MMORPG.com's newest columnist Victor Wachter pens his first column on the shardless server that has been implemented by Cryptic Studios with the launch of their new superhero MMO, Champions Online.

Champions Online recently launched, and one of the innovations that it brought to the table was shardlessness - a single server hosting the entire game population. For years, we've played with game populations that were divided across servers into smaller sub-communities. Putting them all together is an interesting idea and one we will no doubt see more of. But, like any innovation It carries some implications to the business and to the community that will no-doubt change things in the MMO space.

Disclaimer: I am a former employee of Cryptic Studios and worked on Champions Online. This article is by no means a critique of their implementation of the system, only a consideration of what it means for games in the future)

Pro: One huge community that can play together. I have a ton of friends who play WoW across different servers. We talk about playing together, but it almost always ends the same: We roll noobs on the server, play maybe a couple of nights in the week and then go back to our mains. We don't have time to essentially play the game over from the start without the resources that our home server provides from our guilds and our mains.

Read Going Shardless.

Victor's drawing makes him look like he's plotting to destroy the world...

Originally posted by streea

Victor's drawing makes him look like he's plotting to destroy the world...

Who says he's not? :)

Shardless???

there is no innovation there mate:

- Makind Online

- EVE-Online

- Dune Generation (never went past beta)

That's just three examples right here... give me the day and I can probably pull out 5 more titles with a bit of googling.

It's a good article but come on guys... you're suppose to be pros here.

Originally posted by Ponico

Shardless???

there is no innovation there mate:

- Makind Online

- EVE-Online

- Dune Generation (never went past beta)

 

That's just three examples right here... give me the day and I can probably pull out 5 more titles with a bit of googling.

 

It's a good article but come on guys... you're suppose to be pros here.

EVE Online is the abberation. games that didn't make it out of beta just can't count in this case, and with all due respect to mankind Online, I think that the article refers to the lack of AAA, high-budget titles using a shardless system.

Also, the Champions Online shardless system operates differently from the EVE shardless system, or really any other.

I'm just saying, you're awfully quick to try to tear someone down without really fully understanding what was said or considering all possibilities.

yeah, article is misinformed.  eve online has been shardless since beta. oh...for several years now.
And to mr. editor above.

---

and one of the innovations that it brought to the table was shardlessness - a single server hosting the entire game population.

---

Depend on what you mean by shardless, if you mean, only one server your are right, but CO is one server with plenty of shard in it.

Like the one before me said, it's no innovative, good but not innovative.

Yeah the shardless server is not that innovattive, with MMO's like EVE, Ryzom, and Darkfall being played on single servers, saying that CO has made an innovative step in that direction is like saying ice cream is the best thing out there. Can't really tear down CO, but we do have to correct that little info about it being innovative.

Well... As Eve has demonstrated, shardless has its draw backs. With everyone in the same world, even bleeding edge, state of the art, hardware and software(and pro design on both) can't keep up with large numbers of players in a given location.  That grows even worse when its not just one location thats seeing large numbers.  For instance, Jita had to be given its own dedicated hardware, in an attempt to keep lag there within limits.  How many companies are as dedicated to their vision as CCP is, and willing to spend the money for all of that hardware?

I quite agree with some of your points in terms of social interactions, and community building, but I suspect that the economics of the technology(and knowledge base to apply and maintain it properly) are going to keep shardless games in the minority for quite some time to come.

Sheesh I am really tired of people telling "EVE this EVE that", usually "EVE had that first", "EVE has that better" or the like. I don't even think EVE is a MMORPG. RPG needs a role to play and in EVE you are a spaceship. Not to say its a bad game, but it is SO out of everything I consider a MMORPG and a game that interests me, god EVE could invent money shitting and I could not care a rats ass.

/rant off

As to the topic: I find this shard system of CO abhorrent. First, I miss the server communities where I could get to know people. The mass spread over shards just gives you no chance. Second, as a result you are not in a massive world, but always just with a few. Taking for example 100, spread them over a vast zone and you see very, very few fellow gamers often enough. Third, as a non-English native gamer I preferred my overall translated servers, like German, French asf.

Given  the anti-social design of the game itself I never seen forming communities in the beta. There is no social hub like Atlas Park and the lack of given classes makes cooperation fickle at best. (NO DONT try to argue with me, I am as adamant in my belief that classas are GOOD as the Pope beliefs in Jesus. End of story!) And all those 5 minute short quests do not support team-feeling either.

