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Champions Online : Victor Wachter: Going Shardless
Posted Oct 20, 2009 by Jon Wood
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...
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.
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.
if you want to bring up that it's not the same "shardlessness" and eve online not applying, then maybe the author needs to provide a more elaborate explanation of what facet of shardlessness he's talking about. As far as his definition, Eve Online is a direct comparison.
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.
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.
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?
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).
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.
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.
Not sure why everyone is bagging on this guy for his contribution. CO is innovative ( to introduce something new; make changes in anything established. ) in its shardless design. Does not mean the INVENTED it which he does not declare.
EVE is one shard with multiple zones. GW is multiple instances with common areas for grouping. CO has a nice system that tracks friends and plaers through the intances and gives you the feeling that you are playing a massivly popular game by allowing you to choose the instances you want to go to. Is it something they invented or came up with?? No, did they enhance it, yes.
They are using instances to remove the isolation of players from each other. I see the same players in various instancing all of the time. Now the search and friend function actually have a purpose ( I did not use them in other games ). There are some drawbacks which he mentioned... Like any evoloution the viability of this slight modification in the MMORPG gene pool will either suffer and die out in this itteration or be picked up and expanded on for future games.
For a fast paced game this is a good idea. I can see something like Global Agenda really benefitting from a game model such as this. Especially since most of the action in that game will be similar in effect to GW. Common area and instanced action and game content.
I don't think the article meant to imply that Champions Online was the first ever to try it. More that it is something that we will see becoming more mainstream moving forward.
There are a number of items missed from the PRO column.
PRO: Freedom from a single server means that you do not have to make what could be the single most important factor affecting your game play experience prior to designing your character. Yes, there are server transfers that you can pay for, but server mobility is a boondoggle at best. Unless you have some real information about the server you're switching to, you may just be rolling the dice.
PRO: Lower overhead. Dynamic scaling handles server side resources more efficiently, lower costs for the developer. This ultimately means that the game can exist in a niche market and still carve out respectable profits.
PRO: Faster response time fixing bugs. Push mechanics means less rolling restarts and in the end less downtime in general.
PRO: Concentration of players nearly always near optimal. While each zone may be smaller, the population of each zone should always feel more active. As a game enters a mature state when a large portion (or perhaps a majority) of the population is at or near end game, lower level zones can become rather lonely.
Firstoff, the concept of innovation means by definition that is doing something new and NOT already done so...yah...CS is not being innovative by being shardless. And you might want to re-look up the definition of zone and instance...there is no difference, they are one in the same...
Maybe I missed it as a con but I think it is quite amazing than a former MMO developer fails too see the massive instancing going on in an MMO to not be considered a con.
Granted alot of people dont really care about playing in a virtual world and the immersion that comes with it but alot of people also do care.
To play an MMO means not just that you connect your client to a server and can play with others, thats a multiplayer online game, but rather that you connect to a server which is like a virtual world and which you can get immersed in and that the world is persistant.
Kinda hard to get immersed into a virtual world with 10 identical clones of the same area that you can freely switch between. And if instances are freely created and destroyed are they really persistant? The only thing persistant is your character, everything else is not.
I then rather play an MMO with shards which you then can get immersed in without having to bother with every single zone being instanced into multiple clones on the same virtual world (=shard).
So shardless is good if it is implemented like in Eve but like in CO, no. Definetely no.
I'm guessing you've never actually played Eve. You are not a ship. You are a pilot inside the ship. Eve actually has a very extensive character customization tool when you create your character. Your skills are also associated with your character so you actually do "level up" your character....not a ship.
And I would say that Eve is almost the pure definition of RPG in an mmo. Players create a vast portion on the ingame "content" (i.e. wars, economy, feuds...etc), while CCP actively crafts the NPC stories and events in the Eve Universe to take into account the actions of the player base.
Albeit Eve is not for the faint of heart. Then again, it's never been positioned to try and grab a wide population such as WoW.
while you're at it, take a look at Dust 514...which is an extension of the Eve universe in the works. No ships there.
as a side note: there's nothing like opening the map (yes, it's in 3D) in Eve and being able to see what's going on across the universe at any given moment. From seeing hotspots of battles going on to the potentially lone miners (targets) out in the far reaches of the known space and knowing that if you chose right then to go join in the fray...you could.
