Originally posted by MyTabbycat
I do ask: What's the difference between having the population on 15 different shards (that's 14 shards worth of people you can't see) versus having the population in 15 different phased zones (that's 14 phased zones worth of people you can't see)? Is it just the ability to hop from one phase to another without having to buck up and pay a fee to transfer to another shard to play with your friend?

There is no difference, people are just beyond dumb. It's the same exact thing, just nothing visual to show the different Shards, instead there is instances. Mega Server gives you the ability for you to switch to different shards, without having to pay for it basically.

Originally posted by Torgen

When I first heard of TSO i just though "Meh... not interested at all" (even as a former DAoC player). Then they announced some changes to the combat system etc and I thought "Oh great.. now I might look into it" and then I read about their server/instance system and decided not to touch this game at all.

 

Since the OP very much nailed it I am not going to elaborate on this ;)

I played MMOs since UO, I also played DAOC. No where did I get the impression that TESO would have a heavily instanced game, people are putting the Mega Server concept out of context. They obviously don't know what a Mega Server is or how it works.

Originally posted by karmath

Originally posted by RandomDown

These conversations about how they "destroy community" strike me as so wrong. It seems more that these players want the game by design to force them to build a community than to be social human beings and seek out interaction. I just bought GW2 since Im bored waiting to head back to America and once a tittle over 30 someone invited me to do AC explore with them even though I wasn't quite high enough. Everyone in the group got along, friended each other adn we still group to this day. Well I'll be damned the solo centric GW2 game helped me make friends because someone took the time to reach out.

 

To the guy that mentioned sitting around a rabbit. Why do you think thats the better way to do it? Do you think everyone will politely wait their turn to tag the rabbit and get the credit? It would have to be first hit, because everyone getting credit and moving on wouldn't build community.

 

More often than not the statments I see seem to imply that because the system doesn't force you into interaction then you won't have any. And you aren't going to know all 2000 people on your server anyways. Its doubtful your "community" is larger than 150 and that implies a strong, cohesive community. 

All games have a system to form a community. A simple chat option gives you the ability to form a community. You just don't want to be the one to reach out and make a friend. If you're shy and you have trouble reaching out, then that is a reason that I can respect for wanting that kind of population clustering and forced interaction. But to say that a game with instancing doesn't give you the chance to form communities is just a blatant falsehood. 

In theory you are correct. In practise you are incredibly wrong. The majority of people in MMO's will seek the path of least resistance.

ie. If a person can quickly find a group with a dungeon/raid finder tool get teleported there instantly and acheive their goals without uttering a word they will never go through the hassle of actually interacting with others, making friends, forming a group, going to a desination on foot/mount and then acheiving their goals.

Those that would prefer the longer and harder way do try, but quickly get fed up of being behind the 8 ball and generally go allong with the easy route players.

This behaviour has been displayed very prominently in every single last clone.

So, if the majority of players (customers) seek the "path of least resistence", the developers shouldn't take that into mind, when they are creating new games?  It seems to me, thats simply market dynamics at work.   Social engineering projects, either public or private, have a really bad history.  They don't tend to achieve anything like what their original intentions may have been. 

I look at the new games in terms of entertainment. Anything else, beyond that is iceing on the cake as it were. 

Originally posted by muffins89

Originally posted by karmath

Originally posted by spankybus

This thread seems a bit daft, tbh. OP, You realize, of course, that any MMO you've ever played that had multiple servers are like instances when compared to a Mega-server, right? Lets compare:

 

Traditional MMO: Multiple gameplay servers where the player Has to pick one to join, permenantly. Players can only play with people on the same server. Moving to another server is usually a premium service, costing real cash. Server merges usually resulting in player merges and forced name changes for some.

 

TESO Mega-Server concept: Probably multiple servers as far as hardware goes, but to the player one single server that everyone joins. Players can play with anyone who is playing the game, though i expect some communication is required between the parties to arrive in the same shard. Moving between the servers is now possible at-will, and appear to the player as selectable shards, and costs no real world cash to effect the change. A reduction to the requisite servers should be transparent to the player, with no forced name changes.