The entire thing of global chat handles giving you any name is connected to shards how? This could be implemented in any game, servers or not. And they COULD opt to anonymize or randomize the "true me". I wasn't so thrilled to always be recognized. When you have a trifle with someone, which eventually happens in a MMO, there is zero way to escape that.

Originally posted by Yunbei

Sheesh I am really tired of people telling "EVE this EVE that", usually "EVE had that first", "EVE has that better" or the like. I don't even think EVE is a MMORPG. RPG needs a role to play and in EVE you are a spaceship. Not to say its a bad game, but it is SO out of everything I consider a MMORPG and a game that interests me, god EVE could invent money shitting and I could not care a rats ass.

/rant off

lol, you've opened yourself wide open there.  If Eve is not a mmorpg....then Jumpate is out and by partial definition, Star Trek Online is not a mmorpg because you're really a "starship" for a large part of the game.  As a matter of fact, WOW is not a mmorpg because every character does the exact same quests, which totally eliminates the rpg out of it.

there's a reason why Eve is mentioned fairly often...it's because frankly, it's a well designed game that CCP has actually expanded on to improve and not just rehash stuff over and over....ala..WOTLK.

Eve is a single world seperated by a crap ton of zones, which in effect, is "multiple servers" sharing a common chat interface (EQ1 did this).

As for a single world without zones, Eve can't do that, WW2 Online does. And did it well before Eve ever came around.

In my experience, what determines a sense of community in an MMO isn't the presence or absence of shards, but rather the quality and maturity level of the player base. Adults tend to form more serious adult-minded groups, while youth tend to organize around their own interests. Like-minded players will tend to seek out and find each other if they're serious about the game and about gaming, whereas those who are more casual in their gaming will tend to choose their social groups accordingly.

Honestly, I just think you're drawing the wrong connection here. To my way of thinking, it's much more about the quality of the players who choose to form social groups with each other  than it is about what gaming server they happen to end up on.

Originally posted by saranya

Originally posted by Yunbei

Sheesh I am really tired of people telling "EVE this EVE that", usually "EVE had that first", "EVE has that better" or the like. I don't even think EVE is a MMORPG. RPG needs a role to play and in EVE you are a spaceship. Not to say its a bad game, but it is SO out of everything I consider a MMORPG and a game that interests me, god EVE could invent money shitting and I could not care a rats ass.

/rant off

lol, you've opened yourself wide open there.  If Eve is not a mmorpg....then Jumpate is out and by partial definition, Star Trek Online is not a mmorpg because you're really a "starship" for a large part of the game.  As a matter of fact, WOW is not a mmorpg because every character does the exact same quests, which totally eliminates the rpg out of it.

there's a reason why Eve is mentioned fairly often...it's because frankly, it's a well designed game that CCP has actually expanded on to improve and not just rehash stuff over and over....ala..WOTLK.

Does chatting crap come naturally to you? or is it a phenomenon you suffer from time to time?

article was a waste of time :/

Con: Server identity and feeling of community are lost. The division of servers gives a natural sense of community, as you can expect to see a consistent set of people when you play and individual guilds begin to define the character of the server. In the past, I've joined guilds mainly because I grouped with a few of their members in PUGs over time and enjoyed it enough to ask to join. Shardlessness means randomness. You can't expect to hook up with the same people all that consistently if they can be on any one of twenty or more instances. I don't add people to my friends list until I've grouped with them a few times, and as a consequence, my Champions friends list currently contains only people I already knew.

This is the big reason why I don't much like shardless. I know exactly how this type of instancing system works, having played Guild Wars for many years, and I'd much rather stick with shards. Most of the cons to the shard system can be addressed by allowing players to transfer characters from one shard to another for a fee, as in WoW. The reason there needs to be a fee is so players don't just hop from one server to another willy-nilly, which would in the end be little different from the instanced system.

 If the reasoning for this article to exist is that the Champions Online's "shardless" (misused term) system is different from EvE's then why are larger more successful games such as Guild Wars ignored? CO is not the first and no more creative, but CO does need to bring up its image. Bam!  a puff piece appears.

Or is CO's affect on future gaming the increasing number of poorly disguised puff pieces on MMORPG.com? Is this an effort to counter people noticing quotes from press releases?