Firstoff, the concept of innovation means by definition that is doing something new and NOT already done so...yah...CS is not being innovative by being shardless. And you might want to re-look up the definition of zone and instance...there is no difference, they are one in the same...
They are not. A zone is, like it sounds, a zone of the gaming area. An instance on the other hand is a duplicate copy of a zone.
Games can have zones (like EQ and Asherons Call) but not instances.
There are numerous clones of the same zone with statically defined servers, you just don't see them. Does that mean that they are not there?
Firstoff, the concept of innovation means by definition that is doing something new and NOT already done so...yah...CS is not being innovative by being shardless. And you might want to re-look up the definition of zone and instance...there is no difference, they are one in the same...
Not to be rude but, I did include a definition in my post. I think you need to start looking at definitions. There is a BIG difference between ZONE and INSTANCE.
A ZONE is one area where everyone can go in. It is a singular INSTANCE of a gaming area.
An INSTANCE is a zone that is duplicated on one server to allow a finite number of players to access.
They ARE being INNOVATIVE (DEFINITION HERE --> to introduce something new; make changes in anything established. ) by taking the instanced concept and using it to remove the need to isolate players by server or shard.
I'm guessing you've never actually played Eve. You are not a ship. You are a pilot inside the ship. Eve actually has a very extensive character customization tool when you create your character. Your skills are also associated with your character so you actually do "level up" your character....not a ship.
And I would say that Eve is almost the pure definition of RPG in an mmo. Players create a vast portion on the ingame "content" (i.e. wars, economy, feuds...etc), while CCP actively crafts the NPC stories and events in the Eve Universe to take into account the actions of the player base.
Albeit Eve is not for the faint of heart. Then again, it's never been positioned to try and grab a wide population such as WoW.
while you're at it, take a look at Dust 514...which is an extension of the Eve universe in the works. No ships there.
I tried it out, about a year ago. But in the 6 weeks I played it, I did see black space about... 90% of the game time. *shrug*
I'm guessing you've never actually played Eve. You are not a ship. You are a pilot inside the ship. Eve actually has a very extensive character customization tool when you create your character. Your skills are also associated with your character so you actually do "level up" your character....not a ship.
And I would say that Eve is almost the pure definition of RPG in an mmo. Players create a vast portion on the ingame "content" (i.e. wars, economy, feuds...etc), while CCP actively crafts the NPC stories and events in the Eve Universe to take into account the actions of the player base.
Albeit Eve is not for the faint of heart. Then again, it's never been positioned to try and grab a wide population such as WoW.
while you're at it, take a look at Dust 514...which is an extension of the Eve universe in the works. No ships there.
For all practical purposes, in Eve, you are a ship. Your character is just a portrait and some skills that gets auto learned without you having to do anything (beside buying the skill). For everything else it is your ship that does it. Your ship fires weapons, your ship has a holding area and it is your ship that travels from point A to point B.
In almost all other RPGs it is your character that does those things. So after playing RPG since I was a kid then I would say Eve is the game that feels least like an RPG because your are effectively a ship and not a character.
There are numerous clones of the same zone with statically defined servers, you just don't see them. Does that mean that they are not there?
No, its a matter of feeling. I agree with Yamota. It also takes a lot away from Aion, when you know you can swap into a copy of the same world at any time. With a server you know it is there, but it is essentially out of reach, and a server creates a server history with events and things going on, like "do you recall how on Server X this and that happend last year?" and people recall it. They identify with that. With clone areas of the entire world it can't happen.
There are numerous clones of the same zone with statically defined servers, you just don't see them. Does that mean that they are not there?
You get immersed in one server, which is the virtual world, not several servers.
One server = One world.
For all practical purposes, in Eve, you are a ship. Your character is just a portrait and some skills that gets auto learned without you having to do anything (beside buying the skill). For everything else it is your ship that does it. Your ship fires weapons, your ship has a holding area and it is your ship that travels from point A to point B.
