Author Archives: Abalieno

Eve-Online victim of its own success

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And now Eve-Online is growing too fast:

Max Headroom

Red Moon Rising is out and as you have probably noticed we are still dealing with issues from the deployment. RMR is a rather big change, in many aspects close to Exodus in scope, especially at the lower levels. RMR contains many optimizations and improvements behind the scenes to deal with EVE’s continued success (BTW thank you so much for that, EVE owes much of it’s success to you the EVE Player community).

As the game grows and we stubbornly maintain our goal of one cluster, we have to take a more drastic approach to platform management than before. The gradual addition of hardware and on going software optimizations are not able to keep up with EVE any more. Oveur recently did an excellent blog describing our efforts.

The urgency of the situation becomes evident when we do updates of the scale of Red Moon Rising. The margin of error is virtually non-existent as we are already so close to the glass ceiling of our current cluster architecture that the smallest mis-configuration leads to us banging against it. This causes effects which we just witnessed at 15:00 GMT today.

We have been doing research into how we can considerably increase our headroom, the first step was the Ramsan, the next step involves a move to 64 bit architecture. We have brought Christian Tismer, the godfather of Stackless Python to Iceland and him and porkbelly are here at the office busy figuring out how to squeeze all potential power out of the x64 AMDs we are planning to build our next major cluster upgrade on.

Next to them Papasmurf and Dr.J are feverishly calibrating all pistons of our current cluster to focus all computing resources in the right areas so that RMR will hold the 25.000 PCU we seem destined to achieve before we manage to have the new super cluster hardware assembled, delivered, installed, tuned and tested.

The hardware needed to increase our headroom isn’t something you can go to the store and buy. We have world experts assisting us and after everything has been completed the EVE cluster will probably be the first game related cluster site to rank on the Top500 list.

Anyway I wanted to offer my small reassurance that we are focused on backing our commitment to single cluster for the world wide market (The China cluster is a whole different ballgame which warrants a separate blog) and we fully realize that seriously increased hardware and R&D investment is required to back it and that will be done.

In the short term we have world leading experts in MMO development working around the clock here at the office, ignoring all other commitments (which understandably are considerable this close to Christmas). I remain in constant amazement how committed our developers are to make sure we pass each hurdle, commitment that is only matched by the understanding of their families.

In the long term we will build a completely new cluster utilizing all modern day technology to construct something at the scale needed to simulate nuclear explosions or the earth’s weather system.

So this is blog is our plea to you, the EVE Player community, to yet again give us a chance to resolve these matters and to explain that we have long term and short term goals to remedy the situation as quickly as possible.

Of course EVE Online is a commercial venture but seeing what we have achieved together often makes you think otherwise. We here at CCP remain committed to keep up our end of the bargain. With your help we’ll take MMOGs to the next level.

Maybe someone still remembers all the claims about the support for more than 100k “PCU” (aka “Peak Concurrent Player”, CCP’s definition for the maximum number of accounts logged in at the same time) back in beta. Heh…

The subscription numbers are growing at an impressive rate. Really, I expect a collapse because this is going beyond every expectation. Basically *everyone* is now giving it a try or discussing it. If anything, this confirms how important is our community and the true impact we can have on these games. This market is starting to belong more to these communities. We decide who succeeds and who fails and I’m not sure game companies are going to like how unpredictable (and unfaithful) we are.

EVE has over 100k active accounts, including trials. Active subscriptions are now over 86k.

This Sunday the number of contemporary logged in accounts was above 20k.

The 100k mark could be reached much sooner than expected. I’m actually hoping things will slow down, or this may burn both CCP and the future of the game.

Commercial success is corrupting.

“Removing the barriers”

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Someday I’ll have to force Lum admit he agrees with me. From his blog:

The arcana that we get so worked up about? It’s marginalia. We really do play these games to dance. Speaking as someone whose career now involves fixing the marginalia, actually following this line of logic to its conclusion is somewhat humbling. What I do isn’t really that important, unless it somehow works to dissolve those social bonds. The first rule of MMO live teams should be that of medicine: First, do no harm.

And if you look at people who are furious at MMO Screwup X, I’d wager a bet that it comes down to, when reduced to its components, “the game is keeping me from being with my friends”. In most current combat-oriented games, this comes down to a reduction in effectiveness. I’m less effective, so I’m less likely to be asked along in raids, or I’m an imposition on my friends when they do, or I’m less likely to make new ones, or I contribute less to the group/tribe/whatever.

