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Ashes Of Creation server meshing technology but is it really needed or is it wasted effort?
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First?
First
I'm not an expert by any means. I have a little over entry knowledge. Here's my take on a possible reason on why its better for rather than against:
Physical servers can only really be scaled upwards (better cpu, ram etc) so much before you reach capacity. Equally, you want to have your utilization of said server reasonably low for most of the time (helps with sudden spikes etc). Single Server MMOs probably scale up that single server so much and each step up they go it costs a heck of a lot money. Equally, during quiet periods, they are probably unable to reduce resources on that server without shutting it down (Unless they have something specifically in place for that)
AoC has the ability to scale outwards (Add more servers rather than better the single server). Equally, they are able to have a drop in replacement for a server without you knowing (or so they claim) this alone allows a more controlled environment. Whether the tech is cheaper in the long run, I doubt it but what it means is that they can raise the ceiling on maximum players in a realm more than the limits of a physical single server could handle. Ultimately thats what they're trying to achieve.
I'm sure there will be issues, for example, what happens when you get all 10k players on a server to stand on the same spot, you'll end up with the same issues as what a singular server has and more. This will be something that they have to test and ultimately I wont be happy with the solution until something like that is tested. You can't just build tech with a hunch that people hopefully wont do something.
The answer to every single question in your intro is "Yes. Without question". As for the intended population per server – Steven has stated since Day One that his intention is servers capable of 15k max with the intended concurrent being 10k.
Yes, it's needed. Especially with the way nodes will function.
They might want to sell the developed tech (just like Pantheon:RotF – what a waste of my money >.<) in case the game(s) do not work out as intended.
Absolutely. I'm an IT Architect and this is one of the things I have worked on for Cellular companies over the years and for other industries as well. As someone else pointed you have different abilities to scale with physical vs. virtual servers, or even virtual servers on physical servers if they were doing the owned hardware model.
In the end the ability to dynamically scale to handle area load in the virtual world will provide impressive results if it's working correctly. Parallelism is a real issue for MMO's and any other massive multiplayer game. This is an effort to solve that problem and could be a money maker for them.
I really dont get the doomer attitude about this.
These questions follow the line of thought behind "you can't see more that 30 frames a second, why bother making play speed more than 60 fps?"
Even an old dude like me knows gameplay is much smoother at 120 fps. Tearing, jitter, lag, all sorts of things are taken out of the equation at 120 fps that aren't even Considered by the "30 fps is good enough" crowd.
Need to look on the wiki about seiges. It's all there.
This isn't really supposed to be a doomer post…I conclude that Ashes think they need so I am happy to believe them, it was more just an extended talk around the subject
I do think its needed as well, the options it provides is brilliant. I love small scale pvp that snowballs into very large scale pvp, I spent many expansions in world pvp guilds in wow, countless times we ran into another small group, we would duke it out over whatever resource was there, the banners would be called and more people would roll up and it was awesome. Also world bosses in classic or raid nights in black rock mountain that ended up in several raids vs several raids, it was hundreds of players and did lag but it was still a last.
And it wasn't all about the numbers and there was plenty of meaningful pvp in these huge battles. Controlling terrain choke points with aoe crowd control, skirmishes on the outskirts, coordinating cooldowns to divebomb the centre of the enemy raid, obliterate it and then pulling back out. Every person mattered, some roles are more impactful 100% but they were some of my favourite memories in all my years of playing MMOs. I'm not even great at pvp, never a gladiator, always just ok, but it was so much fun to roll out with the guild for a common goal.
This server tech will help with these organic moments as well as organised things like sieges, node wars etc. I don't think Intrepid will push something just because they have the tech, they are aiming for the best experience for us, and the tech just helps that.
Castle Sieges and Node Sieges will be once a month. You have to get resources to start the event and defenders get notice. What is nice about this technology is it can shift resources. How many times in wow did an expansion come out and now no one is in that zone or town?