If You Do Two Servers, Here's How to Make the Final Decision

[Kaemik]

The game promises on its front page a single persistent server. However, 80%+ support of something even in a forum poll is... sufficient support to justify changing any front page promises. And I say that as someone opposed to splitting the servers.

I believe though, all good decisions should be based upon data. So here is how I would suggest you split the servers if you do it:

Wait until a week or two before release. Offer a promotion. This promotion should be something that encourages people to come and do something in-game for a limited reward on persistent release. Make the game entirely free for the promotion period.

This could be something like a special cape or title or it could even be something like a limited number of points you can spend on a very limited amount of initial gold and resources when the game goes live. It should be something that offers a reward engaging enough to excite people without greatly disrupting game balance.

Take the numbers you see, look at things like how many people were paid customers, how many were free, how many decided to pick up new packages during this period, survey people on things like how bad latency hurt their gameplay and how over-undercrowded people felt the world will be.

Use data from other MMOs to make some realistic protections about where the population will be a year or two after launch and then decide how many servers we need.

 

[cwall]

Decisions should absolutely be supported by data, but I anticipate engagement in this type of event would be a low percentage compared to launch day numbers, so it may be hard to tell.

An alternative would be to merge servers after the first few days of launch if the numbers on both servers aren't sufficient to sustain population. The biggest risk is data conflict resolution, and the only things I can think of in that category would be player names, guild names, positions of player-placed structures (will these even be obtainable so quickly?), and unique identifiers in data storage (using large enough keyspaces will make this a non-issue, but I won't make assumptions about the data model).

 

[Rhias]

How many players are "healthy" for a MO2 map? The map is huge and with TC the community will split widely. Not even sure if we got enough players to fill this one world. Probably the towns will be crowded. But there is so much more around.

 

[Xunila]

StarVault has been pretty clear about not releasing a second server. And, as @Rhias wrote, the world is really huge! During the last days I made a round trip along the coasts and invisible walls, from Meduli to the north, then at the northern coast to the east, crossing the cave camp area, then again to the north and east until I reached the Tephra crater, then with a look into Morin Khur valley to the south and back westwards to Meduli. This took me 8-10 hours. And the areas at Morin Khur and Toxai and also south of the cities are missing, same for the complete jungle in the south.

We will see some crowded cities at release times, but the folk will spread soon into the world. In the first weeks after release of MO1 we had more than 10.000 players. Many of them stopped playing after some month. Let's wait half a year after release before talking about a overcrowded world.

 

[Kaemik]

Yeah I'm kind of coming to the conclusion they should just do an NA continent, EU continent, and Oceanic continent. These should all be part of a singular server that allows travel between various parts of the map. It's just that if you are on the NA continent the servers hosting your continent are based in NA and if you're in the EU continent your servers are based in the EU.

It really solves everyone's problems while keeping to the original "one server" promise.

Making EU and NA server continents would be a good idea. Those continents absolutely should not be Myrland and Sarduuca if it's done that way though.

Just make a continent to the east of Myrland that is functionally equivalent in terms of landmass and resource value. Both continents should have the resources needed to make what they need on their own but there should be a few regional differences in resources to promote trade.

I realize there is some existing lore this may contradict with. Overwrite it. We don't even have more than a page worth of description on Alvarins or Ohgmir. Like there is a disappointingly low amount of lore for MO2 as the sequel for a game that has existed for years. You can adapt the lore to make it work.

 

[Handsome Young Man]

Yeah I'm kind of coming to the conclusion they should just do an NA continent, EU continent, and Oceanic continent. These should all be part of a singular server that allows travel between various parts of the map. It's just that if you are on the NA continent the servers hosting your continent are based in NA and if you're in the EU continent your servers are based in the EU.

It really solves everyone's problems while keeping to the original "one server" promise.

SV probably will just do what they want in the end. Sad but the reality of it all.

 

[Kaemik]

I think they will do so something. That poll has roughly 80% support. They clearly demonstrated they will listen to resounding customer feedback by delaying release. I think the idea of a single server but with different host locations depending on what continent you are on would be a solid answer to customer feedback that would leave nearly everyone except a few EUs happy. And even the EUs wouldn't be too upset I imagine.

 

[Zyloth]

So there's no building at all in the first stage of release. Seems like a good time to collect population data and if it doesn't look great then just do 1 server per continent by meshing together. Shouldn't be too jarring for the game if we had to merge before building is in.

 

[Amadman]

It has been suggested by SV that they could have different continents hosted in different parts of the world.

I still believe this is the best solution since it keeps everyone in the same game world with one economy. While still allowing players to choose to be in the place where things will work better for them.

