Does anyone know if STO is planning to have servers, for example, everyone in one world EVE style, regular servers, or instances?

It's going to be one big server like that one in eve, but they will be using instancing to some degree to keep things manageable. Unfortuantely they haven't really expanded on that part yet in any interview or anything. Most of the things out now (interview and stuff wise..) cover the same things we know already over and over again.

But you can be sure you don't have to specifically pick the same server to play with your mates.

Originally posted by Mile5

It's going to be one big server like that one in eve, but they will be using instancing to some degree to keep things manageable. Unfortuantely they haven't really expanded on that part yet in any interview or anything. Most of the things out now (interview and stuff wise..) cover the same things we know already over and over again.

But you can be sure you don't have to specifically pick the same server to play with your mates.

OK you are right that there appears that there will be one server only. I think you are wrong to think of it as like EVE. The tech used for STO is known to be very similar to that in CO (pretty much the same engine). If we extrapolate that idea to STO then you will see several features of this instanced single server approach - these are what CO is like so I am assuming STO will be similar.

One server for every player worldwide , no choice at character creation of which server to play on because there is only one.

Names are non-unique except for names on your own account. oleum@oleum oleum@secondaccount are both allowed. The character name is oleum but in theory every account on the server can be oleum.

There is multiple instancing in CO. This essentially means that there are duplicates of each area in the game. The limit on players per area are something like 100 in CO, STO we will have to wait and see. Each instance is likely to be numbered so you might have STARBASE #1 or STARBASE#73. In CO new instances are dynamically created and destroyed as player numbers rise and fall.

The good things are mainly that you can always find your friends on the same server. You never need play in an over camped area as you can easily switch instance if it is very full. As game population rises or falls they wont need to open new servers or close low population servers. You will always be able to get your preferred game name and people can still uniquely identify who you are by the @part. Trade and economy (AH etc) have access to all players in the whole game.

The bad things. Well I don't actually like the feel instancing can give in some games (GW is the best example to me). If you want to avoid someone, its not so easy to do. Someone might have your name and behave badly. Some will think it is you and you may have a damaged reputation. The economy could be daunting as you are always competing with the best, did I say that was bad? I personally think this instancing lark is the way of the future. The good seems to outweigh the bad.

Anyway thats just how I expect it to be given COs design. I tested and played CO for almost a year now and I doubt STO will be very different.