I mean seriously: how expensive can a few servers be to host a few thousand of players?Quote:
Originally Posted by LagunaD2
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I mean seriously: how expensive can a few servers be to host a few thousand of players?Quote:
Originally Posted by LagunaD2
Quote:
Originally Posted by oggbnvwnyc
Blanket statements are very usefull for effect but dont represent different usecases (Moors, Raids, Game systems, Expansions with increased population load etc). Each can require a different subset of solutions that dont work across all. And everything costs money. Dont think you buy all the best for whatever you need, but on some points you go for functional within the budget you're willing to spend.
It's not an excuse, its just a fact.Quote:
Originally Posted by oggbnvwnyc
LOTRO itself is not Optimized to handle the amounts of Data (Coding, Systems, Characters logged in, what all is going on with any given Server, the amount information each Server must track: Inventory, Vault, Shared Storage, Wardrobe, Housing Chests, all the Items in the Barter Wallet and so on) compared to how it could back in the day and it is by the Month and Year getting worse for the whole game with 1 Server in particular: Evernight, showing the biggest consistent issues.
It is a fact, LOTRO had more Servers and more Players on said Servers back in the day when LOTRO was run from a United States and European Server Host Locations.
The two Server Host Locations back in the day is also why the Coding for Characters doesn't allow for NA & EU Servers to have Transfers between each other.
They moved all Servers to Boston, Massachusetts, USA in June 2011 when Codemasters no longer were running the EU Side of LOTRO's Servers. Obviously we had the Server Closures and everyone having to pick a new Server (or for those who didn't have their information atm stuck in limbo but sounding like this "might" be within striking distance here before end of 2021 for folks to start Transferring off Closed Servers).
Later these Servers were moved and here in 2021 their current Server Host Location is in New Jersey, USA.
Start and End of the day, LOTRO is unique for how it was Coded, dealt with and being dealt with. You can't compare how any other Company or Game is doing but there aren't many, if any, Games that have been handled akin to LOTRO when it comes to Coding, Character Data, Servers, etc.
The biggest thing is: Internet and Server Hardware has gotten better but LOTRO has not been keeping up with trying to be Optimized over it's over 14+ year history which we don't have a specific date when it's first and earliest bit of Coding was being worked on.
LOTRO has seen several DirectX's, several Operating Systems for Personal Use Computers, it's seen several Server Hosting Operating Systems, LOTRO was made during an Era where 32 Bit Programs was the norm and nowadays 64 Bit Programs is the main stay more and more. LOTRO is just a relic of a different time and era that has made it into an era where such older ways of building anything is becoming more and more obselete.
LOTRO is just a House and the Property it is on which the yard is overgrown, the House and Yard has not been maintained as well as it should have with the Driveway and Sidewalks are cracked/pot holes/broken & angled/etc, various issues on the outside of the House and on the Property and the House itself is old with Piping, Wiring, Plumbing, etc which is outdated, the stairs are creaky, the floors creak at the slightest step, etc. Then the House and Yard is just packed with all kinds of Junks from Personal Possessions to various Equipment which used to help keep the House and Yard in order and things moving along but many are now left sat out in the elements just rusting away.
So SSG has 3 main choices:
- First option which basically is akin to what it has been and likely will be. Do what they can which they have but LOTRO itself is going to force both this game and SSG into a position where it'll no longer be sustainable unless MAJOR work is done to improve and keep it doing well. This is the most likely option taken.
- Second Option is to have the Sidewalks and Driveway torn up and redone. Have Landscaping come in and get the Yard better. Demo the House, gutting it to it's core foundation and trying their best to build up around the framework. This option however cannot fully get away from the Foundation issues this game will always have due to when it was built. Basically this means trying to Optimize the game as much as possible but the Old Coding will always be a factor but this would give LOTRO X amount more Years especially if LOTRO saw an increase in the Daily/Monthly Accounts logging in.
- Third Option is to do what they can with the House and Property. Do some maintenance wherever they can that doesn't break the bank and take tons of hours. Then look to get/build a new House. This option is basically LOTRO 2.0 with keeping Current LOTRO, working on it more, keep it going as strong as possible through until LOTRO 2.0 would be fully on it's feet, launched and with a decent amount of Content. Then it would be slowly turning off the lights of LOTRO 1.0 however this is the most unlikely choice.
