That's a good question!
I remember needing the guy in KC for my epic and finding him up, but it off time for my guild and trying to round up folks. That didn't work but another guild came in to kill him so I was trying to find out if they needed the wiz epic piece, if it dropped, only to find out they were a Japanese guild and there was only 1 person in the raid kinda spoke English..turned out to be a fun lil raid.
That isn't really a decision we make mate, the only part we play in that is the translation for text and voice acting if there is any (we would most likely outsource that to a credible company to do for us). The game itself is digitally available to anyone in the world who clicks the buy or download link when we make that available, so it would depend on the country and their laws.
We want as many people in our target audience to enjoy this game as possible, no matter what part of the world they are from, so hopefully there is enough interest to do translations and marketing deals with other countries, that would be really cool! :)
Kilsin said:
That isn't really a decision we make mate, the only part we play in that is the translation for text and voice acting if there is any (we would most likely outsource that to a credible company to do for us). The game itself is digitally available to anyone in the world who clicks the buy or download link when we make that available, so it would depend on the country and their laws.
We want as many people in our target audience to enjoy this game as possible, no matter what part of the world they are from, so hopefully there is enough interest to do translations and marketing deals with other countries, that would be really cool! :)
In the early days, Veeshan was 1 of like 5 original servers and an Americas, English based server. Yet we had whole guilds that were Japanese, French, German, Spanish language based and although it was mostly something that was transparent unless you happened to be on at the right time, tried to interact with them or just happened to know.
Whether there was some back end mechanics enabling them or if they were just doing it the hard way I don't really know. Later on of course, you had servers that were regionalized and more language specific, but to what extent that existed when the game started I would have to defer to Aradune to answer. My thinking is that when released, your going to see people from all parts of the world playing regardless of whether there is a translation available or not.
Castwell said:
Kilsin said:
That isn't really a decision we make mate, the only part we play in that is the translation for text and voice acting if there is any (we would most likely outsource that to a credible company to do for us). The game itself is digitally available to anyone in the world who clicks the buy or download link when we make that available, so it would depend on the country and their laws.
We want as many people in our target audience to enjoy this game as possible, no matter what part of the world they are from, so hopefully there is enough interest to do translations and marketing deals with other countries, that would be really cool! :)
In the early days, Veeshan was 1 of like 5 original servers and an Americas, English based server. Yet we had whole guilds that were Japanese, French, German, Spanish language based and although it was mostly something that was transparent unless you happened to be on at the right time, tried to interact with them or just happened to know.
Whether there was some back end mechanics enabling them or if they were just doing it the hard way I don't really know. Later on of course, you had servers that were regionalized and more language specific, but to what extent that existed when the game started I would have to defer to Aradune to answer. My thinking is that when released, your going to see people from all parts of the world playing regardless of whether there is a translation available or not.
They would have had ping through the roof! but it was probably the only server for them to play on, so they would have put up with it. I can relate to them being in Australia, it does suck sometimes and our poor internet speed doesn't help the matter if we are forced to play on US or Euro servers lol
Yep, I bet they did! But you know, I think it really shows the dedication that people in other parts of the world have to accomplishing anything they want to do as apposed to the spoiled players here (in the U.S) that really have had it good and want to complain about everything.
Kilsin said:
That isn't really a decision we make mate, the only part we play in that is the translation for text and voice acting if there is any (we would most likely outsource that to a credible company to do for us). The game itself is digitally available to anyone in the world who clicks the buy or download link when we make that available, so it would depend on the country and their laws.
We want as many people in our target audience to enjoy this game as possible, no matter what part of the world they are from, so hopefully there is enough interest to do translations and marketing deals with other countries, that would be really cool! :)
I guess part of the question here would also be if there is plans for international based servers and if there are international based servers will the North American servers be limited to North American IPs and so forth?
Castwell said:
Yep, I bet they did! But you know, I think it really shows the dedication that people in other parts of the world have to accomplishing anything they want to do as apposed to the spoiled players here (in the U.S) that really have had it good and want to complain about everything.
It's not really dedication mate, I am forced to use US servers all the time and get horrible ping which effects my ability/spell rotations, puts me at a disadvantage for any type of PvP or parsing of Dps etc. but if I want to play the game, I usually have no choice and I happily give up those things so I can play.
Back in those days Verant and SOE weren't expecting EQ to be as big as it was, so the servers were limited and anyone outside of the US that wanted to play had to play with huge ping on a US server, it is annoying but it's that or not play at all and it is still like that today for us with some games.
Thankfully these days there is usually an AU/NZ server for me and my Au and NZ brothers and sisters and an Asian server for any of the Asian countries, if not, I choose a North American server and just put up with it :)
cram9030 said:
Kilsin said:
That isn't really a decision we make mate, the only part we play in that is the translation for text and voice acting if there is any (we would most likely outsource that to a credible company to do for us). The game itself is digitally available to anyone in the world who clicks the buy or download link when we make that available, so it would depend on the country and their laws.
We want as many people in our target audience to enjoy this game as possible, no matter what part of the world they are from, so hopefully there is enough interest to do translations and marketing deals with other countries, that would be really cool! :)I guess part of the question here would also be if there is plans for international based servers and if there are international based servers will the North American servers be limited to North American IPs and so forth?
That I cannot answer until we get more data and we probably won't know that until well into Alpha/Beta and even then, we will have to try and predict how many will launch and from what countries, it's going to be tough but that is why you see MMORPGs launch with terrible down times, queues, server crashes etc. It isn't usually their fault, it's just that they got the numbers and predictions wrong and have to scramble to get it right as fast as possible, which usually means no sleep until it's resolved for many dedicated team members!
