I don't think I'm an experience gamer by many standards. SWTOR and LOTRO being my only mmo's in 5 years. Long story short... my favourite part of the MMO's was being in areas thriving with other players. There was a time in lotro when dev run bosses showed up randomly in world and 120 people would show up to take her on. In both SWTOR and LOTRO, when those types of numbers showed up in the same place, there is a general server meltdown and the area becomes unplayable (downer).

 

 

So my question for the technologically inclined. How far are we from a truly massive MMO? How long til technology allows games to run fluently with 10,000 people experiencing content side by side? (maybe an exaggeration... I'll take 200 at this point ). In people's experience, what is the current "densest" mmo that's available?

Alterac valley sure was ahead of its time. 80 people and it ran fine. Warhammer tried years later, didnt suceed. Now Ilum...but yeah how long....

 

Oh alterac valley was in wow. Just read u hadnt played it.

Edited March 20, 2012 by Harleyz

I hope they are able to fix the engine soon. After my sub runs out in May, I might go back to WoW just for the massive battles but will come back when the engine is fixed.

There are 2 limits to what you propose. Bandwidth and Hardware.

 

The more communication between the servers and various clients, the more bandwidth needed. The hardware on the client side would have to be able to render so many objects.

 

I don't see it happening. While hardware will keep improving at a decent rate, the bandwidth available to most people is much harder to improve on. I've given up hope of Fios ever becoming available in my area.

Edited March 20, 2012 by Zannis

I don't think I'm an experience gamer by many standards. SWTOR and LOTRO being my only mmo's in 5 years. Long story short... my favourite part of the MMO's was being in areas thriving with other players. There was a time in lotro when dev run bosses showed up randomly in world and 120 people would show up to take her on. In both SWTOR and LOTRO, when those types of numbers showed up in the same place, there is a general server meltdown and the area becomes unplayable (downer).

 

 

So my question for the technologically inclined. How far are we from a truly massive MMO? How long til technology allows games to run fluently with 10,000 people experiencing content side by side? (maybe an exaggeration... I'll take 200 at this point ). In people's experience, what is the current "densest" mmo that's available?

 

The only MMO which deserves to be called massive is EvE. It´s sandbox, all players on one server. They have a solid 400.000 subscriber base since nearly a decade.

The only MMO which deserves to be called massive is EvE. It´s sandbox, all players on one server. They have a solid 400.000 subscriber base since nearly a decade.

 

It also is the only game deserving the fan-nickname "spreadsheet wars".

The only MMO which deserves to be called massive is EvE. It´s sandbox, all players on one server. They have a solid 400.000 subscriber base since nearly a decade.

 

EVE Online is the closest you can get at the moment - usually 35k to 45k people online at any one time, and you will occasionally get battles between corporations (the EVE equivalent of a Guild) or alliances (groups of corporations) with 1000+ individual players per side in a particular solar system. For sure, that will cause some lag, but compare that to the state of SWTOR (oh, a player on Ilum wandered into my field of view and now I get 2 fps), it is leaps and bounds ahead of where we are.

It also is the only game deserving the fan-nickname "spreadsheet wars".

 

The good thing is, it scares off casuals who prefer brainless repetitive quests like "Click X containers and kill X enemies, then return". True, EvE needs an IQ at least above 99, so it will never reach 1.7 M subscribers.

The only MMO which deserves to be called massive is EvE. It´s sandbox, all players on one server. They have a solid 400.000 subscriber base since nearly a decade.

 

All players on the same server yes, but if you get 2000 players in Jita, the node crashes.

 

Eve is awesome ,I always resub for 2-3 months here and there to get my fix

Well aion had more than 500 ppl from each side and run fine at start.Lineage2 oficcial had more than 1.5k ppl at one place and run fine.

The only MMO which deserves to be called massive is EvE. It´s sandbox, all players on one server. They have a solid 400.000 subscriber base since nearly a decade.

 

Well it's not really one server. It's just one big cluster containing many servers, there is a limit of how many players can be on each server.

 

When you go through a jumpgate it's either switching to another server or another cell within the same server (yes, the game itself is basically one big spreadsheet ). You could do this on any MMO, but it's far easier to hide the seams in a space sim where everywhere looks the same

Edited March 20, 2012 by NasherUK

Well it's not really one server. It's just one big cluster containing many servers, there is a limit of how many players can be on each server.

 

When you go through a jumpgate it's either switching to another server or another cell within the same server. You could do this on any MMO, but it's far easier to hide the seams in a space sim where everywhere looks the same

 

Well why couldn't SWTOR do it this way? Instead of having 100 different servers that contain all the planets, have a server dedicated to each zone, ie a server for the fleet, a server for Taris, a server for Ilum, etc? Cap it at like 1.5k ppl/faction on each planet or w/e (prolly more like 200 a side, but that still beats any population numbers I've seen anywhere on my server).

 

At the moment, the 30-40 ppl on the Pub Fleet, along with the single individual on Corellia, Voss, and Belsavis each is a pretty big stretch from being massively multiplayer...

Edited March 20, 2012 by BrotardNosef

EVE takes the cake in terms of massive. 49-U, The siege of 6VDT, Uemon: the titan graveyard, and well before my time there were fights with 3,000+ people. And most recently fights over tech moons in Venal have drawn 1.5k-2k people. Screenshot: http://i.imgur.com/QVH0m.jpg Edited March 20, 2012 by Pantheros

Dark Age of Camelot would have over 100 people on screen at once with little lag, all casting spells and fighting. Yes it was lower end graphics but not at the time it was released. With today's crowd, high end graphics are important. You can probably have the technology and experience you are looking for but you better have a $6,000.00 machine. So technically what you are asking for exists...but it's out of the price range for the average person.

