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What the OP is describing has been used for a long time in Phantasy Star Online games. The way they handle names, is that EVERYONE could name themselves "John Wayne", but each person is given a Number and an "ID" that is behind it (Similar to Global Names that we have in CoX).
So, if I see a ton of "John Wayne"s and I know my friend is on his char named "John Wayne" what I could do in Phantasy Star Online is switch the display to include (or only show) the ID behind it. If it displays both, it does as "John Wayne (Chioko)" with Chioko being my friend's ID name which is -unique- to my friend.
When you log into Phantasy Star Online game, you pick a character, then you pick a (my terminology may be off here.. been forever) 'Realm' to go to, this is a generic descriptor for location. Aka, US, Japan, Korea, etc (But they're named something else, the description for it lists a specific language typically). From there you can choose any World (think Channel) to join. At -any- time while playing the character can switch which World they are on, like changing the channel on a TV.
It basically allowed for people to congregate on a specific place for their language, and then once they've made friends to choose a specific world (Channel) to meet up with that would be "theirs" if they picked a low population one.
It's really quite something to experience for one-self, and in my not so humble opinion, the Phantasy Star Online games have had the absolute best "server" system possible. Because we could have the "unofficial RP" gathering place (aka Virtue), the place for people that enjoy a thronging crowd of hard core gamers (aka Freedom), and whatever else have you. In addition, it allowed for people to escape from griefers with a flick of the switch by changing channel (As the game had no way to search cross channels, there was no way for the griefer to follow unless they guess correctly). Though, I should also note all of the fighting in Phantasy Star Online takes place in Instanced zones (Similar to outdoor maps for CoX).
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I played Phantasy Star Online BB for about 4 or 6 months. Now that you mention it the ID system would be a perfect way to get around the naming issue and still free up toon names for anyone to use.
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Well, it's a question of blending the elements right, I guess. Phantasy Star Online's lobby system bothered me quite a bit. I never really felt a sense of community there; if it wasn't for the friends that dragged me to the game...well, y'know.
Guild Wars was slightly better for me, but I still...didn't really like how they handled towns and cities. They just felt like a really weak movie set, rather than something actually real. The fact you could blink between channels kinda killed immersion for me, oddly. Maybe I'm just weird.
Granted, I've heard folks say CoH's instanced mission map system means our city zones are pretty much glorified lobbies anyway. I guess there's some truth to that. Hell, look at Cimerora. But the game as a whole feels different to me.
'course, that's an entirely subjective opinion. I guess when you come down to it, I just like discrete servers rather than all the technical fiddling of global environment systems. That's not a rational preference...but I do feel that way, and I bet others do as well. I'm not saying the majority of folks think like that, just, well, I'm probably not alone.
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Notice I said "part of the reason".
And while yes, there would be nasty latency between the east and west coast hardware, if they did do a single-shard architecture they wouldn't have it split among datacenters like the shards currently are.
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Well, it's a question of blending the elements right, I guess. Phantasy Star Online's lobby system bothered me quite a bit. I never really felt a sense of community there; if it wasn't for the friends that dragged me to the game...well, y'know.
Guild Wars was slightly better for me, but I still...didn't really like how they handled towns and cities. They just felt like a really weak movie set, rather than something actually real. The fact you could blink between channels kinda killed immersion for me, oddly. Maybe I'm just weird.
Granted, I've heard folks say CoH's instanced mission map system means our city zones are pretty much glorified lobbies anyway. I guess there's some truth to that. Hell, look at Cimerora. But the game as a whole feels different to me.
'course, that's an entirely subjective opinion. I guess when you come down to it, I just like discrete servers rather than all the technical fiddling of global environment systems. That's not a rational preference...but I do feel that way, and I bet others do as well. I'm not saying the majority of folks think like that, just, well, I'm probably not alone.
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I think you are right. It has to be something that will be used, that is beneficial to the player base and is as efficient for gameplay as the typical shard architecture.
I have no clue if itll ever happen but if/when I ever get my mmo ideas off the ground this is the type of system I would like to try and see if it will work to the benefit of the community.
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[ QUOTE ]
I think you are right. It has to be something that will be used, that is beneficial to the player base and is as efficient for gameplay as the typical shard architecture.
I have no clue if itll ever happen but if/when I ever get my mmo ideas off the ground this is the type of system I would like to try and see if it will work to the benefit of the community.
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It's sort of a form and function thing. The traditional 'many different servers' structure of MMOs may have been established for technical reasons, but it's proven pretty good for fostering community identity.
It's easier to feel some kind of affinity for your server as opposed to the game at large. And group identity matters, I think.
There might be other ways to do things, but one needs to consider the social impact.
@Acyl
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I like the server system...
People can make fun of things like "Freedumb," etc.
Plus what every else said... names, crashing, all that.
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@Acyl
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I didn't see anyone mention the flash flood problem yet. During special events, everyone wants to be where the action is. If everyone knew that War Witch was hanging out in Boomtown on Infinity, then pretty much every player in the game would try to go there, all at once. That kind of flash flood would crash any server (unless it was absurdly overspecced for day to day operations). CoH handles that, in part, by dividing players up among servers. Also, when people do flood a zone, you get different instances of the zone, so most people still wouldn't get to hang out with War Witch. Any system you design has to take into account peak usage as well as typical usage.
