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Servers and their impact

Discussion in 'Guild Wars 2: General Discussion' started by Delvie, Jan 17, 2012.

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  1. Delvie

    Delvie Well-Known Member

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    Warning - This thread is mainly cause I'm bored and need something new to think about.

    I'm wondering exactly how they will handle accounts, servers, and characters.

    Arena Net has stated that you can transfer servers for free (with some kind of cool down on WvWvW action to stop abuse).

    Arena Net also has stated that all characters on an account belong to the same guilds (you can belong to multiple) - that being the case do guilds not belong to servers?

    So when you change servers are you changing the character or the account?

    In GW1 you could change servers very easily but much of the world wasn't persistent (only the towns). In GW2 the opposite will be true in that most of the world will be persistent with only the Personal Story and Dungeons being instanced. What affect will this have on server population limits?

    With WvWvW being a major part of game play will server mean more than guild?

    Can anyone else think of some more server questions?
     
    #1 Delvie, Jan 17, 2012
  2. Tak

    Tak Well-Known Member

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    Haven't heard much on this topic. I can say i liked the way GW1 would cache your account name on your friends list. This way no matter if you were on a temporary PVP toon or an alt of some sort you were still easily recognizable by your friends. GW1 was very character agnostic in that the the player was the person in a variety of vehicles rather than other games where your characters were more of monuments that took better part of a year to get max level and top geared.
     
    #2 Tak, Jan 17, 2012
  3. Unknown

    Unknown GW2PC Mod - Forever Unknown

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    How many servers are there and whats the population limit for each one?

    "There is a limit per map in the world, the exact number hasn't been given but it is "high enough that we expect it to be rarely if ever reached"

    What is the limit to the amount of people on each map, and if its exceeded what would happen. If it's a persistent world their can't be another version of the same map.
     
    #3 Unknown, Jan 17, 2012
  4. Tak

    Tak Well-Known Member

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    interesting. rarely reached means for the first few weeks after launch your going to have some angry customers in the noob zones.
     
    #4 Tak, Jan 17, 2012
  5. Delvie

    Delvie Well-Known Member

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    In the Reddit Q & A one of the devs got into specifics on WvWvW maps - now normal PVE maps could be different. There are 4 maps to WvWvW each with a limit of 500 making the limit, for each server, of number of players able to participate in WvWvW at any one time 666 or so.

    They could also do something with phasing/instancing at the low levels - many games do this/have done this to get over the launch hump. EQ2 did this I'm not sure WoW ever did. Basically when an area fills up another copy is created, so in EQ2's case at launch they had a training island with many many copies, from there you went to Qeynos or Freeport and spread out to your racial neighborhoods which might have copies depending on that hour's population, and from there you went to Commonlands/Antonica where there might be 2 copies during peak times. The problem with this is that it is hard to figure out how to meet up with your friends. There again not being able to sign up to the same server as your friends is also a problem.

    With the ability to do free server transfers the load on newbie areas might not be such a big problem.
     
    #5 Delvie, Jan 17, 2012
    1 person likes this.
  6. Unknown

    Unknown GW2PC Mod - Forever Unknown

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    Phasing really causes problems (such as where the heck are my friends/teammates/guildies etc), and will certainly be a turn off for new players coming into the game. Also goes against persistent world.
    I believe WoW incorporated phasing in one of the expansions and there on, but it never was implemented in the beginning.

    I wonder how guilds would feel with their guildies being in numerous guilds, i'd imagine there will be guilds enforcing "you're not allowed to join any other guild" lol.
     
    #6 Unknown, Jan 17, 2012
  7. DonQuitto

    DonQuitto Well-Known Member

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    one way would be that instead of selecting in wich server you are creating your character you chose wich server you are gonna play once you have created your character and swapping server would be as easy as logging out and chosing another server :cool:

    doub this will happen but i would be cool ( one problem being character names though if you had to put First and lastname like in gw1 i think that wouldnt be much of a problem )
     
    #7 DonQuitto, Jan 18, 2012
  8. Tak

    Tak Well-Known Member

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    I think rift raised the bar with many simultaneous players/actions going on. Their servers could handle a lot without crashing. I remember they added some dynamic method to the way the servers split the load so that you could have much higher counts of people at the same time.

    I really think this is a huge technical (as well as game mechanics) hurdle for GW2. If I had to guess this is the greatest barrier we have yet to see them address in their demos. The most i've seen clashing at once is just under 10 in a dynamic encounter with a village on fire. I've also seen about that many in PVP fights and it was honestly a little bit of animation overload.

    example:
    Amazing video from games last summer with an epic boss fight. However you see very few people. It's a similar situation in all the epic encounter videos where you would expect to see 30 people there is scarcely 4-5.

    [video=youtube;_1JfSbKjHHI]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1JfSbKjHHI&feature=related[/video]
     
    #8 Tak, Jan 18, 2012
  9. Unknown

    Unknown GW2PC Mod - Forever Unknown

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    That more so scares me, i don't want it to take 5 people to take down an epic boss. Rather 30+ people so that it actually feels like a real boss. I'm also looking forward to seeing 50 people on the same battlefield in combat..
     
