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EVE has a single instance world which is a much more difficult problem than what WOW has to deal with. WOW basically caps the total amount of people that can be

EVE has a single instance world which is a much more difficult problem than what WOW has to deal with. WOW basically caps the total amount of people that can be in one instance (or at least they used to, haven't played in a few years). It kinda boils down to a massive supercomputer simulation where your limiting factor is the speed, but more specifically latency of communication between servers. Notice how this upgrade brings them far greater internal networking capabilities which should mitigate performance pressure from growth for the time being. If you look at their hardware you can kinda glimpse how their software stack might function: TQ Tech Details: (Not the whole system, just what runs TQ) Servers 64 x IBM HS21 2x Dual Core 3.33GHz CPU's 32GB of RAM Each 1x72GB HDD Each 2 x IBM X3850 M2's 2x Six Core 2.66GHz 128GB of RAM 4 x 146GB HDD Cores - 280 total Cores - ~1 THz RAM - 2.3TB of Total RAM Storage - 4.8TB of Local Storage - 2TB of SSD SAN - 256GB of RAM SAN Network - Gigabit Ethernet - 4Gb/s Fiber Channel

sp332 16y ago
EVE is also one of the major contributors to Stackless Python. The EVE client and apparently quite a lot of the server-side software are written in Stackless.
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Aaronontheweb 16y ago
The WOW dungeons are instanced but the worlds aren't - in WOTLK there used to be a major problem with the new World Battleground (Wintergrasp) where hundreds of players would be playing in it at once and the entire zone would become unusable. Eventually they fixed that by instancing it.
- Retric 16y ago
  WoW uses Shards to split the game world into several servers and then Instances to split off players from each Shard. Eve does the same thing with missions but only has one Shard. The difference is if you meet a Eve player in real life your characters can meet in game, but in WoW it's unlikely for two random people to play on the same shard/server.
  - ZachPruckowski 16y ago
    The game design makes that much easier to do. WoW has 4 continents with no loading screen (except for moving into instanced dungeons or battlegrounds) on each continent. By contrast, EVE is split into several thousand star systems. So while WoW has to put each continent on its own server, EVE can be as granular as to put each star system on its own server (though they usually use virtualization to run dozens of systems on one machine). That's why WoW has to be sharded - each shard can only be split into 4 servers, whereas EVE naturally splits up by solar system.
    - Retric 16y ago
      It might look that way to a player, but if everyone on a continent moved to the same zone the game does crash. Also, you can't drag a mob vary far from its home area. On the client side loading screens had more to do with loading textures for each zone to your graphics card than they did with handing off your character from one server to the next. You might not see a loading screen but if you gate home they still show you as the textures are loaded.
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sp332 16y ago

EVE is also one of the major contributors to Stackless Python. The EVE client and apparently quite a lot of the server-side software are written in Stackless.

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Aaronontheweb 16y ago

The WOW dungeons are instanced but the worlds aren't - in WOTLK there used to be a major problem with the new World Battleground (Wintergrasp) where hundreds of players would be playing in it at once and the entire zone would become unusable. Eventually they fixed that by instancing it.

Retric 16y ago
WoW uses Shards to split the game world into several servers and then Instances to split off players from each Shard. Eve does the same thing with missions but only has one Shard. The difference is if you meet a Eve player in real life your characters can meet in game, but in WoW it's unlikely for two random people to play on the same shard/server.
- ZachPruckowski 16y ago
  The game design makes that much easier to do. WoW has 4 continents with no loading screen (except for moving into instanced dungeons or battlegrounds) on each continent. By contrast, EVE is split into several thousand star systems. So while WoW has to put each continent on its own server, EVE can be as granular as to put each star system on its own server (though they usually use virtualization to run dozens of systems on one machine). That's why WoW has to be sharded - each shard can only be split into 4 servers, whereas EVE naturally splits up by solar system.
  - Retric 16y ago
    It might look that way to a player, but if everyone on a continent moved to the same zone the game does crash. Also, you can't drag a mob vary far from its home area. On the client side loading screens had more to do with loading textures for each zone to your graphics card than they did with handing off your character from one server to the next. You might not see a loading screen but if you gate home they still show you as the textures are loaded.
  - deleted 16y ago
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