[MUD-Dev] Star Wars Galaxies: 1 character per server

[Dave Rickey]

From: "Caliban Tiresias Darklock" <caliban at darklock.com>

> With an SCS system, however, you allocate one and only one
> character slot on the server to a player. It is all he will ever
> need. You do not ever have to guarantee that the player can have a
> character on a particular server. When the server has precisely X
> players, the next player simply cannot have a character there. The
> server is full, and when he asks to create a character, you simply
> don't make that server available on the list. This will cause
> virtually no outcry; internet users are used to it. Internet sites
> can be too busy, and they understand this. They don't like it, but
> they understand.  Support costs of explaining this matter will be
> minimal, compared to the cost of explaining why the "create
> character" button failed when the manual says the player can have
> more characters.

I have many quibbles with your math (the process by which you tie
"Y" to "S" reminds me of the mathematical proof of "1 = 0" or "woman
= evil".  But this is simply flat wrong.  You do *not*, under any
circumstances, want to be telling a potential customer "You can't
play with your friends."  If they want to go to server X because
they have friends there, you do *not* have a good reason to tell
them no.

If SWG has bought into a database liscense that says they may only
have X characters per server, that's a business decision, not a
design choice, and certainly not a law of nature.  There are no
inherent information-theory based limitations on the number of
characters, at least not at any reasonable level (less than hundreds
of characters per account).

--Dave


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