    #9 Unknown, Jan 20, 2012
  10. DonQuitto

    DonQuitto Well-Known Member

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    it's so interesting system i doubt we will se less than 30+ guys in those epic bosses at launch and 2 to 5 months after that.

    since you can benefit from these events even if you are high level and still have fun with them with out ruining the experience for other ones around you.

    i smell PvE guilds running around doing these Epic Events for fun whit their new recruits and other low level players ( a great recruitment method btw ;) )
     
    #10 DonQuitto, Jan 21, 2012
  11. Tak

    Tak Well-Known Member

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    This kinda ties in with the wvwvw discussion that has broken out since this thread started (due to BW's fail on it).

    What the max number of people you have seen doing a quest or pvp on a demo? I think i saw maybe 8 doing the first whirlwind boss & arena one time.
     
    #11 Tak, Jan 21, 2012
  12. Unknown

    Unknown GW2PC Mod - Forever Unknown

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    I've been trying to look for videos that show a mass of players and I can't, I don't think I've seen any.
    With all the neat animations in GW2 I'd be surprised to see 20 + players not causing any lag.
     
    #12 Unknown, Jan 22, 2012
  13. Knives

    Knives Well-Known Member

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    videos i seen all bosses can be done with less than 10 people.
     
    #13 Knives, Jan 22, 2012
  14. DonQuitto

    DonQuitto Well-Known Member

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    i was not saying that you can do it or not, but they seem so fun to do i hope there are many more players since when it launches there will be very much more people playing this game in general than what we see in this closed guarters videos :)

    i doubt there where more than 30-100 at a single time testing these features at PAX and other events, and some of those where either in the Low PvE area, or doing Structured PvP. :cool:
     
    #14 DonQuitto, Jan 22, 2012
  15. Tak

    Tak Well-Known Member

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    Yeah thanks for confirming. This lack of mass cooperative GW2 playing isn't proof there is an issue. But i would say this is the last big hurdle they need to reveal in the coming months. Quite a hurdle to cross if they haven't been planning for it since the early phases. (i.e. SWTOR)

    I would guess they will still pull through, but this could be quite the black eye if they fall down here. They are on such a pedestal right now something like this could knock them off.
     
    #15 Tak, Jan 22, 2012
  16. Delvie

    Delvie Well-Known Member

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    I've been trying to find where I heard this info but unsuccessful so far (there are way to many interviews and videos for GW2 - :) )

    I remember someone stating that the big bosses (as in Teq) require at least 10 players and can scale up to 100. It gets confusing because they have different magnitudes of big bosses - each newbie area has one that is scaled for newbs and a lesser number of players. Besides the ghost ship encounter I'm nto sure there was any other really big bosses shown yet.

    Since Dynamic Events are included in WvWvW what I'm hoping is that will get shown so we can see large scale DEs along with some large scale PVP.
     
    #16 Delvie, Jan 23, 2012
  17. Tak

    Tak Well-Known Member

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    Gentlemen: go to 9-10mins in this video at a minimum. I tried to count and i think the announcer is right we have about 40 people in this demo. Lot going on and its running smooth. I could see how this might scale to 100. This is the most I've seen in one spot so far. Big relief but the next bar is lets see 100 in close quarters.

    Thanks,
    Takiton


    [video=youtube;9w_4POghChg]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9w_4POghChg&feature=player_detailpage#t=551s[/video]
     
    #17 Tak, Jan 23, 2012
  18. Delvie

    Delvie Well-Known Member

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    Great find Tak thank you. Just to point out in the first fight that is what I call Ghost Ship (can never remember it's real name) and be aware that half that battle occurs underwater and closer to the ship, so for that fight there are quite a few more players that are underwater and can't be seen.

    From the fights shown so far the ones designed for lots of people appear to take place over large areas. I'm not sure they are going to have close quarters in the open world, dungeons are all limited to 5 people, WvWvW appears to involve large areas each with multiple keeps and mines and towers etc.
     
    #18 Delvie, Jan 23, 2012
  19. Knives

    Knives Well-Known Member

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    I like how its a desert type area in that fight. You think they will lower graphics or anything in areas with mass of players? Similar to how armor graphics are lowered in GW1 except your own.
     
    #19 Knives, Jan 23, 2012
  20. Tak

    Tak Well-Known Member

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    So i went back and looked at the SWTOR hack job of wvwvw.
    Can you guys believe this is what the MMO business is calling world class right now? I frequent the MMORPG forums for a laugh to watch the total knock down drag out fights that are on there. It's a bloody battle on a lot of the forums right now with SWTOR vs GW2.

    Ok, so i know this is posted in the PVP section but take a look at the GW video above... just 10 seconds in the 10min area of the vid. See smooth high quality graphics with lots of people even when they collapse on the chest at the end.

    Now watch about 10 seconds of the video below. WOW... just WOW... If this is the crap that the MMO industry is excited about. GW2 will defiantly blow some people away. This is as black and white as it gets.
    [video=youtube;7uT90g1-hJg]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7uT90g1-hJg&hd=1[/video]
     
    #20 Tak, Jan 24, 2012
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