Goblin Squad Member
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WOW during the opening of the gates of AQ had hundreds of people in a small area (many spamming AOEs as well). Unplayable definitely applies to that situation: remaining connected to the server for more than a couple of minutes at a time was a miracle, after which you'd log back in to learn that you're back standing where you were 15 minutes ago.
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Goblin Squad Member
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@Areks - no. The last thing we want is a game filled with walled gardens.
So with that being said, would it be a safe assumption to say that a Kingdom will be more of an alliance than a physical location, or do settlements have to be co-located in order to form a kingdom?
Also, will the number of entrances into a settlement be per-determined, or is that something settlement managers will be able to decide when planning the construction?
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Goblin Squad Member
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My recollection is that EE adds 5,000 per month in order of 'subscription'. There are less than 15,000 for the two Kickstarters, but there are allowances for other to enter. Still it would be at least 8 Months to get to 40,000. There are cloud resources that would be good for this during initial roll out. As things settle in more steady state, in house servers may be cheaper, but while things are more uncertain, the cloud provides a better option. This will be mostly invisible to players (one needs to have tools to determine where the servers are).
Lam
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Goblin Squad Member
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@Areks - you should think of a Settlement structure as more of a logical object than a physical one. You won't be able to lock the doors and bar entry. People will find ways to get in.
Exactly, after all, I doubt most settlements I will "need" to get into to "work" won't let me in the front door. not because of my reputation, but because of my REPUTATION. And by that I mean my "job."
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Goblin Squad Member
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The programming team had as much server-side work on their plates as they did client-side. Because Unity is not really designed as an MMO server platform, we are creating a lot of our own code to host the game. We have built our own networking layer to provide fast, efficient communications between the clients and the server. We're also making tools that allow us to set up servers quickly and to manage and monitor them while they're running. Luckily, this is work that Mark has done before at Cryptic Studios, so we have a very good idea of what it will take to ensure our server is secure, robust, and scalable.
Interesting to see Behaviour who are making Warhammer 40K: Eternal Crusade chose Pikkoserver:
Today we are incredibly happy and proud to announce that Pikkoserver, our world record breaking load balancer, will be used to bring the world of Warhammer 40,000 to life in an entirely new game, called Warhammer 40,000: Eternal Crusade. The network technology provided by MuchDifferent, which will be used by game developers Behaviour Interactive in developing this new game, has been developed entirely in house by MuchDifferent and is world leading in its field. There is no other company on the market that can offer the level of scalability and usability in developing multiplayer games that MuchDifferent can with Pikkoserver. We are supremely confident that Behaviour will be able to deliver a world class multiplayer experience using Pikkoserver. And we are really looking forward to fighting it out with hundreds of other players on the grim battlefields of the far future.
There's an good intro vid: Introduction to Pikkoserver