Im confused there are multi of the same zone why so many servers?

Discussion in 'The Newbie Zone' started by PirateLordCarroll, Mar 22, 2020.

  1. PirateLordCarroll Journeyman

    From what I gather from the tutorial and everything there are multi instances of every zone. I see FV has a totally different rule set, but why so many servers? Shouldn't there just be 1 live server that has a bunch of instances, or am I missing something?
  2. Irongron New Member

    Well, when the game was created, there was no tutorial, there were no instances zones...over time things changed, its not "like' other games in its creation but has evolved over time.
    Xianzu_Monk_Tunare likes this.
  3. Iven Antonius Bayle

    There was a tutorial right from the start but it was a separate exe file. You can download it from my webspace. :cool:
    Laerkai likes this.
  4. Herf Augur

    When I started playing, when Kunark released, at login you could see how many people were active at that moment on each server. I'm getting old so I can't recall if it was 2000, or 4000. Either way, that was the max number of simultaneous players each server supported. So to support a large user base, you need more servers.
  5. Finfan Augur

    In the olden days this game was the hottest MMORPG around. The newbie zones in every continent were busy, and they had to have a lot of servers to handle the number of players. Remember we're talking about the tech of 20 years ago. Since then they have merged many of the original servers. The multiple zones with very similar names are specifically for raids or what they call "instanced" zones that only one group can enter at a time. I think that is how it works anyway. I was only ever on one raid and I was insta-killed so I don't really know much about them. So, that sorta explains the structure.
  6. Chikkin Augur

    Hated when they changed that because people either said they had a dead server, or that obviously they needed a server split.

    Can't blame them though.

    I took it out of my signature, but for about 5 months, I worked hard to formulate EQ Populations. This was when FV was first becoming one of the more popular servers. I still have all the charts on photobucket I think.

    The only thing I was super positive on, was that:

    Low = 0-499
    Medium = 500+

    ..now whether High equals 1000 or 1500? I'm unsure. But, back in the hottest days... 2000-2500 was considered ideal server population, and the ones that had over 3000 to yes, I think 4000 as highest or close to highest they ever reached, were nearly unplayable.
  7. jiri_ Augur

    Good old Soandso.
  8. Lumlum New Member


    It's so I can have one of each class in every race without having to buy a ton of additional character slots.
  9. yepmetoo Abazzagorath

    They didn't have a limit, they just had a target max before they needed to start splitting due to the latency it caused.

    Original release the "target" was 1000 per server (and was only 4 servers iirc), and they blew by that almost immediately and added servers, did server splits, etc.

    For awhile it was 1500 as the "target". The Rathe was the last major server split (into Zeb), and it they had 4000+ on around that time.

    I think they maxed at like 45 servers at the peak? But they had 100,000 players online at once during GoD, so the target "max" didn't seem to change much in the years in between.

    Now we don't know, as already mentioned. But the issue is lag. On Sunday night, with 4 guilds raiding, the lag becomes intolerable, for example, in ToV. The servers cannot handle putting all people on the same server.

    TLP servers had a hard cap, because they were overloading the system so they put in a wow-esque queue system. Maybe someone remembers if they ever gave a number on that, as I suspect its a system wide limit now.
  10. Chikkin Augur

    I'll never forget those days in NTOV back on Quellious. Had Vis Maior, Lotus Cult, and Wraith all battling for top spots. While there was a pretty clear view of who was stronger, all 3 were strong enough for NTOV.

    There was at times 150-200 in the zone. It would reach slide-show type lag, and people would often just Blackscreen with "You have Been Disconnected" especially like every pull.


    You can also imagine the /ooc and /shout back then. Wraith was the weakest of the 3 (not by much at all) and of course the venom came out, you'd hear stuff like "Wraith, just get out of the zone, you're killing it for the rest of us."

    lol now, but way back then? hah! Diff world of play.
  11. Skuz I am become Wrath, the Destroyer of Worlds.

    I think that the major difference between the early game & late game for infrastructure is just the sheer scale of how much combat calculation goes on at the late game versus the early game, even with how much faster server processing is now vs them the amount of calculations required per second per player is vastly bigger now than it was.

    At some point I think the pace of increase in how much calculating was required overtook how fast the server processing was increasing its pace, leading to an eventual slowdown in headroom per server before it became impacted by performance problems.

    I could be wrong on that, but it is how it looks to me.
  12. Vumad Cape Wearer

    I think the game(play) as a whole would benefit from running on a single server with a lot of /pick zones. That would make the lowbie zones fill more full. Or maybe if characters stayed on their present servers but the servers shared information, such as when I get pushed to another server I show up as Luclin.Vumad.