 

[Solairerection]

It has been suggested by SV that they could have different continents hosted in different parts of the world.

I still believe this is the best solution since it keeps everyone in the same game world with one economy. While still allowing players to choose to be in the place where things will work better for them.

Agreed. The map is so big now you might even start by splitting Myrland into different servers, say half map be NA and other EU to begin with. Might even switch up the halves from time to time so it's not always one location who has a set ping, so players don't feel forced to play in a region they don't really want to.

Another idea, if it's possible, is to have the game switch servers depending on time of day. As said in the other thread, due to timezones the different playerbases rarely overlap, so maybe have a reboot when it's night in EU and late afternoon in NA and just switch the servers from EU to NA. In the future maybe it's possible to have many more servers and make a hybrid system of switching between servers to where it's needed the most.

 

[Bernfred]

the idea is bad in the first place because you sacrifice too much just for a better ping whereas the negative effect can be greatly deminished by good combat and netcode. the other argument that you can make the combat super fast then is also not valid because of the MMORPG playerbase.
players from other continents are still gimped and so on so better dont even think about it.

 

[Darran]

Don't think it's good to split the population like that, but I think it could be a good idea to implement a second continent (whenever the time comes) in the US if possible. This would split the population a bit, but it would be playable for both EU and US players.

 

[Eldrath]

Design by democracy will fail. It is fun to poll though.

SV already has the data. They have the experience. Their jobs are on the line.

 

[Zbuciorn]

Design by democracy will fail. It is fun to poll though.

SV already has the data. They have the experience. Their jobs are on the line.

Forums can be useful tool for getting knowledge about a game and helping players to organize.

It is polite that developers are paying attention to the voice of community but following any kind of voting on forums
to apply major changes to the game is going to rage those who end up on the loosing side of those referendums.
Majority of players do not even get on the forums much and participate in arguing with people who are often just trolling or
take satisfaction from winning "forum pvp".

I rather let designers to decide on how to make their game than being chased out of playing it by few forum active players focused on their agendas.

 

[Kaemik]

It's interesting how dramatically different this poll is from the other one. It may have to do with posting time though since I see the other poll lost a lot of ground during EU timezone.

 

[Eldrath]

It's interesting how dramatically different this poll is from the other one. It may have to do with posting time though since I see the other poll lost a lot of ground during EU timezone.

The others polls question was heavily biased. I mean even for 2020 forum standards it was bad.

 

[Teknique]

I think they should just put the server in Toronto and revert all the ping changes

And I’ll change my name to Tekguy

 

[Handsome Young Man]

Balancing around high latency is probably top 5 stupidest things SV does.

 

[Wesley Snipes]

Depends on where the data is coming from. The current testing population is extremely small, are we going to use that as the base to pull our data from? Even on a regional server you'll need some kind of padding to keep the client and server in sync, but it won't be nearly as invasive as the janky ass solution we have now where things are being held together with duck tape and bubble gum.

The fact is that MO2 needs regional servers, it shouldn't even be an argument. Full loot, directional combat, asset destruction, monthly fee. 4 reasons why there absolutely, positively needs to be an NA and an EU server solution. Last Oasis has directional combat, they have regional servers for that very reason. Life is Feudal initially had regional servers before the population dropped off due to the game being shit. Dark Fall had regional servers. Games like Elder Scrolls Online have regional servers because no one wants to play with 200+ ms, even in a game where you're risking nothing.

If they go with the two continent, two region solution. That has to be implemented day one of EA. It also has to balanced. Can't have a situation where one continent has all the primo resources, and the other continent has shit.

 

[ChonoKhan]

Depends on where the data is coming from. The current testing population is extremely small, are we going to use that as the base to pull our data from? Even on a regional server you'll need some kind of padding to keep the client and server in sync, but it won't be nearly as invasive as the janky ass solution we have now where things are being held together with duck tape and bubble gum.

The fact is that MO2 needs regional servers, it shouldn't even be an argument. Full loot, directional combat, asset destruction, monthly fee. 4 reasons why there absolutely, positively needs to be an NA and an EU server solution. Last Oasis has directional combat, they have regional servers for that very reason. Life is Feudal initially had regional servers before the population dropped off due to the game being shit. Dark Fall had regional servers. Games like Elder Scrolls Online have regional servers because no one wants to play with 200+ ms, even in a game where you're risking nothing.

If they go with the two continent, two region solution. That has to be implemented day one of EA. It also has to balanced. Can't have a situation where one continent has all the primo resources, and the other continent has shit.

I thought you died after blade... wtf happened man? where the new movies.