[MUD-Dev] Locations vs Social Spaces (was: I Want to Forge Sw ords)

[Andrew Barratt]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Adam Martin [mailto:amsm2 at cam.ac.uk]
> Sent: 16 May 2001 11:51
> To: mud-dev at kanga.nu
> Subject: Re: [MUD-Dev] Locations vs Social Spaces (was: I Want to
> Forge Swords)
 
> (Having just been reading an article, and being freshly disappointed
> by quite how good AC is technically ):
 
> AC's servers are distributed load-balancing by default - the design
> lead implied in a recent Gamasutra article that they could handle
> everyone standing together, because the world would get rebalanced
> so that the one small area got split between all the servers
> dynamically. With each server stress-tested to guarantee a quoted
> lower limit of 3,000 simultaneous players on that server alone, I
> don't think they're expecting problems any time soon.
 
> Not that load-balancing is itself particularly innovative, but I
> hadn't realised that anyone was already using it aggressively among
> the major MMORPGs at the moment.

I'm a current AC player. I can only presume they were talking about
the AC2 engine in the article you mention (I've not read it though) as
anytime an area gets more than 40 or so people close together
something they call a portal storm occurs. It basically teleports you
a random distance away from the busy area which at times can be rather
disturbing if you are on with a character that isn't a combat
character and you end up surrounded by monsters. You get onscreen
warnings, initially saying that a portal storm is brewing and then
telling you one is imminent so its not totally out of the blue when it
does occur. Its 'supposed' to remove the earliest arrivers in the area
- i.e. first in, first out but I've ran back into town on too many
occasions and seen people stood in the same positions they were
earlier for me to believe that :-) This only occurs in world areas
though, dungeons give the messages if they get busy but I've never
been stormed and haven't heard of anyone who says they have.

I came to this game after playing UO and EQ and I can see they were
aiming very high but in places they fall a little short, the interface
as described elsewhere is definitely the weakest link as it were. BUT
in its defence where else do you get such a quantity of new material
each and every month? I can only hope that the 2nd generation game
writers onwards include the same sort of thing, nothing beats going
down a road you've been down so many times before and suddenly there's
a new building there or a portal to a dungeon that wasn't there
before. The only time I'd seen a change to a zone in EQ was when they
added a pier for you to get to Velious, the latest 'purchasable'
expansion, that really bowled me over ;-)

I'll go back to my lurker mode now :)

Andrew Barratt
IT Manager - Hypac Ltd
Tel : 01724 861218
Fax : 01724 280914
Work email : Andrew at hypac.co.uk
Home Email : thunderbones at ntlworld.com
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