In almost all other RPGs it is your character that does those things. So after playing RPG since I was a kid then I would say Eve is the game that feels least like an RPG because your are effectively a ship and not a character.
Well then, for practical purposes you are a suit of armor in WoW...
In Eve your ship(what ever class you are currently using) is little different than the armor and weapons you use in other games. Eve is very much a RPG in the classical sense. Some of the political antics and backstabbing put other games to shame. But it does have a steep learning curve(more like a wall). That plus the open PvP aspect(outside of high sec or with conditions inside of it) is what keeps Eve a niche game. Which is just as well, since they are already pushing the bleeding edge of technology to keep everyone in the same universe as it is.
You get immersed in one server, which is the virtual world, not several servers.
One server = One world.
You Yamoto may feel that you are more immersed. But me? Nah. I feel trapped by a static server configuration. Immersion is in the eye of the beholder.
I am perfectly willing to suspend my disbelief so that I can switch instances whenever I get the fancy.
No, its a matter of feeling. I agree with Yamota. It also takes a lot away from Aion, when you know you can swap into a copy of the same world at any time. With a server you know it is there, but it is essentially out of reach, and a server creates a server history with events and things going on, like "do you recall how on Server X this and that happend last year?" and people recall it. They identify with that. With clone areas of the entire world it can't happen.
Exclusive elitism. People want to feel that "their" server is somehow "better" than somebody else's server. That's not to say that it isn't true, but this kind of exclusion is exactly what MMO developers seek to eliminate. They want that epic player content to be available to all players, not just a random few who were fortunate enough to select the "cool" server.
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.
Ah, EVE does count when you look at the meaning innovate. To bring something new. Shardless is certainly not new to the mmo market.
Not to be rude, but this article is a great example of why the industry sucks. Push the boundaries, get more creative or informed. "Server identity and feeling of community are lost."...don't instance then, load balance.
"The MMO Gamer: The website says that there is no maximum limit on how many people can play simultaneously, but most 3D MMOGs have a server limit between 3000 and 5000 people, how can Fallen Earth have no limit?
Lee Hammock: Chris Pavlou, our network genius, has designed a dynamic load-balancing system which automatically adjusts the number of players handled by any one machine. Therefore you can have any number of servers all linked together, fluidly sharing as many players as you want. So it’s not just one machine, it’s a large number of machines all working as one."
http://www.mmogamer.com/06/29/2007/interview-with-fallen-earth-lead-game-designer-lee-hammock
Server identity is an arbitrary division generated by technological or financial limitations of the company. Factional , regional , guild, playstyle and their sub-communities identity is all the identity we need.
As far as hiding from those who know you, how about a "hide" feature that covers different groups like guild, global, friends, etc. like Coh which I would assume a guy who worked for Cryptic and on CO would have heard of. I mean, my gosh, is that so revolutionary?
Some worlds simple isn't big enough to be one single server. Just imagine if all +10mill players in WoW was on one realm (as they call it). Even if they split it in 3 (usa, eu, asia) the population would be huge. Game worlds like EVE support this kind of population. Worlds like WOW and LOTRO (and 95% of all other current MMO's) does not. New games like Star Trek and Star Wars might be able to support "one server", but popular places in their lore could be problematic.
Also. Zoneless MMO's is NEVER gonna happen. Please keep in mind that we have 3 different words and need the right definition:
1. Server
2. Zone
3. Instance
A server is the global container for a certent amount af players (could be all (like EVE) or 10.000). A server is not just one computer. It's a collection of many (databases and world servers).
A zone is a specific area of the gameworld.
An instance is a dublicate of a zone.
The problem is what defines a zone? No game in the world can send infomation about every player/action to every client all the time. They only submit infomation about the near surroundings. Do we realy want to calculate the distance to every player every time, or do we create predefined (overlapping) areas and registreate a players and send the information to all players in each area (yes we do). Now.. Is that a zone?