The price to make Modern Games keeps rising per year and pending the scope of a "LOTRO 2.0" it could be several Hundred Million Dollars (USD) just to see a LOTRO 2.0 get made, into Beta and see a Launch. Also a LOTRO 2.0 would take X amount of Years to be worked on so even if this choice was decided on say in 2022, it would be unlikely to see LOTRO 2.0 until after 2025 and likely closer to 2027. Note: LOTRO 2.0 wouldn't be porting things over so it wouldn't be a Copy X of LOTRO 1.0 and Paste it into LOTRO 2.0, everything would be 100% brand new.
Perhaps the clients at your datacentre listen to your advice about requirements to run their services. They (Turbine) ran servers with much bigger populations in the past, there's no possible argument there. Rather than keep thinking Daybreak/SSG have your best interest in mind you might instead ask around for anyone with contacts at SSG's datacentre. Those calls for crowd-funding so quickly turned down by SSG might be circumvented if they are directed to a few days of double bandwidth at the datacentre, to prove a point. And if SSG step in to stop it, you'll find out.Quote:
Originally Posted by maartena
If even blanket statements like "Your server is laggy" won't work to get SSG to take action, which has been proven for years, then what good are precise and in-depth reports?Quote:
Originally Posted by Zoroasterax
True, there are constraints, but are the server currently functional, as in getting customers to play, stay and spend money?
Would you react different if the national weather service issued a tornado warning for the street you live on vs one for the entire state you live in?Quote:
Originally Posted by oggbnvwnyc
Ok, it is clear that SSG is not going to take this seriously, I propose we go on strike from the game for a day or so.
Given I can't even login to Evernight at the moment, how would they know it's a strike and not just their crumbling infrastructure?Quote:
Originally Posted by qrcc
They still get / have gotten your money but you don't play. Not a strategy likely to prompt action by the company.Quote:
Originally Posted by qrcc
A server-wide boycott of the store would have a better chance of focusing their attention, but it would be hard to enlist enough people and keep it going long enough to really work.
Whether it's optimized or not is beside the point.Quote:
Originally Posted by Harvain
If your car isn't optimized for gas mileage, do you walk the last five miles to work every day?
No. You buy enough additional gas to get there despite being suboptimal. And maybe, longer term, work toward having a more efficient car.
In this case, there is a certain capacity required to handle normal player populations, and they're only putting up the money to pay for a fraction of it.
A hoarder with a bigger house only has more room to fill up junk with.Quote:
Originally Posted by LagunaD2
Only solving a current problem with a solution that doesn't fix the root cause.
A better Server can help especially with more overhead but if what is causing the issues, LOTRO itself, are still there mostly in 1 year's time likely we'd be seeing issues again, if not far sooner.
You could slap LOTRO onto the best Hardware for a Server Box, best Connection out of a Data Center but if what is being trying to be run can't do it well, it won't matter.
You can give a person with mobility problems a motorized wheelchair, it'll help them get around but won't improve the main issue of why they can't get around. Especially if it's someone who could improve and have better natural mobility again.
The root cause is not provisioning enough network and/or computing resources to provide the service we are paying for.Quote:
Originally Posted by Harvain
They are also ripping us off on QA, with 6 people doing it in Gundabad compared to 62 for the Mines of Moria expansion.
They are also ripping us off on customer service, with 3+ month ticket response times.
Then get a second one so the load is shared between them. This is how distributed computing and client/server architectures work.Quote:
Originally Posted by Harvain
This is a silly analogy because distributed computing is about scaling the resources to match the demand. If you want to use it, then LotRO is a wheelchair missing half its wheels.Quote:
Originally Posted by Harvain
An update from a blue name would be appreciated.
Performance at peek time is dreadful.
Thanks.
Problems on Laurelin also. We had some lag for a long time now but last two-three weeks is just horrendous. It started in instances and spread onto landscape, it's in every area. People logging off, not being able to play.
I have mixed feelings about all of this.
On the one hand, I have tweaked my game settings and been legitimately able to avoid nearly all of the run-of-the-mill lag people complain about on a typical day. This indicates an inherent flaw in the game's ability to detect optimal settings, largely due to incompatibilities in various DX and OS communications. It's to be expected to a point, as this game has been through many evolutions in software over the years. But, I feel a proper troubleshooting post has yet to be made out of what I suppose to be some effort to save face. In not admitting the flaws of the game's interface capabilities, it seems like players have been left to fend for themselves in finding a way to best experience the game itself. This has backfired into many assuming the game just sucks, and players choose to leave not realising that minor adjustments can change the whole experience altogether. If it's about liability, you're better off fessing up to any flaws a player might encounter.
HOWEVER... having said that about standard issue lag problems, what we are dealing with since the Gundabad launch does not fall into this category.
