I looked up faq and tried to search for threads with this issue but found nothing .
The question is simple - is it planned to have 1 or several European server(s) ?
I ask because mixed servers with US players are quite difficult for most Europeans because of time zone and language barriers . The location of the server is irrelevant, what counts is whether it uses the main languages - english, german, french and advertizes as being a server for Europeans .
If it has already been discussed, the link is enough .
No link provided, but I remember it was stated there would be eu servers as much as us ones. Since they are cloud based, they have been said to be put anywhere in the world, however I don't know much about thoses tech.
I however am pretty sure there will be no language based servers, meaning the Eu serv will probably use english as a common tongue.
We have not settled on how many servers or where they will be placed but MauvaisOeil is correct, we used cloud servers and can place them anywhere in the world in a relatively quick timeframe so depending on where the hot spots around the world will be will determine where we put the servers.
We will use Alph and Beta to get those numbers when we allow more people to log on and test, though :)
Kilsin said:We have not settled on how many servers or where they will be placed but MauvaisOeil is correct, we used cloud servers and can place them anywhere in the world in a relatively quick timeframe so depending on where the hot spots around the world will be will determine where we put the servers.
We will use Alph and Beta to get those numbers when we allow more people to log on and test, though :)
Hey Kilsin, I know "Oceania" is a minority but is there any chance of a server based down under for us Aussies? Or as you said, is this TBA once numbers/interest has been gauged.
P.S. I'll send you unlimited packs of Tim Tams and Vegemite to make it happen =)
We can have servers for every time zone and language - but with many of them having under 100 players (maybe 10 on at one time if it is really crowded) I don't think that will work out really well.
One thing the community can do - and quite likely *will* do - is to try and steer certain groups to certain servers in order to have enough people playing at the same time and using the same language (if not English).
Thus, if there are two European servers, Scandanavians could try and designate one as the "Unofficial Scandanavian server". It is more important for "Oceania" because of the time zone differences which are significant - if there is no Oceania server they almost surely will try to designate one unofficially.
Zippyness said:Kilsin said:We have not settled on how many servers or where they will be placed but MauvaisOeil is correct, we used cloud servers and can place them anywhere in the world in a relatively quick timeframe so depending on where the hot spots around the world will be will determine where we put the servers.
We will use Alph and Beta to get those numbers when we allow more people to log on and test, though :)
Hey Kilsin, I know "Oceania" is a minority but is there any chance of a server based down under for us Aussies? Or as you said, is this TBA once numbers/interest has been gauged.
P.S. I'll send you unlimited packs of Tim Tams and Vegemite to make it happen =)
Lol, you got yourself a deal mate ;)
It actually is in the FAQ:
The answer is “most likely.” We’re unsure of the timing yet, but we’re in talks with other publishers that could help us out with that. Everything in our database is set up to support localization, so it’s just going to be a matter of timing and when it makes sense to do so.
But Kilsin pretty much summed it up :)
Zippyness said: Hey Kilsin, I know "Oceania" is a minority but is there any chance of a server based down under for us Aussies? Or as you said, is this TBA once numbers/interest has been gauged.
P.S. I'll send you unlimited packs of Tim Tams and Vegemite to make it happen =)
Kilsin said: Lol, you got yourself a deal mate ;)
It's a trick Zippy... isn't Kilsin Aussie himself? He probably has a huge supply of those already ;-)
Well as I said - for my question localisation was irrelevant because I knew that the answer is "it is a possibility" .
What I was more interested in was a region lock or at least an advertizement (like FF14 is doing) which says the server X is meant for Europe and server Y for Oceania . I mention Oceania because many Europeans with free time in the morning like to play on Oceania servers .
This is the most important aspect because the time zone is much more important than language . If I play at the same time as many other players, I will always find a mean how to communicate with them - english, french, german , russian . But if I play at a time when everybody sleeps and the server is a ghost town then it is irrelevant whether I speak the same language like the sleeping people or not .
Kilsin said:We have not settled on how many servers or where they will be placed but MauvaisOeil is correct, we used cloud servers and can place them anywhere in the world in a relatively quick timeframe so depending on where the hot spots around the world will be will determine where we put the servers.
We will use Alph and Beta to get those numbers when we allow more people to log on and test, though :)
As someone that directly supported a game with millions of players, that was 100% in the AWS cloud, where at any time we might have dozens to hundreds of instances(servers) active, sprinkling servers around the world is not as easy as saying you can do it. In this age of multi-zone communication, large memcache, NoSQLs; we actually ended up not fighting that multi-zone battle and kept our instances based in the US-east.