Or is a zone a collection of these areas? what we would defind as a compleet area like a city or a countryside. This would be the normal definition as a zone, since the area/mobs and so on share the same textures, and entering a new zone, would require loading new textures. Most games today load textures for a new zone in the background when you aproace it. Does this mean there is no zone?
If a game is defined as "no zones" then ALL textures would have to be loaded on startup. How dull would that game look?
So we can conclude that all games from now and forever will have zones in some way. They might load textures on the fly, but each area of the gameworld will still be devided in groups.
And what about chat? I want my global and zone chat, so I can chat with people in my near surroundings and with all. So even if a game is zoneless (we allready established it is NOT), it would still have chat zones.
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).
I wasn't confused. I meant exactly what I said. Eve's world is subdivided into regions. Eve basically lets you move from "server to server" for free all the time. EQ1 charged you for that service. Sure, it is still part of "one world", but since that "world" is merely chat (the economy does not spill over from region to region directly), how innovative is it? It isn't. And eve gets away with zones that probably take 10 seconds of random number generation time to create, and then a little fine tuning by someone to make sure XYZ NPC corp has agents strewn about their regions in appropriate levels (but even that could be coded procedurally rather easily).
WW2 Online is zoneless. There are no zones (unless you count the whole world as a zone). There are terrain tiles, but only one "world/shard/server/zone". Its smart enough not to bog down someone in Reims, France with what is happening in Brussels, Belgium. But if they wanted to (and its coming soon (tm)), artillery and high altitude bombing will let people affect each other from (literally) miles away without ever rendering on the screen.
I think most people are confusing Zone and Seamless Zoning. Seamless Zoning has been around for a looooong time. You are correct, zones are created to segregate hardware resources. Some zones are based on regions, such as EQ and Eve. Some zones are based around the player base, such as Fallen Earth, that make sure that the players themselves are on the same physical hardware to eliminate lag between player to player interaction.
Seamless Zones are basically the same thing, but it allows the game client to load up a bubble around their character and load a single zone or a portion of two zones. Advanced MUDs and even Ultima Online used seemless zones. Dark Age of Camelot also used seamless zones until they split the frontiers off into a non-seamless zone.
Regarding the article, I must say that I am left a little puzzled. I am puzzled why the author of the article did not explain why CO's implementation of a single shard is innovative. The fact is that there are several other games, such as WW2 Online mentioned above, that are both a single server and Seamless Zoned. The same pros and cons pretty much apply to all of these games. However, I have no idea what sets the game's implementation apart from the rest. Without this information, I see no reason why people should not assume that it isn't innovative. The reader is not the reporter and should not have to investigate what was ommitted from the article. (FYI - not being harsh at all, I am just criticizing because I am either misreading something or the author or editor left something out)
WW2 online is not zoneless. It uses seamless zones. I used to play it a lot up until a couple of years ago. There were times were some of the zones were down and if you happened to wander (or fly) into those areas, your game client would disconnect and crash to desktop. It gave the impression that it does not use zones, but it really does and there is nothing wrong with that.
The end result is that the player believes that he or she is connecting to a single server and never has to wait a moment at a loading screen after first logging in. And yes, WW2 Online is a much more accurate comparison when giving an example of why many people here do not believe the article topic is innovative. Even more so than Eve, which I currently play.
Good article. Don't necessarily agree with all of it and don't care to get into what game innovated what but it does provide food for thought. Nice to see other people don't agree with the oft stated maxim that shardless worlds are obviously superior. Everything has a tradeoff and people need to think about what they are rather than jumping in with both feet and saying anything without "x" is crap.
WW2 online is not zoneless. It uses seamless zones. I used to play it a lot up until a couple of years ago. There were times were some of the zones were down and if you happened to wander (or fly) into those areas, your game client would disconnect and crash to desktop. It gave the impression that it does not use zones, but it really does and there is nothing wrong with that.
The end result is that the player believes that he or she is connecting to a single server and never has to wait a moment at a loading screen after first logging in. And yes, WW2 Online is a much more accurate comparison when giving an example of why many people here do not believe the article topic is innovative. Even more so than Eve, which I currently play.
