1&1 seems to have a pretty good reputation... well, their web hosting does.
Have you actually finished the game yet? Until you finish the game I'd recommend looking into Virtual Dedicated servers or shared servers. You'd probably be able to have around 50 (guessing) players online at once which is a pretty ideal closed alpha/beta number...
MMORPG - How many servers should I buy ?
I doubt any game has 500000 players online at all times, seriously. In the old days, Half-Life 1 has about 14000 servers online at its peak. The average player count, counting all the empty servers, was, if we are optimistic, about 6 (*lots* of servers were empty). Thats 84000 players, and its a generous estimate, for a game that was one of the, if not the most popular online game of all times, so far. Hence, I honestly doubt you will need to host 500000 players online all the time, or at least, not at the beggining.
I wouldn't worry about this unless your code is complete anyways. Its kind of hard to estimate your bandwidth and CPU power needs if your game is unfinished. As it was suggested before, the appropriate thing to do is stress-testing when there is a complete (or almost complete) game.
I wouldn't worry about this unless your code is complete anyways. Its kind of hard to estimate your bandwidth and CPU power needs if your game is unfinished. As it was suggested before, the appropriate thing to do is stress-testing when there is a complete (or almost complete) game.
Half-life 1 was not the most popular online game of all times, by a long shot. It might have been the most popular online FPS, but that's a pretty narrow niche.
You should know that in the "east", online gaming is rather bigger than here. However, those games are usually based on social conflict and role playing, rather than first-person shooting. A game like Lineage, running somewhere like Korea, makes EverQuest look small (and EQ at its peak might have had something like 500,000 subscribers and 150,000 simultaneous online, by guesstimates). For more information, look at mmogchart. (Btw: that chart looks really good for World of Warcraft!)
That being said, scaling a sharded system isn't that hard; once you know what a shard looks like (machines and switching infrastructure), you can do pretty well by just cookie-cutter-ing that instance into whatever data center is closest to the area that needs the most new power.
Meanwhile, scaling a single-instance "world" is much harder -- not only for technical reasons, but for gameplay reasons. Players within a single instance tend to congregate in a few popular spots; when you build a single instance, you only have that instance, and building enough popular spots to prevent the most popular from becoming way too overcrowded is an important game design nut to crack.
You should know that in the "east", online gaming is rather bigger than here. However, those games are usually based on social conflict and role playing, rather than first-person shooting. A game like Lineage, running somewhere like Korea, makes EverQuest look small (and EQ at its peak might have had something like 500,000 subscribers and 150,000 simultaneous online, by guesstimates). For more information, look at mmogchart. (Btw: that chart looks really good for World of Warcraft!)
That being said, scaling a sharded system isn't that hard; once you know what a shard looks like (machines and switching infrastructure), you can do pretty well by just cookie-cutter-ing that instance into whatever data center is closest to the area that needs the most new power.
Meanwhile, scaling a single-instance "world" is much harder -- not only for technical reasons, but for gameplay reasons. Players within a single instance tend to congregate in a few popular spots; when you build a single instance, you only have that instance, and building enough popular spots to prevent the most popular from becoming way too overcrowded is an important game design nut to crack.
WOW has recently reached over 2 million subscribers.
If a fifth of them decide to play simultaneously during some weekend special event or something, that's 400k right there.
If a fifth of them decide to play simultaneously during some weekend special event or something, that's 400k right there.
WOW is also a Big Hit of the sort that comes along every three years or so, and probably has an annual budget bigger than Albania's.
I think most of the people worry too much about their MMORPG to be servers.
Unless you are doing some very fancy stuff, and/or you are not a very good programmer, an AVERAGE machine (say, a 1.5GHZ CPU, 512 RAM) can accomodate about 3 game servers, each with 1K or more active players.
If your client/server protocol is semi effcient (ie. not trying to save every bit, but not wasting unnecesary data) then you shouldn't use more than 500 octets/second/player on average.
Of course, during a crowded battle there will be more traffic, but usually not all the players are engaged in traffic consuming stuff at the same time.
Another thing is, it will take quite a while before you will need more than one server (machine) because the players won't just crowd to play your game, regardless of the quality and price. It takes a long time and advertising to get more than 5K players online.
We have a free MMORPG of a resonable quality, and after more than 2 years of being online we barely managed to break the 500 connected clients limit.
By the time you will have 5K players playing your game at the same time, money for new servers won't be something to worry about.
Unless you are doing some very fancy stuff, and/or you are not a very good programmer, an AVERAGE machine (say, a 1.5GHZ CPU, 512 RAM) can accomodate about 3 game servers, each with 1K or more active players.
If your client/server protocol is semi effcient (ie. not trying to save every bit, but not wasting unnecesary data) then you shouldn't use more than 500 octets/second/player on average.
Of course, during a crowded battle there will be more traffic, but usually not all the players are engaged in traffic consuming stuff at the same time.
Another thing is, it will take quite a while before you will need more than one server (machine) because the players won't just crowd to play your game, regardless of the quality and price. It takes a long time and advertising to get more than 5K players online.
We have a free MMORPG of a resonable quality, and after more than 2 years of being online we barely managed to break the 500 connected clients limit.
By the time you will have 5K players playing your game at the same time, money for new servers won't be something to worry about.
Just for those who are curious.
Current Subscribers
Lineage II 2107348
World of Warcraft 2000000
Lineage 1994693
Final Fantasy XI 650000
EverQuest 454000
RuneScape 379000
Ragnarok Online (JP) 300000
EverQuest II 278000
Star Wars Galaxies 255000
Dark Age of Camelot 175000
Ultima Online 157000
Lineage I and II hold ~43% of the market. Interesting isnt it?