Our game was not an MMO, maybe easier to control all the authentication issues, so I cannot imagine how complex it is going to be for VR.
It is easy to get very screwed up and start spending lots of money if you do not architect your cloud design well. The cloud is not a panacea, it takes an expert.
Now assets, those can be easily placed around the world using a good CDN. That is a must.
dorotea said:We can have servers for every time zone and language - but with many of them having under 100 players (maybe 10 on at one time if it is really crowded) I don't think that will work out really well.
One thing the community can do - and quite likely *will* do - is to try and steer certain groups to certain servers in order to have enough people playing at the same time and using the same language (if not English).
Thus, if there are two European servers, Scandanavians could try and designate one as the "Unofficial Scandanavian server". It is more important for "Oceania" because of the time zone differences which are significant - if there is no Oceania server they almost surely will try to designate one unofficially.
This is exactly what I was thinking... but you run into the problems of not everyone being active on the forums. If VR could put something like...
Server name (oceanic preferred)
Server name (europe preferred)
That would go much further than even the community designating one. I mean the last thing you want is to accidentally roll on the aussie server as an American and be the only one playing during your prime time lol.
This may be a matter of semantics - no server is likely to exclude people from other locations that want to play there, so when you say "europe preferred" that is precisely what I think of when I say "European server".
As you say - no need to have an unofficial Oceanic server if VR designates one as a server where Oceanics are encouraged to play.
When I'm talking about an european server, I'm talking about the localization of the server, for ping reasons, more than "a server aimed at Europe players". Due to distance, it will allways be aimed at europe players indirectly, but it remains open to anyone with a timeframe close to europe.
dorotea said:This may be a matter of semantics - no server is likely to exclude people from other locations that want to play there, so when you say "europe preferred" that is precisely what I think of when I say "European server".
As you say - no need to have an unofficial Oceanic server if VR designates one as a server where Oceanics are encouraged to play.
Yes that's what I meant. I must have just misunderstood your post! It looks like we are on the same page lol.
MauvaisOeil said:When I'm talking about an european server, I'm talking about the localization of the server, for ping reasons, more than "a server aimed at Europe players". Due to distance, it will allways be aimed at europe players indirectly, but it remains open to anyone with a timeframe close to europe.
In the game industry "localization" generally refers to language. It does not usually mean physical location of servers. So good to specifiy that aspect, as you did.
Because Euro servers could service dozens of languages.
Landbert said: While I want the game client be translated, I don‘t want to have empty servers for every language. But a server for every region would be nice.
Yeah, probably unlikely
There is no single "server" per se. As it is all cloud based instancing. Most likely is a cluster of instances, generally one for each zone will be used. So you are talking about dozens (and hundreds eventually) of instances making up a "server".
It really all depends on how they design/build the backend, the RDS, the memcache, etc. In this day I would suspect a nosql like Couchbase or Cassandra as well as Redis and other similiar solutions. The old days of more fixed SQL solutions are bygones.
Consolidating servers early in the game's life cycle is a last resort.
It sends the message that the game is failing - however untrue this may be the impression that it is true could be very harmful.
It inconveniences many players - assuming Pantheon works like most MMOs it would mean a lot of people would lose personal names and guild names, and if there is a choice of destination servers communities would be permanently split.
Much better to have the number of servers tailored to the population they expect a month or two after launch, or even later. The first days will be a madhouse - we hope. Only fools would expect everyone playing the first week to stay and VR has a *great* deal of experience.
I am reasonably confident they will be conservative and have fewer servers than needed to support their more optimistic hopes. Multiple versions of starter zones can reduce overcrowding during the madhouse weeks (with easy transfers from version to version and chat covering all versions maintaining commonality).
If things go very well in terms of number of players, adding servers is far less painful than consolidating. It sends the message "success" to the broader world. It is far less likely to cost people treasured names.
dorotea said:If things go very well in terms of number of players, adding servers is far less painful than consolidating. It sends the message "success" to the broader world. It is far less likely to cost people treasured names.
Agreed and that was the point I was making. I think most of us here really want to see this game be a success. Not only for the dev's and this team, but for our own selfish reasons of wanting games like this on the market to play. My instincts tell me that dev's are old enough and seem wise enough to have learned that lesson from the other failed MMO's that quickly whored themselves out to cash stores and pay to win models. Keeping my fingers crossed that this is the case.
All of this is not saying I don't want to see EU servers up. I absolutely want to see people from all over the globe be able to play this game with a good ping and not only have to connect to NA servers.