4 ms·

Server woes are a necessary evil with MMOs, and people buy the game knowing they'll have to deal with some amount of downtime due to maintenance, overcrowding o

Server woes are a necessary evil with MMOs, and people buy the game knowing they'll have to deal with some amount of downtime due to maintenance, overcrowding or just plain growing pains. Try telling FPS players that their game will be unavailable every Tuesday morning for 6-12 hours and they'll probably riot -- that's standard downtime in the MMO world though.

outworlder 14y ago
No, that's actually standard WOW downtime. Check out Eve Online. They've been gradually decreasing downtime. Last time I played, it was like 30 minutes every day, with 15 minutes just for the cluster to reboot (the client has a nice server status, with a countdown and ETA). Their goal was to reduce it to zero (it was 1 hour when I first started playing).
- Irregardless 14y ago
  WoW has similarly minor downtime most weeks, but the point still stands: MMO players are willing to tolerate significantly longer and more frequent interruptions due to the nature of the games and the architecture necessary to support them. I don't know how much simulation is being done server-side or how resource intensive it is, but if the Sim City of 10+ years ago was possible without it, I'm pretty sure EA could've done this one without it as well. Smells like an excuse to me.
- ryusage 14y ago
  AFAIK, Guild Wars 2 has essentially zero downtime for updates. There was a talk posted online a while ago about their backend tools and architecture. It's really very impressive actually. [1] http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/13u1mz/watch_this_free_talk_about_the_technology_behind/ http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/13u1mz/watch_thi...
betterunix 14y ago
"Server woes are a necessary evil with MMOs" I am not sure that is true. What other than DRM stops people from setting up their own competing servers? What other than a lack of incentive for the game makers prevents community-run servers from interoperating, creating an enormous peer-to-peer universe?
- ryusage 14y ago
  As far as interoperating community-run servers: cheating is the first thing that comes to mind. A lot of restrictions in MMO's are not so much for DRM as they are for maintaining fairness in the game, or preventing people from destroying the in-game economy.
- Negitivefrags 14y ago
  What other than DRM? There is no DRM in an MMO. What stops you is the lack of them giving you the server software. Facebook doesn't give you their server software either, would you call that DRM? This is absolutely no different. Considering that a huge proportion of Hacker News is devoted to web based startups, you would think that this would be fairly obvious.
  - betterunix 14y ago
    "There is no DRM in an MMO" Thus explaining why people need to do things like patch the game and/or modify their hosts file in order to connect to third-party servers. If trying to authenticate the server you connect to and leaving you with no options for connecting to third party servers is not DRM, what would you call it? "What stops you is the lack of them giving you the server software." Nope, the protocols are reverse engineered and people create their own server software.
    - gilgoomesh 14y ago
      > Nope, the protocols are reverse engineered and people create their own server software. Which is one of two reasons (the other being anti-cheating) that newer games withhold a large part of the game logic on the server side. It is possible to reverse engineer game logic but impractical: you might as well rewrite the game. If you have a look at efforts to reverse engineer Diablo 3, you'll see that most of the game is missing without the server. You can run around but you can't do anything.

outworlder 14y ago

No, that's actually standard WOW downtime. Check out Eve Online. They've been gradually decreasing downtime. Last time I played, it was like 30 minutes every day, with 15 minutes just for the cluster to reboot (the client has a nice server status, with a countdown and ETA). Their goal was to reduce it to zero (it was 1 hour when I first started playing).

Irregardless 14y ago
WoW has similarly minor downtime most weeks, but the point still stands: MMO players are willing to tolerate significantly longer and more frequent interruptions due to the nature of the games and the architecture necessary to support them. I don't know how much simulation is being done server-side or how resource intensive it is, but if the Sim City of 10+ years ago was possible without it, I'm pretty sure EA could've done this one without it as well. Smells like an excuse to me.
ryusage 14y ago
AFAIK, Guild Wars 2 has essentially zero downtime for updates. There was a talk posted online a while ago about their backend tools and architecture. It's really very impressive actually. [1] http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/13u1mz/watch_this_free_talk_about_the_technology_behind/ http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/13u1mz/watch_thi...

betterunix 14y ago

"Server woes are a necessary evil with MMOs" I am not sure that is true. What other than DRM stops people from setting up their own competing servers? What other than a lack of incentive for the game makers prevents community-run servers from interoperating, creating an enormous peer-to-peer universe?

ryusage 14y ago
As far as interoperating community-run servers: cheating is the first thing that comes to mind. A lot of restrictions in MMO's are not so much for DRM as they are for maintaining fairness in the game, or preventing people from destroying the in-game economy.
Negitivefrags 14y ago
What other than DRM? There is no DRM in an MMO. What stops you is the lack of them giving you the server software. Facebook doesn't give you their server software either, would you call that DRM? This is absolutely no different. Considering that a huge proportion of Hacker News is devoted to web based startups, you would think that this would be fairly obvious.
- betterunix 14y ago
  "There is no DRM in an MMO" Thus explaining why people need to do things like patch the game and/or modify their hosts file in order to connect to third-party servers. If trying to authenticate the server you connect to and leaving you with no options for connecting to third party servers is not DRM, what would you call it? "What stops you is the lack of them giving you the server software." Nope, the protocols are reverse engineered and people create their own server software.
  - gilgoomesh 14y ago
    > Nope, the protocols are reverse engineered and people create their own server software. Which is one of two reasons (the other being anti-cheating) that newer games withhold a large part of the game logic on the server side. It is possible to reverse engineer game logic but impractical: you might as well rewrite the game. If you have a look at efforts to reverse engineer Diablo 3, you'll see that most of the game is missing without the server. You can run around but you can't do anything.