 

I don't see what all the fuss is about. This really is not that different that an MMO with multiple servers, except now you are not  separated from those players by a 20 buck character transfer fee.

 

Now, if the auto-shard assignment cannot be overridden, then it's daft. Auto should auto-sort guild members to the same shards, etc.

While your post is 100% true, your missing the main beef with it. The individual 'instances' can only hold a very low amount of people. If you played AoC when it had a decent population, which had a simmilar setup but no 'megaserver' you would know its a huge pain is the ass swapping back and forth between instances, not to mention the RP kids really dont like things that break immersion. This apparenty being a TES game, the RP crowd is agruably the majority or at least a very large percentage of the potential playerbase.

but we don't know how big each megaserver "pocket" will be.  could be each holds the same as a traditional server. 

We don't know, but we do know what every game who has used the same technology has set the limits to and that's all we have to go by. To expect anything else will place us in the same disappointing position fans of past failed games have been in. Optimism, although a trait I think is worthy to have in real life, is not something earned or even wanted for MMORPG's in development.

Originally posted by D_TOX

I was captivated by the Elder Scrolls video until they touted this game-breaker as if its a good thing. They basically just admitted the game will be heavily sharded/instanced all in one server. What this means is you will have a world much like Star Trek Online, Age of Conan, TOR and other flop MMO's that makes you and other players invisible to each other even when you're standing in the same Inn/house/landscape until you click a little button that swaps you into another version of that zone.

...

Sorry, but I do not understand where is problem. With shards/worlds/realms is same, you DO NOT SEE ANY PLAYER FROM OTHER. Here at least you have easy way to see ANY of players. Just need to adjust where that friends is located. I guess you do not miss random people.

You are making problem where there is none.

I wish every game would have single server. I see only 1 big minus - names. Hard to select right name. So in this case they should adopt option like some games, where there could be many same main names, but different i.e. surnames or other way to make name unique.

Originally posted by Wraithone

Originally posted by nate1980

Originally posted by mackdawg19

Wow 7 pages worth of threads and no one mentions the obvious. Im not here to defend what they are doing, but there is a reason. It's called game programming. Have you ever in your life seen a seemless world that can support hundreds of thousands of players on one server? You could probably answer yes to that on one game, EVE. But heres where things go wrong, ENTITIES!!!!!! You can only have so many moving objects on a screen before the server load gets to high and eventually crashes. If anyone of you have ever read anything John Carmack has written, then you would see why it can't happen with todays technology. There isnt one server that could handle 10000+ players on top of NPC's and the like.

So the question really is, would you rather play a game that crashes constantly but looks amazing and you can play with everyone, or would you rather have smooth gameplay and no crashes and only play with a select few? Trust me on this, you will never see a one server seemless world anytime soon. Getting over this now will help you move on and maybe you can start enjoying what you have.

How about option 3 where the game doesn't look amazing, but passable, yet in return allows me to play with thousands of people?

Two reasons come to mind. One, if it doesn't look amazing, you've lost one of your main hooks into the typical main stream market.  In todays competitive market thats a BIG deal. 

Second, beyond a certain point, you aren't going to have personal interactions with more than a relative handful (30-50) people on a regular basis any way.  Even the most social people aren't going to go much above 100 (if that). 

Those who go on (and on and on...) about this abstract known as "community" seldom if ever take that into account.  What makes a "community" memerable, isn't its numbers, but its *individuals* and your interactions with them. Honestly, when you start thinking about it, how many *individuals* do you remember from a given game? 

A persons circle of friends and even aquaintences may not be huge, but that doesn't matter. In older games, where you grouped for xp to get to max level, you grouped with the same hundreds of people throughout that whole bit of months and year(s) it took you to get there. So while you couldn't name them off the top of your head, you'd recall who they are when you saw their name and would remember how well they played. Also, while you may not know the person, a game that promotes community ensures that in all likely-hood, if you don't know someone, then one of your friends or acquaintences probably will. Finding groups wasn't hard, because everyone knew people to invite if you couldn't get people the normal way (PUG's). Finding crafters wasn't hard, because people knew about and passed around the information for good crafters. Finding community leaders wasn't hard, because they went to social hubs the developers provided, instead of sticking to just their own guilds. Things work very similar to real life actually. Just because you may not know someone, doesn't mean they aren't contributing to your life.