    I realize there a technical limitations and there are costs for a server that could handle such a load, plus mergers, and naming issues, impacts to the game economies, etc. I get it. I just think it would make the game feel more alive if zone loading was utilized to optimize zone populations.
  13. Xianzu_Monk_Tunare Augur

    The game would have considerably fewer total players if there was just a single server. The game is not designed or built to support a large number of players all on a single server. The game would run worse, just ask the servers that are already always high population.

    Also, the cap that they had for active connections back in the day was 3k.

    That was several years after the game launched.
  14. Xianzu_Monk_Tunare Augur

    There has not always been a tutorial. The first was not introduced until May 27, 2004, and only let you stay their until level 5. It was revamped June 29, 2006, expanding it to the current cap of level 10 and the general format it currently has. It has had a few additional revamps since then as well, about one a year for a few years, but has not really changed much in the last 10 or so years.

    Also, the /pickzone command, which allows multiple instances of static zones, is not enabled on all zones. There are zones which it simply cannot be enabled on due to how parts of those zones work and initiating could cause grief for players. It was only earlier this year that they announced that almost all zones that could be load balanced had it enabled. Load balancing in EQ was only really introduced to EQ in April 2015 as a player usable feature.

    The reason why there is more than one server is because the servers would not be able to run effectively if you condensed the playerbase onto a single server, and on top of that there would be negative effects to the playerbase if everyone was forced onto a single server.
  15. yepmetoo Abazzagorath

    No it wasn't. I played that tutorial prior to Kunark coming out when I first started the game in 1999, after reading about the game in a PC Gamer magazine article.

    You started on a dock somewhere, walked around fought a skeleton, etc. Was completely offline.
  16. yepmetoo Abazzagorath

  17. Chikkin Augur

    Xianzu_Monk_Tuna is usually spot on, so I don't know what to say.


    But he said a cap on servers of I think 3000, but during the prime time year 2000 time-frame of when Kunark was new and Velious was coming, before they started splitting servers left and right, the servers were going beyond 3000. Edit: I did a quick google search, only 1, and found nothing. In fact, found nothing about EQ pre-2003. geez.

    As for the tutorial, my memory is really hazy. I do (Edit: Think I) remember before the real tutorial, that you could like take your character walking around doing pretty much nothing in a small little area, from the login screen. Basically what you see today in the login screen, but you clicked tutorial or something, and ran around in that same area you're standing in, no zoning, nothing. I really don't remember much beyond that, but I started at the very end of 1999 in December so pre-Kunark (Jan 2000 launch) and such. It really didn't do anything other than show you what your character looked like or practice moving around .. I did it once I think?

    (simply based off fuzzy 40yo man memory).

    Xianzu, if you see this, if you have actual proof otherwise, not looking to call you out, I'm rusty as all get out on EQ, but I have a strong memory of Xegony I think it was ...no wait... Fenrin Ro server (before split into what I think was Solusek Ro and Ayonae ro? (old memories) and made 3 servers out of 1... whatever the main server of FoH was way back when. --- They were starting to flirt with 4000 on the server and complaining they couldn't do any Naggy/Vox/Kunark raids because everybody went link-dead. Edit: Basically telling you how I remember it, but happy to defer to you, since you're always "on" your stuff.


    That was on the very old forums, and also Everlore forums, so I don't have proof either on this, lol. I just was SO mmo-addict-nerd back then at 20/21. I remember that clearly because I was playing all night then going into work without sleep.


    Edit2: I guess also it's possible, my memory is just of the character select screen evolving, may not a tutorial at all. It's fun/interesting for me to think back to that, so not a debate for me. Cheers!
  18. forum troll Elder



    ahh memories
  19. Durendal777 New Member

    You could change the name of different zone files to that of the tutorial, launch the tutorial, and it would load that zone instead and you could explore it. Not all zones worked due to the tutorial being hard coded for the tutorial zone, and anything reliant on the server (mobs, doors, etc) wouldn't work either.
  20. Beardsy Elder

    I don't know when it happened, but at some point Sony or Daybreak decided to fund toasters for servers. If you've played in the last 2 or so years, you'd know they're impossibly unstable once server population breaks 1k+
    Mangler atm crashes at least once a day and has unbearable desync if there's too many people in a zone or if someone is doing mass AE pulls and no, mass pulling mobs causing desync shouldn't be accepted as "Normal" They're simply running very bad servers... People used PL by doing mass pulls on live 8ish years ago and they never desynced the way it does now. Are TLP run on bad servers and live on better ones? Who knows.