Are We A MMO?

So a FPS with 1 lobby and thousands of 30 vs 30 battle ground maps is a MMO?

 

Indeed, great post, I think Portalarium should pay attention to many details in Guild Wars, they did quite a few things just right.

 

Unfortunately, (to the modern interpretation of the term) yes.

At the same time, despite how crude your description is, it still matches games that are clearly and undoubtedly MMOs:

Albion Online is an MMO and it's structured in such as way that the world is composed of hundreds of unique instances. By "unique instances", I mean, instances that won't be mirrored to allow more players in that particular area. So each city, or farmland, or dungeon is a separate instance but if people decided to go in a single one of those areas, they all fit within that same instance.

Heh, and some people thought they had problems gathering resources in SotA's MPO... try doing it when there's over 300 people in the same area.

It was reported that one single city was hosting 1.5k players within a given moment. The game started to lag for some people.

I think the distinction is that what you do has to influence or contribute to a greater whole (mega server). There's a reason why "For Honor" was covered by a lot of MMO related sites... despite my disdain with how loosely some people use the term.

Yeah. Despite GuildWars initially gaining a lot of flak for being "just an instanced game", it did a lot of things right. GuildWars 2 followed suit but I believe it sacrificed a lot of what made the original great.

I see SotA's shuffling-action-bar as being an attempted evolution of what the original GuildWars game did.

Considering that the world is more or less structured the same way, Richard Garriott has a lot of opportunities to abuse SotA's instancing to truly craft an amazing story within an MMO instead of just using it as a means to cut development cost.

 

Which is exactly why I say it's not worth being pro/con on the label. MMO is nothing more than a meta tag for games to land in someone's search for a new game.

If the meta tag lands a sale then it's all good. Don't let the label define the game. Let the game define the label.

 

I have been asking many places why the devs think this ^^ is possible and people are *starting* to lag, while we lag with 40 people in the same instance.

I think it would help us alot if devs would at least expose the logistics, it would perhaps inspire someone to find a solution.

 

Just because Albion Online can get over 500 people without lagging (and lag does happen from time to time) and can get to 1.5k people before it starts to really struggle, you can't expect every other game to perform the same way. Albion Online is much more lightweight in terms of network packets and graphic fidelity. That's because it was designed to fit on a mobile devices. The game ran with a small amount of stutter on my brother's 2008 computer.

Would you believe it that people in the Albion forums are not happy with the lag they're getting?

I don't believe that Portalarium expects SotA to run without lag with 500+ people inside a single instance but they're sure as hell going to try to support as many people as possible.

 

Yes, that is by definition an MMO. Think about what you just said... thousands of 30 vs 30... so at least 2k instances so... 120k players... and you think that is not a Massively Multiplayer Online game?

 

Fine, if you want someone to tell you its true : its true.

In my day however there was both, Multiplayer online (like blizzard battle.net) then there was MMOs (which meant by definition all players in the same world, thus massively multiplayer, like UO, EQ or WoW).

Can you tell me why in heaven they would use massively as a measure of quantity, and if yes at what number of players does it become massive ? Then there would be big multiplayer online, and huge multiplayer online, then titanesque, enormous ? lol...

You won't find alot of jargon or slang that uses words so literally Its considered bad form, uncool

 

It just means many players can play it at once and together, enjoying the same game. Doesn't mean it all has to be in the same instance. There always has been server limitations so instancing was brought about. Even Ultima Online & EverQuest had different servers... not everyone was on the same instance.

*Edit* Oh and I took out StarCraft mention because I thought about it and figured it would just open a can of worms bringing up RTS's and other type games into the MMO/MMORPG conversation as it already seems difficult for some to understand as it is.

 

The terminology has stuck from it's early beginnings. Keep in mind, what is considered "massive" for online play today was not the same in the 90s with everyone on dial-up and the old server architecture.

 

No lol...

UO started to lag around 3-400 players in the same subserver...

However EA invested millions in the title... YET, freeshards I have seen 600-800 people on the same subserver, not a hint of lag, on free servers... no funding.