This is clearly, and undeniably a capacity issue. No dancing around it. No stalling with routine scripted questions about what your system specs are.
This is a separate issue that cannot be addressed in the same way one might skirt around a user error. And pushing your CM to tank for you with rusted garden rake responses isn't a good look.
What I suspect is happening (based on my own experience in game development) is that the issues are the direct result of mistakes made higher up. Perhaps a terrible contract with a sub-par data centre? Perhaps someone is pinching pennies in the budget and refusing to give the dev team the resources they need to execute expectations? Perhaps management is just in utter denial that there's a problem at all and can't be bothered to look into it? Maybe it's all of the above?
But, perception is reality, and here's what it looks like from the outside:
- QoL is being sacrificed for arbitrary deadlines driven by corporate cash grabs.
- Player base is expendable and replaceable, including new players brought in by marketing schemes.
- There is no interest in customer care, feedback, or satisfaction. Only in revenue.
Now, having played this game for many years, I personally don't want to believe any of those things are happening right now. This has, historically, been the least Pay to Win game I have ever played.
But, there has been a sharp, grating tonal shift this year. Something is off. A lot of that has to do with how the public has been addressed, especially following a series of rickety launches.
Let's be honest. Both the LI overhaul and Gundabad were not launch-ready.
They needed infrastructure in place. They needed testing. They needed existing issues to be addressed first.
Now we have loads of players scrambling to try and make their way through bugged, incomplete content. Whether that's getting a proper weapon, or charging through new missions.
This has led to a lot of clustering in problematic areas of the game that are not fit to hold them.
And it's left the servers struggling to keep up with making sense of all of that.
So now you have unhappy people who just bought an expansion that wasn't ready to go live.
You have unhappy people willing to wait for the expansion that are dealing with the resulting server issues.
You have unhappy passive players, who have been dismissively been told that they don't get their perks that they wait all year for because everyone was too busy.
You have unhappy customers who are not getting what they paid for. Whether they paid you in time or money or both.
What's done is done. You can't change where it all sits right now. But you can do something very simple.
Acknowledge the problem.
Communicate with your supporters.
Fix the problem.
Don't make the same mistakes again.
Reasonable deadlines for reasonable work, with reasonable transparency.
You'd be amazed how many people will pay good money for that.
A Reasoned, sensible, detailed argument put forward. Are you sure the internet is ready for this?Quote:
Originally Posted by Razzleberries
We got no idea how much of the revenue is being invested into the game, i highly suspect that LOTRO is a mere milk cow for the owners, especially given how few people actually work on this game. You' have to wait weeks for a mere ticket response, and the live servers are functioning as beta servers.
Vote with your wallets folks...Nothing will change if the money keeps flowing into the owners pockets.
Either the owners will make major investments in the infrastructure or the game will shut down, but nothing will change if you keep giving SSG money. The game isn't even fun to play when the performance is utterly awful anyways.
They can't even be bothered to have a single server in Europe, that ought to tell you guys everything...
I suspect that's pretty close to the mark.Quote:
Originally Posted by Razzleberries
Unfortunately the best opportunity for a while is past, with the intro of the new expansion. If sales had flopped badly, it might have triggered a response. As it is, I expect the expansion has done reasonably well, and any small dip after that could easily be explained away. So now it would likely take a substantial and sustained effort to register, which simply isn't likely to happen.Quote:
Originally Posted by LagunaD2
Well, something certainly happened seen from here.
Sadly, I don't know whether the patch did something or me switching between custom settings and standard high and very high graphics, but I have smooth gameplay at 1920x1440 resolution, with 1200+ players at 22:00 GMT+1.
Haven't sen that since returning to the game a few months ago.
How about peeps press Crtl Alt Del and get task Manager up and watch how much bandwidth you are using, performance tab ironically.
Compare the figures you see with your ISP DL/UL and a 56K modem, yes 56kbps dialup modem. Is your current bandwidth being stretched one iota?
How come these performance measures only kick in when we drop below 500 non-anons and improve further when the numbers drop to under 200?
Raninia or Cord,
When can we expect an update on the server performance? It would be really useful if it could be a considered response, rather than "we're working on it".
Paid expansion, poorly implemented instances and dreadful server performance are not really doing much to change our minds about the fact you're focusing on what the community wants.
Lob
There was work done during yesterday's maintenance that we are hopeful had a positive impact on game performance on Evernight, and we will be keeping an eye on this thread along with our game metrics throughout the weekend. We know, though, that yesterday's work did not correct everything, so we continue to identify other areas to focus on, and knowing how this weekend goes will also inform that. So, please do let us know how things go on Evernight!