Current Subscribers
Lineage II 2107348
World of Warcraft 2000000
Lineage 1994693
Final Fantasy XI 650000
EverQuest 454000
RuneScape 379000
Ragnarok Online (JP) 300000
EverQuest II 278000
Star Wars Galaxies 255000
Dark Age of Camelot 175000
Ultima Online 157000
Lineage I and II hold ~43% of the market. Interesting isnt it?
Author
Saruman,
Your probably the least helpful person I have seen so far on these forums, which aint saying much because there is a good number of people like you on here that are quick to write posts that do nothing more then respond in a negative manner and attempt to lower people's morale.
Your first post , you write nothing useful but make a smart ass comment about how " you were going to write something, but chose not too, because you didnt want to upset the moderator " , - I held my tongue and ignored your comment and continued to review the replies to this post.
However you continue to be jerk in your next reply by judging me and my staff on something you have no idea about, stating things like ,
"Also just FYI you would need to have more subscribers than Lineage + Lineage 2 + World of Warcraft + Final Fantasy XI + Everquest 2 combined before you start to worry about 500,000 concurrent players. For an indie such as yourself you should actually be looking more towards the 500-1000 concurrent users number, and even that is high."
and..
"If you are asking these questions you aren't even close to having the game finished and most likely aren't even started."
Neither of these two comments have ANYTHING to do with the original post. Stop being part of the problem and start being part of the solution on GameDev.net . The whole, " Sh*t on the noob and his ideas or questions " has gotten really old around here.
You know whats helpful and whats not.. dont cross that line , just ignore the post and keep your negative critism to yourself. KKTHXBYE
Your probably the least helpful person I have seen so far on these forums, which aint saying much because there is a good number of people like you on here that are quick to write posts that do nothing more then respond in a negative manner and attempt to lower people's morale.
Your first post , you write nothing useful but make a smart ass comment about how " you were going to write something, but chose not too, because you didnt want to upset the moderator " , - I held my tongue and ignored your comment and continued to review the replies to this post.
However you continue to be jerk in your next reply by judging me and my staff on something you have no idea about, stating things like ,
"Also just FYI you would need to have more subscribers than Lineage + Lineage 2 + World of Warcraft + Final Fantasy XI + Everquest 2 combined before you start to worry about 500,000 concurrent players. For an indie such as yourself you should actually be looking more towards the 500-1000 concurrent users number, and even that is high."
and..
"If you are asking these questions you aren't even close to having the game finished and most likely aren't even started."
Neither of these two comments have ANYTHING to do with the original post. Stop being part of the problem and start being part of the solution on GameDev.net . The whole, " Sh*t on the noob and his ideas or questions " has gotten really old around here.
You know whats helpful and whats not.. dont cross that line , just ignore the post and keep your negative critism to yourself. KKTHXBYE
Author
= ALSO THANK YOU TO EVERYONE THAT HAS POSTED USEFUL INFORMATION =
Also a couple more questions I would like to shoot out..
1.) ildave1 - Curious how you came to those numbers on subscribers ?
2.) Raduprv - Your posts have been a great help to the community, and I know you made Eternal Lands ( because I read all of your guides ; ) ) , so I will clue you in on some info. The reason why we are stressing over here about server numbers is because we are trying to project a budget for costs over the next year. I am encouraging our art team to shoot for the best graphics as possible yet are worried about game performance. Like everyone else we would like nice looking graphics for the 3d models and backgrounds, but like with any MMORPG, Lag , Crashes , and other issues can kill a game. At what point should you start to place emphasis on things like network peformance and are there any guidelines we should follow for graphics to reduce lag and render times without seriously compramising the graphics ?
3.) XOR - Thats a good observation.
4.) Anonymous Poster - Thank you for being helpful and posting the link.
Guys please keep the helpful info coming and thanks again for taking the time out to answer my questions. : )
Also a couple more questions I would like to shoot out..
1.) ildave1 - Curious how you came to those numbers on subscribers ?
2.) Raduprv - Your posts have been a great help to the community, and I know you made Eternal Lands ( because I read all of your guides ; ) ) , so I will clue you in on some info. The reason why we are stressing over here about server numbers is because we are trying to project a budget for costs over the next year. I am encouraging our art team to shoot for the best graphics as possible yet are worried about game performance. Like everyone else we would like nice looking graphics for the 3d models and backgrounds, but like with any MMORPG, Lag , Crashes , and other issues can kill a game. At what point should you start to place emphasis on things like network peformance and are there any guidelines we should follow for graphics to reduce lag and render times without seriously compramising the graphics ?
3.) XOR - Thats a good observation.
4.) Anonymous Poster - Thank you for being helpful and posting the link.
Guys please keep the helpful info coming and thanks again for taking the time out to answer my questions. : )
Graphics detail and network lag have pretty much nothing to do with each other. Graphics detail and framerate lag are closely tied, of course. It's useful to keep the two apart.
The actual bit rate needed for your game will vary greatly depending on what your game simulation model actually is. If it's kinetic and high-action, you can easily saturate a 56k modem (even with good netcode). If it's low-key and RPG-ish, hitting 500 Bps is quite reasonable. Same thing on servers.
So, again, to answer your question in detail, you need to post more details about your architecture, requirements, and measurements you've made so far.
The actual bit rate needed for your game will vary greatly depending on what your game simulation model actually is. If it's kinetic and high-action, you can easily saturate a 56k modem (even with good netcode). If it's low-key and RPG-ish, hitting 500 Bps is quite reasonable. Same thing on servers.
So, again, to answer your question in detail, you need to post more details about your architecture, requirements, and measurements you've made so far.
This topic is closed to new replies.
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