[MUD-Dev] re: Sun's Sim Server and Gordon's 10 Reasons (the firstone:))

[Thomas Tomiczek]

From: David Kennerly
> Quoting Eric Lee:

>> The major difference between 20 shards of 5,000 players apiece
>> and one shard of 100,000 players is that in the latter case you
>> have to create ~20 times as much content to keep all of those
>> players busy and to give them room to breathe.

> Your insightful point piques my curiosity.  How much more
> dissatisfied are players with 20 copies than 1 copy?

IMHO the problem pointed out is more one of having to provide MORE
content. Not because of players not being satisfied with the
content, but because of the space needed.

You can have a dungeon. This dungeon can only hold X players until
it is crowded. Now, with 20 copies of the world, the dungeon can
hold 20 times as may players before they basically turn into a
tourist tour without danger.

This means when I put all the people into the same server, I have to
provide 20 times as many dungeons. EVEN if I reuse the dungeon 20
times, I have to provide "space" for the 20 fdungeons on the
surface, which meany my game world has to be bigger.

So, in order to facilitate 100.000 servers on one copy of the game
world (instead of 20), the game world has to be 20 times as
large. And this is a design problem . Possibly also a technical
cone, but first of all, a 20 times as large game world will tage
more time than it's smaller counterpart. Not necessarily 20 times as
many (the reuse possibilites ARE there) but it WILL be more
expensive.

If you do not spend this, you end up 20 copies of the SAME content
in ONE world - and then ou definitly get into a funny world. YOU
know, like "the 20 identical tombs of X". And if you look at the map
from above, you see a square structure which repeats the same little
rectalngle 20 times, down to the trees. This is about the only way
to keep the design time roughtly similar.

Thomas Tomiczek
THONA Software & Consulting Ltd.
(Microsoft MVP C#/.NET)
(CTO PowerNodes Ltd.)
_______________________________________________
MUD-Dev mailing list
MUD-Dev at kanga.nu
https://www.kanga.nu/lists/listinfo/mud-dev