Ignore this lesson at your peril.

Which sounds like a remix of what he wrote a while ago.

Here below I repeat again that WoW’s success is in the accessibility and that these games should work toward “removing the barriers“. Lum’s “the game is keeping me from being with my friends” is, essentially, a barrier.

On his recently released book (I’ll have to say something more about it as I have more time) in the description of WoW he insists a lot on the fact that it’s the polish to make it successful. The new players are at ease with it, it’s the best mmorpg to start with right now.

I often insisted to define that as “accessibility”. The reason is again that it’s a generic term that is able to embrace all the other aspects that are still fundamental. But the accessibility is THE distinctive trait that joins those aspects. And, essentially, the accessibility is about the absence of barriers. Or the possibility to make them permeable.

If you read Raph’s book you’ll also see that a barrier is another element that prevents the fun. The accessibility to learn. If the game is too hard and you don’t have enough elements to figure out a solution, you crash against a wall and, often, you lack the tools to overcome it.

Now, *the very first goal* of my dream mmorpg is about removing those barriers. Removing the levels and replacing them with a skill-based sytem. Giving the players the possibility to travel between the shards, switch factions, classes and roles, and keep the (PvE)content accessible while still retaining progress and complexity to keep things interesting and involving. From my point of view, and it seems I’m not alone, this is a fundamental need that cannot be anymore overlooked. We cannot pretend anymore to develop mmorpgs without considering this point and provide an effective solution. My ideal game exists to give an answer to that problem. It starts from that point as the basic premise.

I’m writing this because I was commenting a post on Nerfbat about the PvP which made me re-read a long discussion about skill systems. It seems to not fit in this theme, but read this:

What are the negatives of uncapped skills? The traits I was able to isolate are:
– In PvE: gaps between the players, favor elitism and closed communities, difficulties to group and catch up with friends
– In PvP: unbalance

“Uncapped skills” stands for endless progress. See how we are discussing again about barriers?

Changing completely context, I was reading on FoH’s boards how, again, a PvE game just doesn’t fit with a PvP one. The justification was again that the item progression is fun when it comes to PvE, but then breaks in the PvP due to the unbalance. So the contrasting need to maintain the advancement into the game, but still keeping it reasonable to not screw up the PvP.

Imho, this is totally false. That unbalance that is obvious on the PvP is still there even in the PvE. If you look carefully you’ll see how there is absolutely no difference if not because the PvP is directly competitive, so making the inequality more visible. But not more relevant. I just posted a letter from WoW’s community managers explaining how Blizzard is committed to provide a satisfying character progression even for the casual players. Now I’m curious to see how. That huge umbalance in PvP due to the exponential growth in power provided by PvE raids is NOWHERE MITIGATED in PvE. I’m *really* curious to see how the hell they’ll balance a 5-man instance when they have no control over the variance in power of the characters.

Under these conditions it will be hard to balance the PvP as it is balancing the PvE. It was simple to balance an instance at the lower levels. The levels themselves were already a narrow estimation of the variance in the power. But at level 60 the variance goes through the roof. As I dinged 60 my 2-handed axe had around 48 dps. My new epic sword has 70.6 and there are better ones that reach 90.

Again: “gaps between the players, favor elitism and closed communities, difficulties to group and catch up with friends”.

So, am I the only one who has some concrete ideas on how to address these fundamental issues and trying to give an answer to these problems that we are dragging along from a very long time?

What the hell are you doing out there?

Well, beside Raph.

Blizzard’s answers to players protest

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On the official forums appeared a long, redundant letter from the community managers to the players about the recent debate on raid Vs casual (accessible) content. We got our own version of ithis debate here. The long version of the letter is saved here.

Short version: We would like to give you more stuff. But content takes a lot of money and time to develop.

Nothing that wasn’t already obvious a year and half ago.

EDIT – We got the answer from a pointless dev chat. I really don’t know why I find Kalgan so fucking irritating (it has nothing to do with this quote, though):

Kalgan: Yes. We plan to introduce some cool new quests that introduce a new armor set that is a step above the current dungeon armor set. These quests will involve both solo and 5 person instances, with a few new twists.

[BCM]Tyren: i can hear the gasps of surprise and joy

I peed my pants. /roll eyes

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Games must be dumbed down?

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From Joystiq:

For a MMOG to make buckets and buckets of money, it must be dumbed down. Nintendo and Microsoft have both taken steps to make gaming more accessible to the masses with simpler controls, simpler interfaces, simpler hardware, and so on. If we agree with the premise that consoles are complex enough to warrant dumbing down, then PC gaming needs a friggin’ lobotomy.

