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I think that there's something kind of fascinating and romantic about the idea that an entire world and the ongoing social affairs of thousands of people can fi
by jpxxx 14y ago
I think that there's something kind of fascinating and romantic about the idea that an entire world and the ongoing social affairs of thousands of people can fit on a single server blade in the middle of nowhere.
- Alex3917 14y agoThis hack is eerily reminiscent of Morpheus coming to free the minds of all the people trapped in the matrix...
- adrianonantua 14y agoAmong everything I read in this thread, this was by far the most insightful.
- thornofmight 14y agoIt's probably against HN etiquette to say things like this, but I really love this post.
- bsphil 14y agoThat's what makes EVE so much more interesting to me. There's only one server. The monthly fee can be earned in-game. The economy is tied to actual dollars because it's so reliable. There have been plenty of universe-spanning conflicts that impact the entire game with genuine political drama, and the dev team steps back to let it unfold with minimal intervention.
- kahawe 14y agoAlso a lot of EVE is actually played outside the game... think about traders and crafters and their excel spreadsheets or websites put together for trade networks. And of course the spies! Their activities went so far as cutting an important fleet commanders electricity so his thousand-of-real-world-dollars titan could be shot down. EVE is fascinating!
- DigitalJack 14y agoThere are many servers in eve. Each time you go through a jump gate you are usually hopping to a new server.
- saurik 14y agoI don't think he means in terms of implementation detail like "how many machines are running the world": the idea is that there is only a single shard (to use UO terminology; I believe WoW calls these "realms"), which means that everyone is playing together in a single massive alternate universe.
- DigitalJack 14y agoI agree, that is probably what he meant, but it was factually incorrect. Even so, in eve there are only small aspects that span servers simultaneously (the market place, and maybe other things too--I haven't played in a year or so). The unique thing about eve is being able to jump between "realms" or servers or "shards." That gives the illusion of playing together in a much larger world. I've never played WoW, so I don't know if you can jump between shards or realms, or if they are treated more like parallel dimensions.
- podperson 14y agoWoW is not that sophisticated. Or perhaps a better way of thinking of it is that Blizzard wants to provide a highly predictable customer experience. The world has no real state so it's simply like being locked into parallel _identical_ dimensions.
- mquander 14y agoIt wasn't factually incorrect, you just didn't understand him because you're not using the video-game-specific meaning of the word "server." As you suggested, it refers to multiple "parallel dimensions" between which the playerbase is split to avoid overpopulation; that's how almost all other MMOs work. Whether each of those runs on a single physical computer is irrelevant to anyone except the host.
- pooriaazimi 14y agoCan someone explain what EVE is? And explain it like I don't know anything about it (and I don't). Wikipedia, etc. don't cut it and I still don't understand what EVE is and why people like it. Thanks a lot!
- TazeTSchnitzel 14y agoEVE Online's a space massively multiplayer online game. Unlike World of Warcraft, instead of there being multiple servers for a given areas (hence not everyone sees the same people in that area), EVE allocates one server per area, or something like that, meaning there is only one EVE online world. EVE's considered very interesting because there's a quite sophisticated virtual economy and a larger emphasis on trade. I don't play the game though, so I might be wrong :)
- njharman 14y agoIf you don't know what a MMO is then you need to back up and ask that question first. Eve is an single "shard" MMO with a starship piloting theme. Similar in ways to Elite http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elite_(video_game) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elite_(video_game) The economy (and related such as production, resource ownership, politics, warfare) are, to an extent not found in most MMOS, player driven. That is what sets Eve apart. People are a varied lot and thus like it for varied reasons. There are several ways to enjoy game.
- Tooluka 14y agoEVE is a spreadsheets with a chat. Why people like it? Because everything else is so much simpler and dull (except elves in armored bikinis of course). It's like comparing Lego Mindstorms to a Barby game set. The latter is way more popular though :) , just like WoW and Lineage vs EVE.
- jpxxx 14y agoSomeone once referred to Eve Online as 'Ayn Rand's Battle Spreadsheets".
- CDRdude 14y ago
- astrodust 14y agoThere's only one game context, but there are undoubtedly many servers involved.
- antihero 14y agoUnless BoB was involved, in which case they jacked up their areas and played as part of the corp.
- aesopiate 14y agoYou could easily be a Night Elf's World of Earthcraft avatar on some server blade in some cooler universe than ours.
- eric_bullington 14y agoAs you probably are aware, this is not entirely unlikely: http://www.simulation-argument.com/ http://www.simulation-argument.com/ An interesting read by world-renown philosopher Nick Bostrom.
- Evbn 14y agoUm, my money is on this option: "(1) the human species is very likely to go extinct before reaching a “posthuman” stage" I am going to wrote allmy papers like this, "Either some ridiculously unlikely scenario will never be reached, or some other unfalsifiable scenario is true."
- jiggy2011 14y agoI'm going to assume it's much more than one physical box, probably big chunks of several data centres. In MMO terminology "server" seems to refer to a single self contained game world.
- saraid216 14y ago"Server" refers to player load balancing, not hardware. Generally speaking, a group of solar systems is run on a single physical box. (If you search through their dev blogs, they explain it a little in the ones where they're improving performance.)
- brown9-2 14y agoNeal Stephenson's "Reamde" had some very interesting takes on this topic.
- singlow 14y agoAfter reading the review I was afraid that it was going to be primarily about in-game action - but was relieved when I read it that the online game was mostly a backdrop and only a few scenes actually occur there. I absolutely recommend this book to anyone who has played a MMORPG for more than a few hours and enjoyed the concept of it - even if you were never addicted. It is not a masterpiece like Cryptonomicon or Anathem but a very enjoyable read.