Originally posted by eric_w66

Eve is a single world seperated by a crap ton of zones, which in effect, is "multiple servers" sharing a common chat interface (EQ1 did this).

As for a single world without zones, Eve can't do that, WW2 Online does. And did it well before Eve ever came around.

You've got two different things confused together there.

EVE has one shard with a lot of zones.  Correct.  There are not multiple "servers" (in the common usage of the term) because there is only one replica of the game running.  People confuse the term "server" and "shard" all the time.

There is no MMO on the planet (afaik) that does not zone their worlds.  Some have seamless transitions between zones and some don't - but all are zoned nonetheless.  There simply isn't a technical way that I'm aware of to fit the expansive content inherrent to MMOs, with the "massive" number of players required, onto one physical CPU.

I.E.  You can run the length and width of Vanguard (or LotRO - baring the PvP zone - when I last played) without encountering a loading screen.  Both games have zones the same way EQ did, but handle the loading of the zones in a manner that seems seamless to the player.
 

As to the writer - the article comes off as very naieve to state boldly that CO innovated a shardless model.  Their particular take on a single-shard game is slightly different, but the writing of the piece used too broad a brush when painting that statement.  As a result, the author came across as having only played WoW and CO (which was probably not the intent).

Originally posted by Demz2

Originally posted by saranya

Originally posted by Yunbei

Sheesh I am really tired of people telling "EVE this EVE that", usually "EVE had that first", "EVE has that better" or the like. I don't even think EVE is a MMORPG. RPG needs a role to play and in EVE you are a spaceship. Not to say its a bad game, but it is SO out of everything I consider a MMORPG and a game that interests me, god EVE could invent money shitting and I could not care a rats ass.

/rant off

lol, you've opened yourself wide open there.  If Eve is not a mmorpg....then Jumpate is out and by partial definition, Star Trek Online is not a mmorpg because you're really a "starship" for a large part of the game.  As a matter of fact, WOW is not a mmorpg because every character does the exact same quests, which totally eliminates the rpg out of it.

there's a reason why Eve is mentioned fairly often...it's because frankly, it's a well designed game that CCP has actually expanded on to improve and not just rehash stuff over and over....ala..WOTLK.

 

Does chatting crap come naturally to you? or is it a phenomenon you suffer from time to time?

Actually for your 1st question, yeah.  For your 2nd, it's a phenomenon I encounter often (e.g.  current conversation).  I find I often have to bring myself down to certain levels in order to communicate effectively and/or manner in which the opposite person can readily understand/comprehend.  

This ability has made me a great socializer.

Originally posted by saranya

Originally posted by Yunbei

Sheesh I am really tired of people telling "EVE this EVE that", usually "EVE had that first", "EVE has that better" or the like. I don't even think EVE is a MMORPG. RPG needs a role to play and in EVE you are a spaceship. Not to say its a bad game, but it is SO out of everything I consider a MMORPG and a game that interests me, god EVE could invent money shitting and I could not care a rats ass.

/rant off

lol, you've opened yourself wide open there.  If Eve is not a mmorpg....then Jumpate is out and by partial definition, Star Trek Online is not a mmorpg because you're really a "starship" for a large part of the game.  As a matter of fact, WOW is not a mmorpg because every character does the exact same quests, which totally eliminates the rpg out of it.

there's a reason why Eve is mentioned fairly often...it's because frankly, it's a well designed game that CCP has actually expanded on to improve and not just rehash stuff over and over....ala..WOTLK.

Well, I define MMORPG with emphasis on RPG. Sorta like a single player RPG just that you share it with people in a constant world. Now a space sim is not a RPG, so a game where you don't play a person can still be cool and be an Online Game, but as I see it no MMORPG. How can a Starship be a role?

And as a sidenote, yes, I am just annoyed EVERY time any debate out any MMO feature starts at least 3 people jump and and say something like "EVE has this better, because bla bla". Well as the Queen usually says "how interesting for you". Nothing against EVE, but as Online space shooter/sim is is only for a special audience. Most people prefer to be a virtual person rather than a virtual ship, so it is for me such a different category, it really does matter little. And many EVE players here on forums DO seem a bit... well high nosed. Like they play an elite game and they are elite gamers and blah blah EVE is the holy grail of gaming, and all that just starts to annoy me by now.