In fact when I programmed some of the first freeshards with friends, we noticed there was ALOT of code that was very wrong, allowed hacking and created insane amount of lag. With only basic knowledge in C and Kobol we managed to unlock its true potential... we actually never could test up to where it could have handled.

So I understand that by definition, 3-d games with PvP is muuuch more bandwidth, but UO was a looong time ago, technology improved and well I am still puzzled, at first I thought it was Unity (that engine really made me cringe compared to Unreal Engine and Cryengine), but people kept repeating NO ITS NOT UNITY, supposedly all games on this engine have that kind of performance.

So then I asked, what is the culprit... radio silence, nobody knows where the bottleneck is. Well I reopened unity, ran HEAVY benchmark tests at 40 FPS. Everything seems fluid when I applied the same network saving protocols which we used for freeshards (protocols that I freely gave to some portalarium devs who decided I was a lunatic and completely ignored me)

Well... my previous computer dates back around 2004 and it ran Guild Wars perfectly... the computer I have right now is much more recent, it runs all kinds of 3d games and as I said the heaviest 3-d benchmarks I can find and everything is perfect... in shroud I get 10 fps at the lowest settings possible with the least options. Oh its improved, I used to run around ardoris @ 5 fps...

My processor is 4 times stronger, my graphic card 3 times bigger, and yet its barely playable for me.

A 3d game is a 3d game... yes sure when all the options are at beautiful the visuals are amazing, but why can't I run the game properly at the lowest settings while other games with similar quality of graphics run at 50+ fps ?

I would really like to know, and if we knew, I'm pretty sure people with experience in unity might have ideas for solutions. Heck I might even have ideas with my limited experience... Besides isn't unity supposed to be made for multi-platform including mobile ?

https://unity3d.com/unity/features/multiplatform
https://unity3d.com/solutions/mobile

 

I'm not sure why you need people to understand... theres alot of people who don't understand things on this forum, you could spend your life trying to correct people that are wrong in the internet

It's a common thing here since people are so passionate about their comments... when a comment dosen't apply or seems wrong, we just skip it, let the person say what they want to say and move on. This way we make sure not to feed the trolls

 

If you don't have people understand your discussion, then why even bother bringing it up? It's kind of the point to have people understand the answers. You may be content with someone posting something wrong or incorrect, but that is not me. I would rather argue for why its wrong or incorrect rather than have those comments out there and people simply believe them because no one countered them or showed/explained the correct or right answer. Far too much of that going on nowadays as it is.

 

Not in the least. Break it down some. 15 vs 15, by your definition it's still MMO, even though those 119,970 other players are practically playing a different game. How about 5 vs 5 or 1 vs 1. Really, does versus matter? Solo game that's an instance where 119,999 other players are in the same chat room? That's an MMO to you?

Yeah, that means Steam is one giant MMO where we all play the game/instance of our choice.

What you describe is online gaming where the game developers provide a system to form groups. Not MMO.

If you look at it from the view point of RG, he's said that no MMO is really an MMO any more. So why try to define SotA as one.

Games like WoW that took the MMO market into instances tailored to small group removed the massive from MMO. By design. It was the answer to quest chain lines and MOB camping.

But, it's ok to call SotA an MMO if that's what it takes to get new players to try it out. SotA can fit the label when used that loosely.

 

That is a noble goal brother, but I think you are still quite young And I don't mean that in a diminutive way, I am the worse eternal adolescent there has ever been. I'm immature, too emotional, often think there is a conspiracy against me, among many other damning things... but I do have wisdom from being on forums since well... since even before dialup modems... I was on BBS and even before, we had postal forums, sharing discs and magnetic tapes by the mail !

The amount of incorrect people is infinite, like beauty in the world.

You will often find me arguing however, but I choose my battles ; I do think this discussion should have happened at the very start, now well its a bit late to start over, even if in my little heart I think it would be the best solution.

 

Corrected it for you

 

You predate AOL too!

 

I stand corrected, skimmed over that in the proof read.

/hangs head in embarrassment

 

Hahaha, I don't miss those days one bit get it ? one bit per second

 

Waiiiiiit a second? Can we count AOL as an MMO? It was a vehicle for a massive amount if people to meet up and play online games