Hrm, I'm a day 1 WW2OL player and have never seen any "zone" crash ever. I've seen map tiles not load due to bugs, and I've seen a strat server bug that caused the city of Metz that wouldn't let it be recapped by the allies, but aside from the "pixel of death" while flying, or the odd dropping through the world bugs, nothing that says "zone" crash. Those map tiles are not zones.
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.
That may be, Jon, but I don't think the majority of this site's viewers, and MMO gamers who keep up with the hobby at large, aren't willing to just pat Cryptic and CO on the back for being "unique" or "different" when another company, or companies I should say, have been doing this. AAA or not, it has been done and I know I personally am not willing to give Crytpic kudos or write an article for it before any of the companies who have pioneered the idea before them. If anything you guys should have had an article giving respect to those companies and also giving due respect to Icarus and Fallen Earth who, at worst, was implementing the same idea (in general) as Cryptic (as the games were pretty much in development at the same time.
Sure, I get per his disclaimer that Mr. Wachter is a "homer" for Cryptic but that doesn't take away from the fact that if he's going to try to present information in a generalized, "this is pioneering for the industry" manner, well, he should be more versed in the industry. If he is, then he should write in such a way and not present himself as if this is something the rest of the industry should be following Cryptic on. If he isn't, then it should be made clear, in a like disclaimer.
/facepalm
All MMOs since Ultima Online are "shardless."
Good Point.
Reading through the responses to this thread is like reading the responses to a thread on the official EVE forums by someone who jumped his uber faction-fit marauder into lowsec, got ganked by pirates, then decided to put up a post about how he shouldn't be able to be shot by other players anywhere, at any time. It's almost like a shark feeding frenzy. As such....
-throws a bag of popcorn into the microwave and drags out a big bowl and some popcorn cheese-
In reality, much as I may violently disagree with the design theory behind Champions (I play EVE, after all, and that's one shard with one--and only one!--instance), the truth is that, as far as I know, the only-one-shard-instanced-to-Hell approach hasn't been tried before. This meets the criteria for "innovative" in my book. As a result, most of the objections to the article posted here have little validity.
Now, as to whether that was a good design decision, that's another matter....
Eh, I enjoyed the few points on what's good or bad about being on a single-shard server, regardless of whether or not EVE did it first, etc.
I don't know if you should be trying to use the words like "douchebag" in the future, I mean, "Gankers", "Griefers" and "Ninja-looters" could have been used to replace the word and remained more "professional"
But meh, I agree with most of the pros and cons, anyway. A big con, though, as someone pointed out, is that a single-shard server will likely have some high-population-density zones that'll screw with the players computers if there are too many characters on screen, etc. etc.
But nowadays, I think MMO companies have the budget for a really nice, big ol' server computer with some ridiculous mish-mash of two PlayStation 3, like, eight-core processors or whatever (maybe the i7 processors?), with several dozen GBs of RAM, with crazy fibre-optic 400Mb network connection speeds... I mean, a little monster like that's only gotta be something like $50,000, tops, right?
...right?
Yes, thats always funny as hell...Pass the popcorn.
Then there are those who start foaming at the mouth at the mere mention of Eve... I suspect they had a typical run in with the Goonies. 
But Eve is what one makes of it..
Hahaha. All it needs is pinky in the background.
Isn't that exactly what Guild Wars is?
Also, I didn't catch that in the article - so, how are any of the readers supposed to know that by reading the article. From reading it, "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" The opening doesn't make any reference to zones or instances. It simply says that CO launched the game on a single server and it was innovative. It's not. There are a lot of different games that are on a single server. It could be innovative in its implementation, but I'm not spending $50 to find out what the author left out of the article.
Believe it or not, alot of people haven't played EVE and don't consider it a AAA release. (I personally don't consider it one, no matter how good it is.)
Also, Guild Wars is not even close to being Champion's Online. (I think you'd find pros and cons for both styles... only one is really suited for an MMO. Guild Wars would have more in common with Hellgate than it would CO imo.)
The author basically listed concisely a number of pros and cons for the style of shardlessness employed by Champion's Online, a type of shardlessness that would be reasonable to assume could well be modeled off of in the future.