For example, you may not know the owners,cashiers, workers and etc of all the people that run the stores, shops, restaraunts, bars, and other entertainment venues, but if they weren't there doing their thing, you wouldn't have those places to go . You may not know all the women/men in your city, but if they weren't there, then you'd be more likely to have less friends, girlfriends, and etc. You get my point.

I'm just saying UO, DAoC, SWG, CoH, Ryzom and so many early games had GREAT communities ON SERVERS that held 3-5k people. I mean hell, a couple years ago a friend I met online in a game convinced me to give UO a shot, since I never played it in its prime, and so I did. I got into that game and was bombarded with help from community members, and even saw large RP events going on that GM's decided to help out with that was organized by the community. I was invited to these events, despite being new and not knowing the game all that much. That's a community. Good luck finding people like that in such concentrated areas in modern MMORPG's, much less modern ones that seperate their community into groups of 100.

Then again, now that I think about it, if TESO is going to be one of those games where great graphics, fast combat, and killing is the main thing to do in the game, then it won't really matter, since people don't generally talk in those games anyways.

I have concerns about the mega server idea. But I'll wait and see exactly how it works before I decide it's the worst thing ever introduced to MMO's.

Its still that way in these types of games. That guy contributing to you, that you may not know, could be the one selling mats or crafted items below value or at cost in the market place. People still know other people while they are waiting around looking for more they can ask for help. None of those things have changed. It all comes down to people wanting the interaction to be there instead of being the one to take the first step.

Originally posted by RandomDown
Its still that way in these types of games. That guy contributing to you, that you may not know, could be the one selling mats or crafted items below value or at cost in the market place. People still know other people while they are waiting around looking for more they can ask for help. None of those things have changed. It all comes down to people wanting the interaction to be there instead of being the one to take the first step.

I'm one of those people who take first steps and I'm still hard pressed to build a friends list of more than 5 people before I quit the game. Most modern games do not require or promote a strong community. The typical modern MMORPG goes like this:

1. You solo quest grind to get the vast majority of your levels. No communication required

2. You join instanced PvP. Combat is too fast paced, and matches are relatively short. No communication is required, other than really short commands to direct people to where people should go. Even that isn't done really.

3. You join an instanced group. You may try to initiate a conversation, but it never works, because combat is too fast paced, there's no down time to talk, and everyone just wants to rush through the dungeon, down the bosses, and gather the loot.

4. Everything can be sold through the AH, so you never need to meet people for new gear. That, plus you can get all of your gear through dungeon loot.

5. If you make it through a game like this and actually reach max level, you raid. Here is where you finally need a guild and friendships and a community will be built. However, you can't group more than 10-20 people at once, so they will be small communities. Extremely small.

In older MMORPG's, things worked rather different:

1. Grouping was encouraged, not required, but people still grouped most of the time since it was the best way to level. Combat was slow, there was downtime, and it took a lot of coordination to deal with adds and down these hard mobs. People also stayed in the same group for many hours. Thus, by the end of the day, you had 5-6 new friends. Multiply that by the amount of days you play. Some end up being downgraded into acquaintences, since many will reroll a new toon.

2. PvP was in the open world, or in persistent zones like the open world. It took great coordination and tactics to overcome your rivals. Other than calling out targets and offering directions, chatting wasn't something done a whole lot in this activity from my recolection.

3. There weren't any instanced groups until after WoW came out. Everything was done in the same world. But there'd be multiple dungeon groups in the same open world dungeons. People didn't bitch at other groups for being there, they just cooperated and moved to a different part of the dungeon. Those other groups also helped you if you were in trouble and would rezz you. The rest was the same as open world groups. You left with a small list of friends by the end of the day.