Kilsin said:
cram9030 said:
Kilsin said:
That isn't really a decision we make mate, the only part we play in that is the translation for text and voice acting if there is any (we would most likely outsource that to a credible company to do for us). The game itself is digitally available to anyone in the world who clicks the buy or download link when we make that available, so it would depend on the country and their laws.
We want as many people in our target audience to enjoy this game as possible, no matter what part of the world they are from, so hopefully there is enough interest to do translations and marketing deals with other countries, that would be really cool! :)I guess part of the question here would also be if there is plans for international based servers and if there are international based servers will the North American servers be limited to North American IPs and so forth?
That I cannot answer until we get more data and we probably won't know that until well into Alpha/Beta and event hen, we will have to try and predict how many will launch and from what countries, it's going to be tough but that is why you see MMORPGs launch with terrible down times, queues, server crashes etc. It isn't usually their fault, it's just that they got the numbers and predictions wrong and have to scramble to get it right as fast as possible, which usually means no sleep until it's resolved for many dedicated team members!
Completely understand. One thing I imagine you guys might have an idea of right now is how many people would be needed to create a dedicated Europe or wherever server? I know we have talked about the right population size for a server (I don't recall if there was a firm number I guess it goes in the we will see how it test sort of area) but I think this question if more of one of finances, basically how much money need to be coming form an area for it to deserve its own server. You would be somewhat of an expert on this Kilsin but if you are getting terrible performance I would imagine some people would be willing to pay a little more to get a server closer to home which might allow for more international servers. Just throwing things out there of course.
cram9030 said:
Kilsin said:
cram9030 said:
Kilsin said:
That isn't really a decision we make mate, the only part we play in that is the translation for text and voice acting if there is any (we would most likely outsource that to a credible company to do for us). The game itself is digitally available to anyone in the world who clicks the buy or download link when we make that available, so it would depend on the country and their laws.
We want as many people in our target audience to enjoy this game as possible, no matter what part of the world they are from, so hopefully there is enough interest to do translations and marketing deals with other countries, that would be really cool! :)I guess part of the question here would also be if there is plans for international based servers and if there are international based servers will the North American servers be limited to North American IPs and so forth?
That I cannot answer until we get more data and we probably won't know that until well into Alpha/Beta and event hen, we will have to try and predict how many will launch and from what countries, it's going to be tough but that is why you see MMORPGs launch with terrible down times, queues, server crashes etc. It isn't usually their fault, it's just that they got the numbers and predictions wrong and have to scramble to get it right as fast as possible, which usually means no sleep until it's resolved for many dedicated team members!
Completely understand. One thing I imagine you guys might have an idea of right now is how many people would be needed to create a dedicated Europe or wherever server? I know we have talked about the right population size for a server (I don't recall if there was a firm number I guess it goes in the we will see how it test sort of area) but I think this question if more of one of finances, basically how much money need to be coming form an area for it to deserve its own server. You would be somewhat of an expert on this Kilsin but if you are getting terrible performance I would imagine some people would be willing to pay a little more to get a server closer to home which might allow for more international servers. Just throwing things out there of course.
Yeah, that's a really good question mate. We did discuss it on the forums roughly that it would depend on zone/world size to get that "lived in/populated" feeling but also balancing the lag from having too many characters running around rendering effects, armour, weapons, shaders, animations, spells/abilities/buffs etc.
I don't know that there is a "firm" or "magic" number, I think the realisation that we all came to was that it would be tested during Beta with stress tests, until we are happy with a nice balance, which is how it is normally done.
We will definitely try to accommodate as many as we can without sacrificing performance, which is something the team is passionate about, we don't like playing with lag either! Which is why the guys do a full optimisation sweep every month to make sure we are in a good place and on track. ;)
balancing the lag from having too many characters running around rendering effects, armour, weapons, shaders, animations, spells/abilities/buffs etc.
Ok, just to clarify the technical side here.
Servers track an incredible amount of data. Where you are, buff timers, inventory...ect. and there is a point where you could exceed it's ability to keep up. Usually, if this happens the server will end crashing if the load is not brought down and that's kinda ugly.
Lag produced by rendering (spell effects, animation and so on) actually takes place on your PC. The server doesn't actually render anything. It just tracks all that information and passes that info off to you for the actual rendering. That's why ping time, server load (# of people in close proximity), amount of detail and so on are very important from the development side.
At least, that's my understanding of how it works and it's a pretty simplistic picture. It get a whole lot more complicated if we start talking about the networking side of all that and the whole cause/effect thing.
Castwell said:
balancing the lag from having too many characters running around rendering effects, armour, weapons, shaders, animations, spells/abilities/buffs etc.
Ok, just to clarify the technical side here.
Servers track an incredible amount of data. Where you are, buff timers, inventory...ect. and there is a point where you could exceed it's ability to keep up. Usually, if this happens the server will end crashing if the load is not brought down and that's kinda ugly.
Lag produced by rendering (spell effects, animation and so on) actually takes place on your PC. The server doesn't actually render anything. It just tracks all that information and passes that info off to you for the actual rendering. That's why ping time, server load (# of people in close proximity), amount of detail and so on are very important from the development side.
At least, that's my understanding of how it works and it's a pretty simplistic picture. It get a whole lot more complicated if we start talking about the networking side of all that and the whole cause/effect thing.
It's a mix of all of those things, which is why I said balance is needed, that includes client-side and server-side.
Your GPU and CPU do a lot of client-side rendering, but the servers have to calculate ticks and patterns, movement, not to mention the length of effects and many other things as it is a lot more complicated than that, the optimisation is in good hands with our network team so let's not go off-topic here, the thread is about World Wide Access.