World of Warcraft is successful because it hit the right balance between simplicity and complexity from launch day. There are still hard-core gamers today who call WoW “Diablo III,” the implication being that it’s too dumb for a true hardcore RPG fan. And yet the subscriber numbers don’t lie. WoW is the most successful MMOG. In game design, dumb is the new smart.

If “dumbed down” stands for “accessibility” I agree.

It’s a oversimplification and may sound wrong, but it is a good one.

The key is not about finding a balance, though. The key is to make accessible what remains complex and involving. An example is the comment I wrote to Dave’s description of Eve-Online.

I believe that Eve-Online can be way more successful and accessible than how it is already. The core point is: without becoming less interesting for those who currently love it.

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If you need to shamelessly rip off other games, at least choose the best ones

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I just read a letter from EQ2 producer about the upcoming implementation of PvP and full PvP servers. I like the guy, but I don’t like the plan. It cannot be a more blatant rip off:

Player vs Player
PvP has been a topic we’ve been discussing quite a bit on the team for the past few months, and it’s time we start talking about it openly.

While it’s true that we wanted to focus purely on PvE for the launch of EverQuest II, PvP has always been a direction that we’ve wanted to expand into when the time was right.

– This is strict good vs. evil. You’re only grouping with others of your alignment, and opposing aligned PCs highlight to you the same way that NPC encounters would.

– PvP will not be restricted to specific zones. It will take place all across the world of EverQuest II.

– EQ2 will be introducing the concept of Honorable, Neutral, and Dishonorable victories. Honorable victories are where the rewards lie.

– The first of the rewards for defeating your city’s enemies include: Status and Standing with your PvP faction.

– Once you earn PvP standing, you can buy valuable and useful items from your faction’s merchants. This is real, desirable equipment.

It smells of World of Warcraft. And it smells bad.

Let me be blunt here. If you really have ZERO good ideas, at least try to rip off games where the PvP was successful and not games (like WoW) where the PvP is the worst ever implemented in the whole genre (if it wasn’t for the polish and resources available).

Mythic’s patch drama

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I’m tired so I’ll go with a short version.

While Eve-Online had some major problem patching and putting back the servers online (plus all the legitimate rants about the bad font. Something important in a game so heavy dependent on the UI) the patching for DAoC went smooth as the baby butt. With the exception of a change that wasn’t disclosed and that made the players rise a loud protest.

Basically there were the high level items called “artifacts” that you could put on your vendors. With this new patch the process to get these items was made easier and this made the prices descend, as a consequence. To counterbalance this loss of value Mythic decided (without announcing it beforehand) to let the players sell these items directly to NPCs vendors for rather high prices.

Now you would expect the players to be just happy since this change suddenly made many items worth a lot more than previously (thanks to the high vendor values), but the problem is that noone was aware of this change and many players, after discovering the possibility, started to clear the whole market to sell these items themselves, buying low from the player’s vendors and selling high to the NPCs. In Sanya’s words (CM stands for player’s vendors):

What is causing the excitement is that on some servers, early birds realized that artifacts could be sold at a profit compared to listed prices on the CM. Those early birds cleaned out the CMs whenever possible, and made big profits.

If you do a 1+1 you can understand why so many players are pissed off despite Mythic added this feature exclusively for their (of the players) benefit. The problem is that many of those players who had these items on their vendors at low prices suddenly discovered after logging in that they had been looted by other players who sold those items for an higher value. They feel robbed because the change wasn’t announced and it was transformed into a “first come, first serve” scenario at the expense of those players that weren’t aware that the rules of the market were going to change like this.

Imho, the players have all the rights to complain and feel robbed. I also believe that Mythic just didn’t expect all this and the feature just slipped in without the devs paying too much attention and anticipating the results. It happens when you work at a bunch of stuff at the same time and overlook something that seems minor. The idea was a good one but it got totally screwed in the implementation. As I wrote on the forums the solution could have been easy (from a logical point of view, I don’t know about the implementation):

Imho they should have freezed all the artifacts on the vendors as the patch was released and the changes announced.

So that the owners would have had the possibility to draw them back from the market or put them back in with new prices.

That would have prevented all the pain I’m hearing now (I care zero since I play on classic).

This is really a screwup and one of those that cannot be made up.

There should always be an extreme caution when toying with the value of the items in an economic system. Especially in one where the items that are going to be changed play a large role.