Finding one phrase that really doesn't have that much to do with the point of the article, nitpicking it to death, and then holding it up as some sort of triumphant dismissal of this author's contribution doesn't make you look perceptive and smart, it makes you look like a short sighted jackass.
Having played Champion's Online, I would by and large agree with his feelings towards their system. He listed three legitimate "Pros" and he listed three legitimate "Cons". What varies from individual is the "weight" that each of these systems have... for example, someone who enjoys playing with friends regardless of server may not feel the lack of a server identity a bad tradeoff. A roleplayer may well feel the loss of server identiy more deeply, with the notion of having to potentially play with "everyone" a bad thing in and of itself.
I guess when you are a pioneer, people will keep pointing out that you had something others are calling "new".
Being shardless is not new, unusual at the moment, yes, but definitely not new.
Also Yunbei, you obviously never played EVE or if you did, you never got it. In EVE you are not a spaceship. You are a pilot. When I used to play EVE I had nothing less then 15 ships, each with it's own uses, strength and limitations.
And by the way, money shitting was already invented years ago. It was called a "Bling Gnome" in Dungeon Runners.
LOL, Captain Underpants! I remember being obsessed with that series in the fifth grade, I used to read at least one captain underpants book every week or so... Ah, I loved those flip page animations. I would always wait in anticipation until I got to it, and then spend forever just flipping it back and forth.
On a more pertinent note, I think that the shardless system would ruin a lot of games, like in WoW, the server community definitely defines a huge part of the gameplay. Besides, Blizzard is now going to use cross-server technology for all instanced gameplay for all the benefits of a shardless system in game, and Battle.net 2.0 will give you all the benefits of communication that come with it. That way, you don't have any trouble communicating with your friends on different servers or different factions, and you never have trouble finding a group for things, yet you still maintain the sense of community on your server. I think that sort of deal is pretty much win on all fronts.
"Believe it or not, alot of people haven't played EVE and don't consider it a AAA release. (I personally don't consider it one, no matter how good it is.)"
Well sorry to break your bubble, but Eve is one of the top 5 subscription MMO's considering it's playerbase size, so if it isn't a AAA title then most of the others are not either.
And sorry Stradden, but unless you provide specifics why Champions shardless design is that different from Eve, I have to disagree with your statement. I don't think it is really pertinent how they implement such a design, it is still basically everyone on the same server.
Personally shardless design has it's drawbacks. Wow for example, I always play on the roleplay servers to get away from the kiddie corps and their silly names. A shardless design would be a real negative for me in that situation.
I think more games should start doing it this way, devs are making bigger and bigger worlds so why not pack more people into them. I like the one game one server you can only log into. Fallen earth has a good idea with the seamless instances. You can watch someone go in first then you go in and poof their gone, unless they were in your team. Its like magic and its awesome, no loading screen which im always for. Im not sure if they are the first but thats not the point, the point is ,that they are using the technology. Devs and Gamers alike need to embrace technologies like one "Server" worlds and seamless instances, it will make the world feel more massive and no loading screens to help with immersion.
@ Ozmod yeah I can see how that would suck but then you just have a naming policy just like most games do. If you see someone that don't have the right name report them. Or they could make 4 servers for WoW. a RP, RP PvP ,PVP, PvE. There you go people can all play which server they want with a ton of people. But right now Im playing FE to try and stay away from those kiddies in the first place. But WoW will do anything to grab more people IMO, which Im not down with. Id rather have a game that keeps the existing people rather than acting like a whore trying to get as many people to play.
I simply cannot stand the way newer games all appear to be completely instanced. Nothing kills the feeling of immersion more than splitting every single zone into multiple instances of the same area. Yet, this appears to be the growing trend in every new MMO in development.
I am all for a shardless world if it does not rely on instancing every area in the game. If it can be done the way it is in EVE (no instancing ANYWHERE), then it is great. But let's face it, most games that would utilize this model would make it a shardless collection of instanced copies. The more people crammed in the same small game world, the worse this will be... Good luck ever running into someone you know in the gameworld because you are in instance A and they are in instance Z.