4. There wasn't any real AH's, so you met crafters and delt with them face to face. Loot also wasn't a large priority in those games, so you weren't constantly running back to sell. I remember many times in SWG when the crafters acted more like businessman. They'd help you choose colors, patterns, types of clothing, and etc. and give you tips and opinions on looks you were aiming for. In DAoC, you needed to communicate with crafters to get spellcrafted gear done the way you wanted. You had to meet face to face with them. You remember the good crafters, and became repeat customers. Is there any real loyalty or communication through AH's? Any real friendships built?

5. Max level wasn't end game. There were things to do at max level, but the entire game was the game. People enjoyed the journey and the destination. By max level your friendslist was maxxed out, you were in an awesome guild (not really many bad guilds in those times), that guild was apart of an awesome alliance (which had alliance chat), and there were things to do to make use of all those people all at once if people wanted to. You had 100+ man raids (no person limit for raids), you had several hundred in RvR. In SWG, you had social events thrown in player cities and cantina's or other cities. PvP skirmishes happening all over the galaxy. 

I'm just saying, developers will or will not create games that foster a community. The social butterflies will flourish no matter what, but that doesn't help that vast majority of people out there who won't talk to anyone unless needed.

Originally posted by nate1980

Originally posted by RandomDown
Its still that way in these types of games. That guy contributing to you, that you may not know, could be the one selling mats or crafted items below value or at cost in the market place. People still know other people while they are waiting around looking for more they can ask for help. None of those things have changed. It all comes down to people wanting the interaction to be there instead of being the one to take the first step.

I'm one of those people who take first steps and I'm still hard pressed to build a friends list of more than 5 people before I quit the game. Most modern games do not require or promote a strong community. The typical modern MMORPG goes like this:

1. You solo quest grind to get the vast majority of your levels. No communication required

2. You join instanced PvP. Combat is too fast paced, and matches are relatively short. No communication is required, other than really short commands to direct people to where people should go. Even that isn't done really.

3. You join an instanced group. You may try to initiate a conversation, but it never works, because combat is too fast paced, there's no down time to talk, and everyone just wants to rush through the dungeon, down the bosses, and gather the loot.

4. Everything can be sold through the AH, so you never need to meet people for new gear. That, plus you can get all of your gear through dungeon loot.

5. If you make it through a game like this and actually reach max level, you raid. Here is where you finally need a guild and friendships and a community will be built. However, you can't group more than 10-20 people at once, so they will be small communities. Extremely small.

In older MMORPG's, things worked rather different:

1. Grouping was encouraged, not required, but people still grouped most of the time since it was the best way to level. Combat was slow, there was downtime, and it took a lot of coordination to deal with adds and down these hard mobs. People also stayed in the same group for many hours. Thus, by the end of the day, you had 5-6 new friends. Multiply that by the amount of days you play. Some end up being downgraded into acquaintences, since many will reroll a new toon.

2. PvP was in the open world, or in persistent zones like the open world. It took great coordination and tactics to overcome your rivals. Other than calling out targets and offering directions, chatting wasn't something done a whole lot in this activity from my recolection.

3. There weren't any instanced groups until after WoW came out. Everything was done in the same world. But there'd be multiple dungeon groups in the same open world dungeons. People didn't bitch at other groups for being there, they just cooperated and moved to a different part of the dungeon. Those other groups also helped you if you were in trouble and would rezz you. The rest was the same as open world groups. You left with a small list of friends by the end of the day.

4. There wasn't any real AH's, so you met crafters and delt with them face to face. Loot also wasn't a large priority in those games, so you weren't constantly running back to sell. I remember many times in SWG when the crafters acted more like businessman. They'd help you choose colors, patterns, types of clothing, and etc. and give you tips and opinions on looks you were aiming for. In DAoC, you needed to communicate with crafters to get spellcrafted gear done the way you wanted. You had to meet face to face with them. You remember the good crafters, and became repeat customers. Is there any real loyalty or communication through AH's? Any real friendships built?

5. Max level wasn't end game. There were things to do at max level, but the entire game was the game. People enjoyed the journey and the destination. By max level your friendslist was maxxed out, you were in an awesome guild (not really many bad guilds in those times), that guild was apart of an awesome alliance (which had alliance chat), and there were things to do to make use of all those people all at once if people wanted to. You had 100+ man raids (no person limit for raids), you had several hundred in RvR. In SWG, you had social events thrown in player cities and cantina's or other cities. PvP skirmishes happening all over the galaxy. 