EVE Online is the closest you can get at the moment - usually 35k to 45k people online at any one time, and you will occasionally get battles between corporations (the EVE equivalent of a Guild) or alliances (groups of corporations) with 1000+ individual players per side in a particular solar system. For sure, that will cause some lag, but compare that to the state of SWTOR (oh, a player on Ilum wandered into my field of view and now I get 2 fps), it is leaps and bounds ahead of where we are.

 

Total ********, firstly eve doesnt have anywhere near 400k subs, never has and possibly never will and secondly, the most i've ever battle with and against in a fight, in the recent NC vs Drf/PL/Nc. etc etc was around 400 and then alot of the time it was a slideshow, granted there have been improvements, before 200 people in a fight used to be a nightmare , so things have improved but to say 2000 people in a fight ?!?, big bold faced lie.

 

On an different note, warhammer online seemed to handle a few hundred people just fine in warband vs warband in the lower tiers, yes the city raids often turned into lagfests, but out in the world, large scale fighting was fine.

There are 2 limits to what you propose. Bandwidth and Hardware.

 

The more communication between the servers and various clients, the more bandwidth needed. The hardware on the client side would have to be able to render so many objects.

 

I don't see it happening. While hardware will keep improving at a decent rate, the bandwidth available to most people is much harder to improve on. I've given up hope of Fios ever becoming available in my area.

 

Did you read what you just wrote? Server hardware doesn't have to render anything. Graphics are not a limitation of server hardware, they're a limitation of client hardware.

 

Bad netcode is the limitation of server hardware.

Edited March 20, 2012 by Gungan

I prefer the way TOR is now. I can go do quests and not have to worry about others running up and ninja a item while I am fighting mobs. Or having to wait for mobs to respawn and then have to camp a spot to tag them before others do.... The only thing I see which would improve the population on servers for raid runs, is a LFR tool. Other than that...they donot need to change a thing. The answer for the fps drops for some is to not have massive battles going on. Limit the grps to 8 players at a time. That is more than enough IMO.

I prefer the way TOR is now. I can go do quests and not have to worry about others running up and ninja a item while I am fighting mobs. Or having to wait for mobs to respawn and then have to camp a spot to tag them before others do.... The only thing I see which would improve the population on servers for raid runs, is a LFR tool. Other than that...they donot need to change a thing. The answer for the fps drops for some is to not have massive battles going on. Limit the grps to 8 players at a time. That is more than enough IMO.

 

Removing a staple of MMOs is definately not the answer. This is especially true for PC gaming in general, which always packs superior numbers into the multiplayer experience. Stick to consoles for tiny coop games would you.

Edited March 20, 2012 by Gungan

Total ********, firstly eve doesnt have anywhere near 400k subs, never has and possibly never will and secondly, the most i've ever battle with and against in a fight, in the recent NC vs Drf/PL/Nc. etc etc was around 400 and then alot of the time it was a slideshow, granted there have been improvements, before 200 people in a fight used to be a nightmare , so things have improved but to say 2000 people in a fight ?!?, big bold faced lie.

 

On an different note, warhammer online seemed to handle a few hundred people just fine in warband vs warband in the lower tiers, yes the city raids often turned into lagfests, but out in the world, large scale fighting was fine.

 

So you are calling ******** on the screenshot that was posted two posts before yours?

 

And are you also calling ******** on this article (admittedly estimated).

Edited March 20, 2012 by dazednconfuzed

Removing a staple of MMOs is definately not the answer. This is especially true for PC gaming in general, which always packs superior numbers into the multiplayer experience. Stick to consoles for tiny coop games would you.

 

For one..just because a player happens to not want to play like you do..does not mean they are wrong. I donot need you to tell me how to enjoy my MMO.

i think the best game for massive battles was Planetside with 3 factions all fighting over same nodes was great fun and lagg was not a real issue and cant wait for Planetside 2

Well it's not really one server. It's just one big cluster containing many servers, there is a limit of how many players can be on each server.

 

Implementation detail The unique thing is that it's a single shard - that is, every player inhabits the same game world, and there's nothing to stop you interacting with, cooperating with or shooting in the face any other player (whereas in SW:TOR they need to be on "your server").

 

Big fan of EVE and a long-time player, along with some of my colleagues; one of whom, when I mentioned that SW:TOR was sharded, responded, "Why do people still make games like that in this day and age?"

I always suggested 1 planet = 1 server.

 

Make them bigger, actual planetsize. There might be other clusters you switch to if you enter specific zonea, but at the end you could meet basically everyone with a subscription if you want. You should be able to travel between servers seamlessly.

Perfect World features 80 vs 80 Territory Wars. These ran fine on my machine until they introduced the Genies which were graphically intensive and started to stutter a lot with full 160 person battles.

 

Another route games such as Battle of the Immortals (which I otherwise don't recommend) use are 'realms' which equate to the instance phases SWTOR was using at launch. So one realm became the go-to realm for player permanent shops, some others for getting groups for certain dailies instances etc. and others might be always sparsely populated if you wanted less competition and general chatter.

Implementation detail The unique thing is that it's a single shard - that is, every player inhabits the same game world, and there's nothing to stop you interacting with, cooperating with or shooting in the face any other player (whereas in SW:TOR they need to be on "your server").

 

Big fan of EVE and a long-time player, along with some of my colleagues; one of whom, when I mentioned that SW:TOR was sharded, responded, "Why do people still make games like that in this day and age?"

 

Because Jita crashes with 2k people, because there's more than 2k people on Dromund Kaas/Coruscant on all TOR servers, because comparing the graphical load of Eve with TOR is silly, because comparing the amount of exchanges with a server with 50k people or 1M is stupid.