Any sense of community is totally lost in this kind of game. There is no permanence to the world and it is completely unrealistic. How do the developers explain it when two friends are in the same zone looking for each other, but neither can find each other because they are in different instances? How do developers NOT see that this is a total immersion killer? It is mind-boggling to me...
In order for a popular single-server game to be done RIGHT, it would have to have an absolutely IMMENSE game world. One the size of EVE. It would have to have such a staggering amount of content that it would be nearly impossible to accomplish in any setting other than outer space.
Either that, or the developers would have to come up with some method for automatically zoning people who know eachother in the same instances as their friends/guildmates. If that could be done seamlessly, then it might not matter that everyone is in different zones. Unfortunately I don't see any way to do that...
"Back in my day... blah blah blah."
All I can say is you better get used to it. The move from statically defined servers to shardless, dynamically instanced everything parallels the shift from static web pages to dynamic ones.
Have fun lamenting the good old days with the other MMO dinosaurs. I will certainly not be missing them.
I didn't read through all the responses so this may have been mentioned. There is one thing that shardless allows that isn't really allowed otherwise.
Currently players can't effect their world because once the shards are different the devs have to do multiplying amount of content to reach the same size audience. So more and more work to cover the different states of the shards to bring in the same money.
Shardless allows for the devs to put in a quest that depending on how many people complete it one way over another, that effects the outcome and effects the world from that point forward. So a quick example, an evil guy tries to come to power. Players can choose to help him or fight him. If more choose to help him then he gains power in a future patch and the world is forever changed.
Would be interesting to see a company that went shardless also adopt this strategy and give the players genuine choices in how the game world develops.
CO would have been a great game if they just would of made it a single player rpg. There is nothing to brag about having one shard, because the game is so instanced it completely destroys the 'Massive' in MMO.
I find the article unbiased and logical, which leads me to ask, "what the hell is going on around here?"
In all seriousness, you do bring up very good points. I especially like the cons. Being able to log onto an alt and be anonymous has appeal to it, and server communities do tend to take on characteristics all their own.
Even EvE, with its single universe has characters that are unique from the user account name.
I rather enjoyed the challenge of finding a meaningful name in City of Heroes, and I liked the global chat handle feature in that game too.
I played the closed beta of CO and this was one of the "features" that prevented me from buying the game. Didnt like this system at all.
The idea of 1 server to handle your player population is very cool. It becomes uncool however, when you shatter that world into an X amount of instances. If you want your world to feel large and big do it, but do it with one shard 1 instance. You can multi instance dungeons we're all used to that but the whole 30+ variations of the same world zone is frustrating to say the least.
Nothing innovative here. Single servers have been done.
I don't see this as a con, especially as a player. I find it insulting when game companies try to hide these kinds of things from the players. It's hard to build customer trust when you lie or withold information that players use to base their judgements on whether or not they are going to try the game.
Well, if the players are divided into many different instances, then that isn't truly "shardless" in my opinion. All players in one big world (besides instanced dungeons) would be shardless. But it sound like CO is no more shardless than a typical AoC server (at launch anyway).
Furthermore, I like games where players can't just switch servers or change thier names. Players need to be held accounatable for how they act in games, and you just don't see that in todays MMOs. I believe that is one major reason why the communities have suffered so much recently. There is too much anonymity. A player can ninja loot an entire raid, change his name, and come back the next day and do it again and again.
One way to fix the global handle problem would be allowing each player to have three or so global handles that represent them as if they are three or so different players.
That way, I could have my global name with my characters that are RP, my global name with characters that are in Guild X, and a global name for something else.
I'm kinda surprised the Champions Online devs haven't thought of this solution before.
While I agree with most of what you said, I don't agree that the game would have to be in in outer space. You could have different nations, continents or even an archipelago.
If you are willing to draw a very broad definition of 'single server' and 'multi-server' titles, then sure, ChampO uses the same system as EVE. But the specifics of implementation are different.
EVE goes for a shardless single world / single zone - everyone plays in the same world at the same time. There are no separate servers to segment the players and every single EVE player could meet in one location if they wanted to (technical issues aside).