I'm just saying, developers will or will not create games that foster a community. The social butterflies will flourish no matter what, but that doesn't help that vast majority of people out there who won't talk to anyone unless needed.

Much of that is entirely subjective.

 

1. Take EQ, grouping was more than "encouraged" if you weren't one of a few classes who could competently do it. Most were closer to "forced" grouping.

 

2. DAoC dungeons were technically "instanced" from the main world. Though you all went into the same one, it wasn't seamless, which I see a lot of people say it was. Also they had "instanced pvp" as they had the BGs which were that, whether you believe it or not. They were persistent in the sense Thidranki had to be capped to turn yes, but they were instanced.

 

3. Not sure so I won't speak to it.

 

4. Good meaning they had the mats available, got it done on time what? An AH still facilitates "good" crafting if you mean the ability to craft the gear you desire in a timely fashion.

 

5. How are 100+ man raids good, is it because a lot of people can do it? Doing that for the Avatar of War certainly wasn't. Most people want to raid for lewtz and that makes your chances astronimical going in if anything as usually the "core raiding group" got first dibs or whoever the ML decided should have it. Getting that many people together is a hassle and not a fun part of a game. When you have an alliance of guilds in instanced raiding, oh hey you could have all those people still raid, and have a chance to progress their character.

 

And if the social butterflies will flourish no matter what, and they seem to constantly say they can't, then let them. Maybe all those other people, who are evidently the largest percentage of the playerbase, don't want to talk to anybody. So why should the game systems force them to do that?

Instances are great, the only time in mmorpg's were I feel like in a hero is in an instance and towns actually become bustling areas to meet and communicate and trade, I'd agree that the world feels a little less natural at times but nothing shatters the real feeling and the illusion that your a hero by seeing bots running around, or seeing respawns constantly, with an instanced world areas can be layed out to make it more challenging and fun. You can easily meet anybody, if you have friends in real life who want to come play and your on a full server then what happens? My dream mmo is almost entirely instanced and populated by thousands of non heroic npc's, who react to your deeds, like in fabel, you do good and the game world changes, seeing people jumping like goofy rabbits really makes roleplaying a hero difficult. Seeing another group kill the exact same dude that you killed a minute earlier does more to make the world feel gamey than an instance ever can.

There are So many options for good fantasy mmo's with persistent worlds, we all know this like every mmo it will be the same exact game, kill, loot, organise inventory, organise skills, get stuff, get mire powerfull to kill more powerful bad dudes, sell stuff, mine, sew etc allmost all make you feel very lame, han solo never looted greedo and rarely changed gear, a heros deeds define how the world views him, as far as I'm concerned instanced or persistent it doesn't really matter, it'll just be another port of d&d pen and paper on the computer, we gotta have something different where the game rewards role playing and doesn't punish it. The last of my concers is weather the world is persistent of instanced.

Originally posted by lordfarrel

Instances are great, the only time in mmorpg's were I feel like in a hero is in an instance and towns actually become bustling areas to meet and communicate and trade, I'd agree that the world feels a little less natural at times but nothing shatters the real feeling and the illusion that your a hero by seeing bots running around, or seeing respawns constantly, with an instanced world areas can be layed out to make it more challenging and fun. You can easily meet anybody, if you have friends in real life who want to come play and your on a full server then what happens? My dream mmo is almost entirely instanced and populated by thousands of non heroic npc's, who react to your deeds, like in fabel, you do good and the game world changes, seeing people jumping like goofy rabbits really makes roleplaying a hero difficult. Seeing another group kill the exact same dude that you killed a minute earlier does more to make the world feel gamey than an instance ever can.

There are So many options for good fantasy mmo's with persistent worlds, we all know this like every mmo it will be the same exact game, kill, loot, organise inventory, organise skills, get stuff, get mire powerfull to kill more powerful bad dudes, sell stuff, mine, sew etc allmost all make you feel very lame, han solo never looted greedo and rarely changed gear, a heros deeds define how the world views him, as far as I'm concerned instanced or persistent it doesn't really matter, it'll just be another port of d&d pen and paper on the computer, we gotta have something different where the game rewards role playing and doesn't punish it. The last of my concers is weather the world is persistent of instanced.

