explanation from holo on the server cap

[toolfan]

well here it is, the main reason why the servers are in the state they are in. To many players and not enough servers to support them. I would hardly call this SOE's fault, and they are doing a great job keeping us up to date. it just sucks that so many players choose to ignore this stuff and complain anyways.

 

http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=Development&message.id=1698

 

This is just an explanatory post on how server caps work.

 

Every MMORPG limits maximum server capacity. There are no MMOGs where servers have infinite capacity. Capacity is limited because a given server is made up of a cluster of computers. At some point, the cluster can't handle any more users, and slows down, and may even eventually crash if badly overloaded.

 

Generally, an MMOG will set a cap at the point where the performance starts to degrade. We actually set two caps:

 

One cap is when performance starts to degrade. This cap prevents new people from logging in.

 

Another cap is set even lower than that, and it prevents new character creation. This is so that people who are already established on a server do not get blocked from that server when they are trying to log in.

 

Now, the second fact that should be known is the concept of the tie ratio. Basically, the idea here is that you need enough clusters to handle everyone who is going to play simultaneously, plus everyone who is going to want to create characters. There's a traditional rule of thumb in the industry about what percentage of your active playerbase will be logged in at peak times (it's usually considered to be around 20%).

 

Now, during launch, you see MUCH higher percentages of your userbase logging in. For example, right now we are seeing more like 50%. Based on past history, this won't last.

 

Estimating needed server capacity at launch is tricky. You have to factor in how quickly people will get their copies of the game (everyone at once? staggered? picked up at the store or delivered UPS ground?), how long the typical play session is (longer means more simultaneous users, of course), what typical server population should be three months in, and so on. If you get it wrong, you end up with too many servers, all underpopulated, and you might find it difficult to close them. Too few, and you end up with people unable to get in.

 

In our case, we KNOW we have too few. Our plan was 12 to start with, and we have more than that dark and ready to go. But the database issues have effectively left us operating under target capacity for a couple of days. This can be rectified, and we are working to bring up servers as fast as we can.

 

Believe me, I understand how frustrating this is for everyone. It's very clear that more people have planned to live on Starsider, for example, than there is actually ROOM on Starsider. I believe that the same thing would occur on any game--if as many people all made plans to be on an EQ server as seem to have made plans for Starsider, it too would fail to have enough capacity.

 

That said, I don't think that all the people who are planning to live on Starsider are out of luck. I suspect that there are a lot of folks on Starsider right now who actually plan to be on different servers later. I also am pretty sure that the load on the servers in general is extra heavy right now because of the newness of the game. At the same time, I also think that if half the playerbase of SWG made plans to be on Starsider, that it is flatly impossible to accomodate them all (well, unless we name lots of servers the same thing. ).

 

I hope this explains the server cap issue better for everyone. Again, I know how frustrating it is. We will continue to work to bring up servers to meet this heavy demand at launch.

 

-Raph Koster,

 

Creative Director

[-=ReApEr=-]

Ok thanks for that, the addresses some of the issues i was wondering about.

[Daneel]

This reminds me of something very cool about SWG: no zoning.

 

Why, you ask, would a post about server population remind me of that?

 

It's simple - I am reminded how overworked the servers are every time I enter a building from outside, and my FPS count triples within a second, while latency on the line drops like a rock. :-) Thus, if you want to go AFK, are lagging, or doing something that doesn't involve exterior environments, you can help the whole server by parking yourself inside a building.

 

And while that concept won't help the whole cluster, it will certainly take some of the load off of the more frequently accessed outdoors area servers.

 

[toolfan]

and who can forget how annoying zoning in everquest is?