Personally, I like the idea of a shardless world because it makes it easier to advance the storyline in a dynamic way. Suppose the devs set something up where there was a special event in Dark Astoria, and whether or not the permanent fog dissipated depended on how many heroes successfully completed the event. With multiple servers, you'd get some with one result and some with another. That would fork the ongoing development, which would cause all kinds of headaches later on.
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side note: You can chat cross-server already via global tells and global chat channels.
there are a few "single world" games out there now
Guild Wars is the only one that comes to mind at the moment, but it's system is set up a bit different than most would like. there are common areas, and there are "instanced areas," areas that, once you leave the common areas, are only populated by you and your party.
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Eve Online is another single world game (and one that I've recently gotten back into again).
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Personally, I like the idea of a shardless world because it makes it easier to advance the storyline in a dynamic way. Suppose the devs set something up where there was a special event in Dark Astoria, and whether or not the permanent fog dissipated depended on how many heroes successfully completed the event. With multiple servers, you'd get some with one result and some with another. That would fork the ongoing development, which would cause all kinds of headaches later on.
[/ QUOTE ]I believe that Asheron's Call did something like this, but what they did was the first group on any shard to complete the quest forwarded the story along pre-determined lines for all shards. So no forking.
I will confirm that Runescape has the exact server layout that the OP asks about you create your character and you can log into any world you want. They limit free players to some servers, and pay players to others, but many pay players log into the free servers because of economic differences there are some crafting items that you buy free and sell pay, and others you do the inverse (free players can harvest wood but have nothing to do with it but burn it as a camp fire while pay players can fletch arrows, hence buying wood cheap on free servers and selling it on pay servers is a great source of cash).
Runescape handles the naming just fine. Millions and millions of characters, most of them have perfectly unique names. Lots of people with totally lame names like xx123_bob_321xx and so on. Overall it works. Each server is limited to 2000 players at a time, they setup a queue if one gets full, and they have an option to "jump to an open server" where you let them assign you and you never have to wait.
Many of the servers do have unique flavor and cultures. For instance as the game has grown, there are servers where specific quests and areas are full all the time. Sort of if CoH had one server that ran Sewer Trials and another that ran Hami Raids. And if anyone wanted to do those, instead of trying to talk people on their own server to do it, you'd head to the "sewer" server and find a pug fast and easy. Then there is, I think Shard 7 or 17, which is the home of the ironically named OoC (Order of Cabbage) a roleplaying group who hang out picking cabbage and talking. Plus occasionally having group activities. Kah Bah GEE!!! Err, anyway, long-story-short: even on a system like this you could have (and do have) shards with unique personalities. There are many which are bland, but some have flavor. And people seek out that flavor intentionally.
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I played Runescape back when it was 1 server that ran the forum, game, and the website all at once, and having 300 people on the server status was a busy night. lol
I left that game like 7 years ago as a top player. I just got bored with what I called the "Hampster Wheel".. click this, click that, repeat.. for hours a day. Not like clicking powers in CoH over and over again is any better.. but it has a lot more personality. It's not the same as clicking a tree for hours just to get wood! lol
Anyway, yes, their character files are so much smaller and a copy is instantly sent to the server using it. Adjustments are made as you play, and every so often it "saves" your file again to the main server. Te problem used to be that some people could trade expensive items to another character (we called them Mules), then log out the "Mule" to save the file with the expensive item.. then crash the character or server in some way so that the original file never saves. When you come back on, you have the expensive item still.. effectively duplicating the item or money you traded.
Obviously they put in more safeguards by now to prevent such a thing happening, but it's still a weird system to deal with sometimes. I'm afraid with CoX's larger complex player files, and the track record with server crashes and file corruption, it wouldn't be a good thing to try. Every other time the server went down for maintenance, there would be somebody complaining they lost items or xp from a "rollback". lol
What the OP is describing has been used for a long time in Phantasy Star Online games. The way they handle names, is that EVERYONE could name themselves "John Wayne", but each person is given a Number and an "ID" that is behind it (Similar to Global Names that we have in CoX).
So, if I see a ton of "John Wayne"s and I know my friend is on his char named "John Wayne" what I could do in Phantasy Star Online is switch the display to include (or only show) the ID behind it. If it displays both, it does as "John Wayne (Chioko)" with Chioko being my friend's ID name which is -unique- to my friend.
When you log into Phantasy Star Online game, you pick a character, then you pick a (my terminology may be off here.. been forever) 'Realm' to go to, this is a generic descriptor for location. Aka, US, Japan, Korea, etc (But they're named something else, the description for it lists a specific language typically). From there you can choose any World (think Channel) to join. At -any- time while playing the character can switch which World they are on, like changing the channel on a TV.
It basically allowed for people to congregate on a specific place for their language, and then once they've made friends to choose a specific world (Channel) to meet up with that would be "theirs" if they picked a low population one.
It's really quite something to experience for one-self, and in my not so humble opinion, the Phantasy Star Online games have had the absolute best "server" system possible. Because we could have the "unofficial RP" gathering place (aka Virtue), the place for people that enjoy a thronging crowd of hard core gamers (aka Freedom), and whatever else have you. In addition, it allowed for people to escape from griefers with a flick of the switch by changing channel (As the game had no way to search cross channels, there was no way for the griefer to follow unless they guess correctly). Though, I should also note all of the fighting in Phantasy Star Online takes place in Instanced zones (Similar to outdoor maps for CoX).
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