Games like you describe are a lot of fun, but they're Co-Op and single player games, not MMORPG's. 

Originally posted by D_TOX

I was captivated by the Elder Scrolls video until they touted this game-breaker as if its a good thing. They basically just admitted the game will be heavily sharded/instanced all in one server. What this means is you will have a world much like Star Trek Online, Age of Conan, TOR and other flop MMO's that makes you and other players invisible to each other even when you're standing in the same Inn/house/landscape until you click a little button that swaps you into another version of that zone.

I really hate this retarded direction ALL MMO's are taking now. There's nothing MMO about them, just cheaper server architecture to ease the workload in return for a weaker player experience and community. Then you have games like Planetside 2, an MMOFPS that happily allows thousands of players to be connected simultaneously in one server zone. Maybe i'm just an old-schooler who enjoyed the days of SWG, EVE and WOW when everything you were experiencing was being experienced by other players too. You never missed a thing. Now it's all about minimizing waiting for 'mobs' to spawn and creating a streamlined fast-track experience for players which completely detracts from the real MMO experience of community, patience and dedication. 

We're moving into the future of gaming but game development appears to be going backwards. Instead of creating BIGGER worlds with MORE quests and MORE ways to level, they are creating SMALLER worlds and INSTANCING them to sh*t instead. I just don't get it. There's no boldness in developing any more, only shortcuts and unoriginal 'creativity'.  I would have thought of all developers the Elder Scrolls team would be brave and bold with their development but it looks like i was wrong. 

I despise instancing!

LISTEN ALL, Basically this is a very very good thing, you know how many of my friends on GW2 could not join my server? yo uknow what happened on SWTOR when masses stopped playing? dead low pop servers, you know this direction of single servers is the way forward in a massive leap, when you have 1 servers everyone can play together unrestricted, when peopel quit aftr 2 months the server is still populated and feels the same because we are all on 1 server and 1 community, planetside 2 only holds a few hundred people per continent, hence the ques and so on.

The fact is you want single servers for what? no valid reason at all. with 1 server when you meet a guy at work who playt the game there sno of dam we on seperate servers, i gota pay £18 to join you lets not bother, its cool lets play together.

EvE Online is 1 server and do peopel complain about 50,000 people logged on at once?

SWTOR before they used basicallymega servers were dead and long ques and boring.

Single servers are the only way forward for mmo's to keep the community alive, the population healthy and friends together.

 

 

 

I would like a fantasy MMO that has a single server like EVE... the only instancing EVE has is the missions and that's like going on a dungeon run in WoW, basically.. but no group finder, make your own group by >gasp< talking to people.  And I like the PVP too, generally I don't like open PVP 'cause it's a gank fest, but EVE isn't.. you choose how much riak you want to put yourself in by where you play, and the greater the risk the greater the reward.  I enjoy being able to log in at 4am US time and having people around to talk to in local.  Even in WoW on a high pop server it wasa pain in the ass to find people to play with at that time 'cause they divided the players up into RL geographic regions so much.

Originally posted by FistyMayhem
I would like a fantasy MMO that has a single server like EVE... the only instancing EVE has is the missions and that's like going on a dungeon run in WoW, basically.. but no group finder, make your own group by >gasp< talking to people.  And I like the PVP too, generally I don't like open PVP 'cause it's a gank fest, but EVE isn't.. you choose how much riak you want to put yourself in by where you play, and the greater the risk the greater the reward.  I enjoy being able to log in at 4am US time and having people around to talk to in local.  Even in WoW on a high pop server it wasa pain in the ass to find people to play with at that time 'cause they divided the players up into RL geographic regions so much.

Thats another point i forgot to say in my post, 1 server = servers are always active and populated no matter what time you play, i play games alot living in UK till around 4am, most eu servers are totally dead by 1am so this massivly helps everyone.