Why Only Two Servers

Rudrani

ESO, at least according to ZoS is like the most or second-most popular MMO existing right now, yea?
Surely that means some decent $$$ is coming from it.

So what's the justification for having only two servers?

Performance improvement (other than fixing bugs) can be achieved in two ways:

1) making the software more efficient
2) making the hardware more powerful

So, whats the excuse for never ever doing 2 but doing 1 CONSTANTLY and failing so bad that things just get worse?

SirAndy

It's not just 2 physical servers, it's the concept of "mega servers" which is really just a fancy word for sharding instances under one (or in this case two) common points of entry.

There are many instances running for both the NA and the EU server ...

Miszou

I'm fairly sure you can put multiple physical servers behind a single virtual interface....

idk

As others have said, each ESO server consists of multiple servers. Even WoW and FF14 servers that have a significantly smaller population per server are made up of many physical servers.

If you enter Cyrodiil you are going to be on a different physical server than if you were in Glenumbra. Even in Glenumbra, you may be on a different instance than a guildmate in the same zone and as such could be on different physical servers.

I think the real issue is the complexity, and organization, of the game's design, not the number of players. However, even with my experience with servers and networks, I can only guess just like others in the forums other than we do know the complexity of the game does contribute significantly to the game's performance.

zaria

SirAndy wrote: »

It's not just 2 physical servers, it's the concept of "mega servers" which is really just a fancy word for sharding instances under one (or in this case two) common points of entry.

There are many instances running for both the NA and the EU server ...

This, you can see this if you have many alts in the same location and cycle trough them, or even moving to another zone and come back and you see other players and population might be higher or lower.

Benefit is that instead of having 50 servers and are limited to guilds and shopping on one you have access to all, avoiding issues with servers being full or dying. Yes you get some issues like having to travel to player to get in the same instance.

Note that the dungeon finder issue is not because megaserver, WOW dungeon finder uses all relevant servers too and works.
However unlike in WOW is you meet cool people in an pug you can add them as friends or join their guild.

Banana

I imagine it's cheaper. But to hell with any customer who doesn't live close to either of them.

MentalxHammer

The megaservers have proven to be very unstable, and as such has diminished the pvp experience in ESO drastically. It has proven clear over 6 years of lag that ESO needs one server to handle open world, dungeons and raids, and another separate dedicated server to handle Cyrodill, IC and battlegrounds. This would likely help the poor performance in Cyro drastically.

LalMirchi

I think that apart from software bugs a large proportion of the lag is caused by the DDOS protection provided by Akamai.

Tandor

MentalxHammer wrote: »

The megaservers have proven to be very unstable, and as such has diminished the pvp experience in ESO drastically. It has proven clear over 6 years of lag that ESO needs one server to handle open world, dungeons and raids, and another separate dedicated server to handle Cyrodill, IC and battlegrounds. This would likely help the poor performance in Cyro drastically.

As we understand it, Cyrodiil is already on a different server. See post #4 above for an explanation.

The big change in Cyrodiil's performance as I recall from the forums (never having been to Cyrodiil myself) came when a lot of the data updating was moved from player-side to server-side due to the amount of cheating. Anti-cheat coding was added and it slowed everything down. I imagine it's the same for IC and BGs, without the players cheating such measures wouldn't be necessary.

Araneae6537

Tandor wrote: »

MentalxHammer wrote: »

The megaservers have proven to be very unstable, and as such has diminished the pvp experience in ESO drastically. It has proven clear over 6 years of lag that ESO needs one server to handle open world, dungeons and raids, and another separate dedicated server to handle Cyrodill, IC and battlegrounds. This would likely help the poor performance in Cyro drastically.

As we understand it, Cyrodiil is already on a different server. See post #4 above for an explanation.

The big change in Cyrodiil's performance as I recall from the forums (never having been to Cyrodiil myself) came when a lot of the data updating was moved from player-side to server-side due to the amount of cheating. Anti-cheat coding was added and it slowed everything down. I imagine it's the same for IC and BGs, without the players cheating such measures wouldn't be necessary.

It seems like it would be better to change it back and ban cheaters. I’m assuming ZOS would have the relevant data to different actual cheating from some combination of luck / skill / proc sets to identify cheaters once instances were reported, but I know nothing about what kind of cheating was going on or how difficult it would be to identify. It just seems like it makes things worse for most, even everyone, and no less work for ZOS. I can’t help but think the best way would be to change it back to player-side for better performance and instead device ways to facilitate identifying cheaters and remove them.

Sanguinor2

Araneae6537 wrote: »

It seems like it would be better to change it back and ban cheaters. I’m assuming ZOS would have the relevant data to different actual cheating from some combination of luck / skill / proc sets to identify cheaters once instances were reported, but I know nothing about what kind of cheating was going on or how difficult it would be to identify. It just seems like it makes things worse for most, even everyone, and no less work for ZOS. I can’t help but think the best way would be to change it back to player-side for better performance and instead device ways to facilitate identifying cheaters and remove them.

Literally everything was possible in terms of cheating. You could make yourself invincible, give yourself 500 ult gen per second, could fly etc.

SirAndy

LalMirchi wrote: »

I think that apart from software bugs a large proportion of the lag is caused by the DDOS protection provided by Akamai.

The switch to Akamai DDoS protection was the single most lag increase ESO has seen.
Second in line were the anti-cheat measures implemented, which added another layer of lag on top.

ZOS has been trying to catch up with the previous performance ever since.

Araneae6537

Sanguinor2 wrote: »

Araneae6537 wrote: »

It seems like it would be better to change it back and ban cheaters. I’m assuming ZOS would have the relevant data to different actual cheating from some combination of luck / skill / proc sets to identify cheaters once instances were reported, but I know nothing about what kind of cheating was going on or how difficult it would be to identify. It just seems like it makes things worse for most, even everyone, and no less work for ZOS. I can’t help but think the best way would be to change it back to player-side for better performance and instead device ways to facilitate identifying cheaters and remove them.

Literally everything was possible in terms of cheating. You could make yourself invincible, give yourself 500 ult gen per second, could fly etc.

Wow, that is crazy! But it’s not something you could do from within the game, right? You’d have to deliberately mess with the code, I’d assume. But I guess the problem would be catching those who cheat in less obvious, more subtle ways? Still, if Cyrodill worked well that way but for cheaters, the fix seems an inelegant untargeted solution. Or perhaps it was also to level the playing field between those with faster internet connection? Out of curiosity, was such a change also made for console servers?

LadyLethalla

Banana wrote: »

I imagine it's cheaper. But to hell with any customer who doesn't live close to either of them.

Like me and all of Oceanic.

WTB OCEANIC SERVER...

SirAndy

Araneae6537 wrote: »

Wow, that is crazy! But it’s not something you could do from within the game, right? You’d have to deliberately mess with the code, I’d assume. But I guess the problem would be catching those who cheat in less obvious, more subtle ways? Still, if Cyrodill worked well that way but for cheaters, the fix seems an inelegant untargeted solution. Or perhaps it was also to level the playing field between those with faster internet connection? Out of curiosity, was such a change also made for console servers?

@Araneae6537

Nope, no code change needed, just a decent tool to modify an apps memory.
Google "cheat engine" and be prepared to be educated.

Btw., cheat engine still works for ESO to this day. Sure, not every exploit from the early days is still possible, but you'd be surprised just how much one can still cheat/modify within ESO by modifying the games memory while it is running.