When World of Warcraft launched in Europe, 80 servers were installed to support the 290,000 players who signed up for its first weekend. That's 3,625 players per server.
What if they'd had 800 servers instead of 80?
Modern commercial virtual worlds generally handle between 3,000 and 5,000 players per server. Players may say that this is what they want, but given half a chance they'll flee to instanced sub-world bubble environments so as to avoid contact with the seething masses. If the virtual worlds themselves had more shards, each with fewer players, there wouldn't be this kind of pressure to have pocket universes for friends-only play: the whole virtual world would be exactly that, only persistent instead of temporary.
Having more servers with fewer players has other advantages, too. It reduces the effects of farming (try selling gold from server #401 to someone playing on server #682), it makes server recycling easier (merging low-use servers and reopen released ones for newbies), it makes getting away from personal griefers a real possibility (how long would it take them to find where you'd gone?), it allows for multiple server types (PvP, commodified, PD, whatever), and it gives players a sense that they can have a real effect on their virtual world.
How few players could a server support for players to feel that they didn't need instances yet for their virtual world to remain viable? Never mind whether instances are a good thing or a bad thing: how many players is the minimum necessary for a server to remain attractivee, and is this more than the number of players that makes instancing a requirement?
At GDC, there was a panel on Persistent versus Instantiated Spaces, and I asked the panellists the above question. Mark Jacobs was of the opinion that there was perhaps a sweet spot where it could happen, but he didn't say where he thought that might be. Raph Koster pointed out that text MUDs can feel like a world with as few as 10 players, but didn't say what the low-end figure might be for commercial graphical MMORPGs.
So what do you think? Is the critical mass required for a full sense of community greater than or less than that required for relatively hassle-free play? Indeed, are the two figures related?
Richard
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