Tag: Server

Rift Increasing Server Capacity


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This may be surprising, but the recent transition of Rift to a free to play model has brought in swarms of new and returning players. As a result, the most populated servers have hit their breaking point resulting in long queues. In response to player complaints, Trion has been working to increase server queues and optimization, with some of those updates coming tomorrow, Friday.

I did raise server caps ever so slightly this evening which completely removed the queue on a number of servers. They may be able to go up further this weekend – our engineers were able to find a number of optimizations based on today’s load on the servers. We hope to have those optimizations up potentially on Friday. The % impact of the optimization is not yet known.

There are also plans in place for Trion to be able to lock character creation on the fly.

(Source: Rift Forums)

TERA Servers Are Paid After June 11th


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TERA players will be happy to know that the restrictions on server transfers have been removed, allowing movement to the previously denied Lake of Tears and Ascension Valley. Players are advised to make use of this freedom of movement, since server transfers will no longer be free soon. Beginning June 11th at noon Pacific, server transfers will cost 2,750 EMP (1,650 for elite) with a limit of the character being at least level 20, a transfer limit of fifty thousand gold, and a five day cooldown between transfers.

For the free transfer period, everyone’s cooldown period has been wiped clean.

(Source: TERA)

Age Of Conan Implements Patchless Events


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Don’t you hate temporary events in MMOs? Forgetting the other issues around the time-limited nature of the event itself, then you have to put up with the obnoxious issue of the game requiring a patch (and thus downtime) both before the event begins and once it ends. Wouldn’t it be easier if there was a way to, oh, let’s say update an MMO with temporary event content without having to patch the servers? Well you are in luck! Age of Conan’s latest Game Director letter details a new system put into action with the recent fifth anniversary event. From now on, Funcom no longer has to patch the games to boot up or wind down a game event.

The new system allows us to create events and activate them whenever we wish. This means that we can run events on the fly, without taking down the servers and escalate them on the fly, as we did each day of the 5th Anniversary event. It means that a GM can kick start one of these events in the game by running a simple command. Obviously this has many applications, but the upshot of it is this – you can expect to see a wider variety of events in Age of Conan going forward.

The letter also reminds us that the merger of servers with similar rulesets is still coming this summer, along with a new network layer to improve server stability after everyone is tossed into one location.

(Source: Age of Conan)

Vanguard Merging Down To One Server


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Generally when an MMO hits that point where it has merged down to its last server, you can bet that the game is either one step away from the chopping block at worst, or will remain in maintenance mode for the rest of its life at best. Sadly this is exactly what Vanguard players are experiencing as Sony has announced that the Halgar and Telon servers will be merging as of April 4th. The servers will be down for twenty four hours, after which the Halgar server will remain online until the end of business on April 9th. All characters above level 10, plus those below level 10 which have logged in since October 3rd, 2012, and before the April 3rd transfer, will be moved over to Telon.

Halgar characters will also be reimbursed for the cost of their houses, however they will have to find new housing when their characters transfer over. For more details, click the link below to see the transfer FAQ.

(Source: Vanguard)

The Old Republic Closing Asia Pacific Servers


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In their attempt to respond to ongoing community concerns, Bioware asked players on the Asia Pacific servers what they wanted to do about low population issues. Rather than merge the three APAC servers down to one, given that each represents a different playset (PvP, PvE, RP-PvE), the decision has been made to merge each server into an appropriate North America server. On the Old Republic forums, Bioware Community Manager Eric Musco posted the following:

  • Mastar Dar’Nala (PvP) will transfer to The Bastion (PvP)
  • Gav Daragon (RP-PvE) will transfer to Begeren Colony (RP-PvE)
  • Dalborra (PvE) will transfer to The Harbinger (PvE)

There is no current date on when the servers will be merged.

(Source: The Old Republic)

MMOrning Shots: Does Preserving Nostalgia Trump Preventing Scams?


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RuneScape’s Old School server has been running for four days now and while the game is looking pretty stable, it isn’t completely up and running. Construction and player owned housing needed to be overhauled and are not currently available, and neither is the Barbarian Assault mini-game or one or two quests. The small team currently assigned to the game is still working on a method to accurately gauge player interest in further updates, with the community divided on whether to implement new updates or keep the game as it was.

Among the changes first implemented, Jagex altered the way herbs work to be less friendly to scams. At the time in which the server existed (August 2007), all herbs looked alike and were simply called “herb” until identified. This confusion generated a specific scam in which players would advertise unidentified herbs as being higher quality than they actually were. In an update in September 2007, Jagex changed herbs to “grimy” versions, allowing players to see what the herb was before actually cleaning it. When old school RuneScape launched last week, it came with the grimy herbs instead of the unidentified versions, prompting a backlash from the community. On Monday, Jagex updated the game to revert the system back to its more scam-friendly version in response to player demand.

