word for it..... https://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/Tranquility Hardware is dated, so that probably does not apply, but the fundamental architecture does.

MMO megaservers are an illusion.

 

They are actually many serves clustered and with cross server data and communications to make it look like one megaserver. While it can make it look like you can go anywhere and do anything.. they suffer from the same sorts of performance challenges and issues that classic multi-shard server farms do.

 

As such.. this game WAS NOT designed with a virtual megaserver in mind, and as such the code rewrites to make is so would be prohibitive and would not provide the return on investment. You must architect and implement from the ground up for this sort of thing.

 

If it was in fact easy.. WoW would have done it years ago as their servers became more and more deserted locally. Instead.. they went with an faux approach where they allow clustering of players from many servers into virtual instances of zone content.

Wait isn't the server that runs STO one big mega server?

Wait isn't the server that runs STO one big mega server?

What part of the term "illusion" do you not understand?

It's a server farm, with db layering (probably very similar to what CCP does for EVE) to make it appear to be one mega server, but in fact it is composed of fractioned content across many servers.

What part of the term "illusion" do you not understand?

 

It's a server farm, with db layering (probably very similar to what CCP does for EVE) to make it appear to be one mega server, but in fact it is composed of fractioned content across many servers.

Yes we get it, a mega server is lots of little servers linked up in some way but the end result is as intended no?

Yes STO is in fact on a megaserver and i hear ESO is going to be on one also.

Yes we get it, a mega server is lots of little servers linked up in some way but the end result is as intended no?

 

Yes STO is in fact on a megaserver and i hear ESO is going to be on one also.

The part that you failed to grasp is that the so called meagservers still struggle with all the issues that server farms do.... like servers going south, localized lag, broken mail and comms channels, etc. etc.

The only benefit derived from the virtual single server approach is never having to wrestle with server consolidations or transfers. Though don't be fooled by this... EVE for example has two megaservers (one for western nations and one for China) and you cannot transfer between them.

The part that you failed to grasp is that the so called meagservers still struggle with all the issues that server farms do.... like servers going south, localized lag, broken mail and comms channels, etc. etc.

 

The only benefit derived from the virtual single server approach is never having to wrestle with server consolidations or transfers. Though don't be fooled by this... EVE for example has two megaservers (one for western nations and one for China) and you cannot transfer between them.

Additional benefits: a more robust PVP/PVE queue system and a more lively GTN. The queue system for these games cannot be underestimated: people are expecting them to pop. Even on one of the main PVP servers in NA (POT5), getting a pop for a solo arena (or group arena) can take awhile (20-30+ min) and forget about during off hours. This means less action, less fun and that the "solo" queues that I do get into could easily be populated by a pre-organized group. PVE q times are no better. Sure they could do a x-server, that would be just as useful as far as I'm concerned, but if a "mega-server" is more practical then do that.

Additional benefits: a more robust PVP/PVE queue system and a more lively GTN. The queue system for these games cannot be underestimated: people are expecting them to pop. Even on one of the main PVP servers in NA (POT5), getting a pop for a solo arena (or group arena) can take awhile (20-30+ min) and forget about during off hours. This means less action, less fun and that the "solo" queues that I do get into could easily be populated by a pre-organized group. PVE q times are no better. Sure they could do a x-server, that would be just as useful as far as I'm concerned, but if a "mega-server" is more practical then do that.

Well.... the best example of a megaserver implementation is EVE in the industry is.. and there are no PvP or PvE queues in EVE. So simply having a megaserver architecture does not guarantee anything.

Besides, a megaserver, which really just a cluster of smaller serves with a db over lay on it is no different then a cross server queue overlay in a multi-shard server farm from the context of instance queuing.

TSW is a bit different in that it has several unique servers, but they really not unique as you are allowed to play with players on any of the servers with a few exceptions. So essentially, TSW is also a megaserver approach, with some restrictions.

The thread is focused on would the game be better on a PvE megaserver. So far, I see no compelling reason why it would. Besides.. the discussion is pointless since a "megaserver" approach is something you have to design from the ground up. Clearly SWTOR was not designed with this in mind.

It's not one server. It's an illusion. It's a farm of servers.

 

Each planetary system is essentially a shard in EVE. It's just that they are more closely coupled then shards in a typical old style MMO. EVE uses a persistent database layer wrapper around a server farm to make players think they are on one shard.

 

You know what is happening when you jump from system to system in EVE? You are jumping your data from one server to another. Which is precisely why it can be so laggy in one system and crystal clear in an adjacent one (population density = server side lag). They do have the ability to have more then one planetary system per server, and I think they can even move systems from server to server to load balance... but at the end of the day Tranquility is a large server farm, with the appearance of being one server. And yes.. it has the same issues and challenges of a standard MMO server farm.....a server goes bad and players in that server go off-line, and localized population density produces server side lag.

 

But hey.. don't take my word for it..... https://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/Tranquility Hardware is dated, so that probably does not apply, but the fundamental architecture does.

Hmm this is a good point, I guess that's why sometime Jita (the most populated system in Eve online) is full and you can't jump there. The more the merrier seems to be true though, if there's no lag or queue. Perhaps a cross servers on some of the features ?

Example, on GW2, The market is cross servers. This make the Economy far more alive. They also have the W v W v W.

The part that you failed to grasp is that the so called meagservers still struggle with all the issues that server farms do.... like servers going south, localized lag, broken mail and comms channels, etc. etc.

 

The only benefit derived from the virtual single server approach is never having to wrestle with server consolidations or transfers. Though don't be fooled by this... EVE for example has two megaservers (one for western nations and one for China) and you cannot transfer between them.

So no real advantage then, apart from never having to worry about the population of your particular server (I remember the threads about the Jung-Ma server), everything else would be the same. Oh well, no point even considering it really.

So no real advantage then, apart from never having to worry about the population of your particular server (I remember the threads about the Jung-Ma server), everything else would be the same. Oh well, no point even considering it really.

I doubt it would solve the queue problems for PvE. There is no magical server full of tanks and healers who would supplement the often bad DPS, which make tanks/heals reconsider if they should queue...

I doubt it would solve the queue problems for PvE. There is no magical server full of tanks and healers who would supplement the often bad DPS, which make tanks/heals reconsider if they should queue...

On POT5 I have had trouble getting into things like Esseles/BT and the Czerka fps to do my weeklies - those don't require tanks or healers. Also, there are occasions where I want to run something specific, like one of the required HK fps - the wait for those can be forever. There just aren't enough people in the qs. And knowing that the wait can be a long or perpetual one, many of the people that would otherwise be in that q are not - it's a vicious circle.