ChampO goes for a shardless multi-concurrent zones - players across multiple different versions of the same zone and there are multiple zones that provide content for different level ranges. There are also some instanced locations. Each zone is limited in the maximum numbers of players it can hold before sending players to other instances.
It is different to Guild Wars' "lobby areas leading to shared instances" structure.
Is it the single greatest revolution ever seen in MMOs? No. But it is a logical extension of Cryptic's instancing decisions that existed in CoH/V - now the world is instanced rather than just the warehouse / cave system - and a neat way of dealing with the issue of servers vs single world. The mix of also offering an open naming system to this multi-concurrent zones could certainly be considered innovative. (I'm not sure when Aion in Korea got this feature - the ability to flip to a different version of the same zone where it can be easier to find / avoid players is something Aion has too.)
Of course, one of the ironies here is the discussion of a "server" as if it is just one physical entity somewhere. It could be, or it could actually be a multitude of different physical entities that have a single virtual face as the server. Even single servers might not really be single servers!
Finally, Wachter is unlikely to be a Cryptic plant for this article (which is the subtext I get from several posts here) since he no longer works at Cryptic and hasn't for quite a while.
Those who have played know that the game tends to sort instances with friends/team/super team members in it near the top of the selection screen. Maybe what we need is a 4th level.
Just spit-balling here, but perhaps an "acquaintance" level. This will automatically track people you've grouped with, or had some sort of interaction with and will sort instances containing those types of people to the top.
This will perhaps bring a bit more community as you start to see the same people more frequently.
Well, if the players are divided into many different instances, then that isn't truly "shardless" in my opinion. All players in one big world (besides instanced dungeons) would be shardless. But it sound like CO is no more shardless than a typical AoC server (at launch anyway).
Furthermore, I like games where players can't just switch servers or change thier names. Players need to be held accounatable for how they act in games, and you just don't see that in todays MMOs. I believe that is one major reason why the communities have suffered so much recently. There is too much anonymity. A player can ninja loot an entire raid, change his name, and come back the next day and do it again and again.
I think the only distinction you make here is in the definition of shard. Shards and instances are technically the same thing but define two seperate concepts. A shard is a single copy of the entire game world. An instance is a single copy of a zone within a game world. Semantics to be sure but they are important distinctions. To have only one copy of the game world is to make the game shardless(IE one server to log into period). To have or not have instances in such a world is another topic alltogether.
An example, In AoC if I pick server A to create my character on and get that character to lvl 30. My friend joins the game but chooses server B to make a character to reach lvl 30 on, We can not play our level 30 characters together because we are on different shards. In Champions online If I level my character to lvl 30 in instance 1 and he goes and does that in Instance 2 at any point with no help from the developers or publishers I can join my friend by simply switching instances. That is a one shard game.
I think the writer outlined the pro's and con's of a one shard system fairly well. I personally think the con's outweigh the pro's by a pretty good margin in the types of games I want to play.
My preferred system is still a multishard universe with a completely non-instanced game world. I would tolerate some special case instancing in a system for arena style pvp and for special dungeons made specifically to challenge you as a player where the developers can control specifically who can get in so the dungeon design can be tailored to that. But I would want that to encompass no more than 10% of the total game world content.
I'm not terribly concerned with the language or who innovated what... However, one point in the article that really hit home for me was that (paraphrased):
Server shutdowns and mergers caused by a reduction in population send a negative message to the players.
I never thought about it in this light, and I agree completely. Panic the people and they flee.
Ken
In a game in decline its always the fine line between server population issues and the negative PR from shutting down servers. I think that developers overestimate the negative impact of server merges in todays MMO market. The vast majority of people who play MMO's expect a population decline after the first month now and its much better to make sure any and all servers open after the first month have good/healthy populations. This will have a much larger impact on people staying to play the game than just about anything else a game company can do. They will take a short term negative hit as all the nay sayers will say I told you so, but that will only last about a month and can easily be overcome if the game itself remains healthy and fun to play.
Hiya, Spork....Wish you were going to be part of PlanetSide 2...Because we all still miss you in PlanetSide.....