Players who argue for unidentified herbs do so on the grounds that players voted for RuneScape as it was in August 2007, and that includes all of its features both good and bad. The players who argued to keep grimy herbs generally do so on the grounds that preventing players from scamming each other is more important than preserving nostalgia. Neither side is wrong, really, the question comes down to priorities. Is it more important for Jagex to preserve the nostalgia of RuneScape as it was on August 10th, 2007, or is it a higher priority to implement updates geared toward preventing unruly behavior, even if that means changing the game? The question then becomes about where the line gets drawn as to what is off limits.

So where do you draw the line? Keep everything as it was, or let the community vote on newer features?

OldScape: RuneScape 2007 Server Details


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Jagex has run a live Q&A today, focusing on the upcoming 2007 Old School servers.

  • The servers launch this Friday, the 22nd.
  • The first month will be free for all of those who voted.
  • The February 22nd launch is an early access phase and is expected to have bugs.
  • Free players will only have access if the poll exceeds 500,000.
  • At the current 213,000, free players don’t have a snowball’s chance in hell.
  • Rares (tradeable discontinued) will not be available.*
  • Gambling will not be removed*
  • Chat between the two versions (Current and OldScape) will be compatible.
  • Holiday events will not be added*
  • Characters will be separate, however accounts will not be able to log into both simultaneously.

*Barring 500,000 votes which is highly unlikely.

Currently, there are only 214,000 votes for the 2007 Classic servers. If the poll hits 250,000 by the end of the week, players can expect the following perks:

  • $5 a month subscription
  • A small team for development.
  • Basic maintenance.
  • Possible anti-gold farming updates.

If they do not hit 250,000, players will be expected to shell out $15 a month to access the game, with zero possibilities of updates or anti-gold farming systems.

TERA/The Old Republic Discuss Server Transfers


Since I know how much you all love hearing about server transfers, I’ve lumped both games in the same article.

You may be aware of TERA’s pre-launch woes, particularly a lacking in space on player vs player servers. Alongside the release of a new PvP server, En Masses is opening temporary free server transferal for all players. Transfers are immediate, free of charge, and will remain so until the server populations level out. You can not transfer between PvP and PvE servers, and your character cannot have any chronoscrolls. For a full list of the restrictions, check out the announcement here. After the announcement, transfers will remain free if used for the purpose of balancing server population.

Now for games that have been released. Over on the Old Republic, Bioware has announced that server transfers will be held in waves, beginning in early summer. Players will be limited in which servers are able to transfer from and which servers can be transferred to, with more details to come as the time approaches. After, server transfer limits will open up, allowing anyone to transfer anywhere, although not necessarily for free. Presumably, if servers drop enough in population, Bioware may take the Warhammer route and retire servers.

 

Mortal Online Wasn't Hacked


Here at MMO Fallout, I’ve developed a pet peeve over the distinct difference between being hacked and having an account breached. Hacking requires some amount of technical prowess to accomplish, such as exploiting a vulnerability in an sql database to retrieve a list of passwords, or in the case of NCSoft back a couple of years, using an exploit in the client to log into a random person’s character and steal their items. When someone breaches an account by way of keylogger, guessing the password, or having access to an account with higher privileges, the account was compromised, not hacked.

In the case of Mortal Online, yesterday a player obtained access to a GM account and went wild on the server, deleting structures and altering some player’s accounts. It’s important to note that the person was not able to access payment details, and apparently the extent of the damage was destroyed assets, some players had their passwords changed, and some players were banned.

So Star Vault, as they announced, had a “security breach,” but the company was not hacked as some outlets are reporting. I just want to reinforce this difference because with the recent hacking at Steam, Square, Sony, etc, the announcement that a company has been hacked is just another fear of one’s credit details being stolen.

The more you know.

(Source: Star Vault)

Mortal Online Wasn’t Hacked


Here at MMO Fallout, I’ve developed a pet peeve over the distinct difference between being hacked and having an account breached. Hacking requires some amount of technical prowess to accomplish, such as exploiting a vulnerability in an sql database to retrieve a list of passwords, or in the case of NCSoft back a couple of years, using an exploit in the client to log into a random person’s character and steal their items. When someone breaches an account by way of keylogger, guessing the password, or having access to an account with higher privileges, the account was compromised, not hacked.

In the case of Mortal Online, yesterday a player obtained access to a GM account and went wild on the server, deleting structures and altering some player’s accounts. It’s important to note that the person was not able to access payment details, and apparently the extent of the damage was destroyed assets, some players had their passwords changed, and some players were banned.

So Star Vault, as they announced, had a “security breach,” but the company was not hacked as some outlets are reporting. I just want to reinforce this difference because with the recent hacking at Steam, Square, Sony, etc, the announcement that a company has been hacked is just another fear of one’s credit details being stolen.

The more you know.

(Source: Star Vault)