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Your skill in Catass has increased!

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Ha! Update for my catass curriculum.

My recently joined guild has just cleared Zul’Gurub (with the exception of Jin’do who they decided not to try) with relative ease. This despite they all just recently started raiding and have little to no uber equipment. I believe this was possible thanks to our drunk and enthusiast female (in voice chat) guildleader keeping the mood fun, competent healers (so rare!) and a very good, always calm guy leading the raids and passing precise instructions. I believe the voice chat is also always polite and ordinate, which helps a lot.

I think I was unbelievably lucky to find a mature guild on my server that still welcomes casual players and maintains an healthy presence of low level characters still enjoying every part of the game and not just the catass raids. What is even more surprising is that they didn’t discriminate me on the voice chat limitation, nor my problems understanding when I use it, passing me instructions through whispers beforehand. A miracle! I really couldn’t be happier about how it went, so happy that I fear things could go wrong for some reason just to ruin all this.

So we killed all the channelers and Hakkar, I took lots of pretty screenshots and I’m planning to write down some impressions and details about each encounter, just to describe how they are designed and the type of strategy/gameplay they require. It was rather fun.

With all this luck I went overboard and here’s the result:


YAY! EPIX!

It’s bigger than me and pretty but I would have flipped the model if I was the artist. Now I’m going to skill up in the Plaguelands and later I’ll have to try it on some taurens. Tauren steak tonight!

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Patch day for DAoC and Eve-Online

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And both with two really good patches, from my point of view.

This last patch in DAoC in particular reminds me the old times when I was really anticipating the changes and always excited to discover what was next and wish to be part of it. It’s a bond with the game. You like where it’s going and you can forgive the devs many more mistakes. Right now I like what DAoC offers me. I don’t play often but I wish I could, and I know that I’ll have some fun if I do. Of course this doesn’t mean that I cannot criticize it. It’s just that my tone is less the one of the angry ranter.

About Eve-Online is pretty much the same. I resubscribed and plan to remain so for a long time. Again mostly because I have faith in what they are doing more than rabid fun coming out of the game. On the contrary to every other game, I keep rerolling characters in Eve. With this new patch/expansion I’ll take advantage of the new bloodlines and the changes to the tutorial and entry-level ships for a new fresh start. In this case there are two reasons why I’ll do this. The first is because of the accessibility barrier. The “group play” in Eve is the heart of the game and of the fun, but at the same time it is not easily accessible and it’s almost impossible to group casually and do shit together. Actually I believe that since beta I’ve never grouped casually with anyone. This also means that I log in the game without any type of bonds (as I always do), nor I “make friend” in the game because of those reasons. So I’m a “stranger in a strange ship”. The second reason is that I love Eve because of its depth. And I love to learn stuff. From the forum, from the game, lurking the chat channels. The tutorial and the fresh starts are a way to reenact that learning part I love and get accustomed with the game again since I use to resubscribe after many months, while the whole game shapeshifts. It’s fascinating to go back and discover what changed, how it improved, the new mechanics added. And each time I do a step forward and fall in love again with this unique game.

For DAoC there’s a rather conventional patch, while Eve will be down for a full day, if not more (and I expect problems, but I also like this unpredictability and continuous development. so it’s all good to me and I’ll follow along especially when things won’t work). Till the very last day the patch was in doubt and it seemed unlikely they could finalize it before the holidays. Instead they managed to meet the deadlines and even anticipated the patching by one day (I wonder about the reasons).

The only game missing at the call is WoW. No patch for it and it seems we’ll have to wait the very end of December or even the next year. But then, beside some smaller features, I’m not missing much of what’s announced. So I’m rather indifferent at the changes. WoW is a game in a better state than the other two, but in this case I don’t have the same faith in the devs.

With the new patch for Eve the forums went down for 24h as well and CCP replaced them with eight pictures and comments that I’ll archive on this post. For the children.

It seems they are partying after the restless work of the last weeks to push the expansion out of the door. Good work.


And there was none of that while developing RMR


 

 

Proud of it! Hope you are too being a part of it.

 

 

Thanks to you all, we’re here today still enjoying EVE as much as you do.

 

 

The fanfest really brings all of us so much closer to eachother.

 

 

You do, you all just really do.

 

 

Hang in there, we’re doing our level best to please you.

 

 

O RLY? YA RLY! NO WAI! YA WAI!

 

 

A 24 hour downtime? better be prepared!

Thanks for sticking around,
The EVE Online Team

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