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A Theory about the Crashes
steampunky
Member Posts: 0 Arc User
Cryptic began working on Neverwinter in August of 2010 under Atari's production oversight. The game, as described by Jack Emmert at the time, was less of an MMO and more of a LAN party or Lobby game in which players connected directly to their teammates and moved out into the world from there to fight against the evils assailing the city. Rather than having hundreds or thousands of players in the same world you'd have only the 5 and their companion pets. The game was slated for release in late 2011.
However Cryptic Studios, and Neverwinter in turn, were sold to Perfect World International in May of 2011, 10 months or more into it's production cycle. And then 6 months later shifted the game's design philosophy and focus into an MMORPG in October of 2011, which in turn pushed the release date back into 2012. During early 2012 and repeatedly throughout the year the game's release was further delayed.
Throughout 2012 unexplained server outages would randomly kill Champions Online and Star Trek Online which lead to a lot of player frustration. And now that Neverwinter is in Open Beta the servers are, again, collapsing in a cascade with Neverwinter throwing a wrench in the works that takes out the whole server farm. This leads me to the following conclusion.
The reasons the servers keep crashing is because the game engine itself was not rebuilt but merely repurposed from it's LAN design. Given the time table a rebuild would have put open beta at least another 4-5 months from now, after all. So what we're seeing is coding conflicts between the original LAN purposed lobby system designs and the newly installed MMO server structure interacting with two other MMOs which do not have the LAN design built into them causing failures.
This is also very likely the same problem that Champions Online and Star Trek Online have been having over the past year or so. In order to find out if the new code holds up to spec the Devs had been mounting pre-alpha and alpha builds of the newly revamped game design onto the server farm as a method of testing the code and it's interaction with the other two games on the same server structure.
At least, that's my going theory. I could be way off. I just feel like it explains everything very well.
-Rachel-
However Cryptic Studios, and Neverwinter in turn, were sold to Perfect World International in May of 2011, 10 months or more into it's production cycle. And then 6 months later shifted the game's design philosophy and focus into an MMORPG in October of 2011, which in turn pushed the release date back into 2012. During early 2012 and repeatedly throughout the year the game's release was further delayed.
Throughout 2012 unexplained server outages would randomly kill Champions Online and Star Trek Online which lead to a lot of player frustration. And now that Neverwinter is in Open Beta the servers are, again, collapsing in a cascade with Neverwinter throwing a wrench in the works that takes out the whole server farm. This leads me to the following conclusion.
The reasons the servers keep crashing is because the game engine itself was not rebuilt but merely repurposed from it's LAN design. Given the time table a rebuild would have put open beta at least another 4-5 months from now, after all. So what we're seeing is coding conflicts between the original LAN purposed lobby system designs and the newly installed MMO server structure interacting with two other MMOs which do not have the LAN design built into them causing failures.
This is also very likely the same problem that Champions Online and Star Trek Online have been having over the past year or so. In order to find out if the new code holds up to spec the Devs had been mounting pre-alpha and alpha builds of the newly revamped game design onto the server farm as a method of testing the code and it's interaction with the other two games on the same server structure.
At least, that's my going theory. I could be way off. I just feel like it explains everything very well.
-Rachel-
Great Weapon Fighter tanks? Who are you kidding? Cleric tanks. They draw -all- the aggro.
Post edited by steampunky on
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Do the words hurt your little brain?
And the answer to your question is: intelligent people.
Nepht and Dr Deflecto on primus
Although, it could be due to some goofy coding not handling certain exceptions.
I doubt that though.
Pretty much this.
Because the game was designed as multiplayer instead of as an MMO to begin with, engine structure is messing things up now that it has been converted.
And then I listed some possible evidence and background explanation.
Though I don't think the games are too interconnected at all. I think it's the original design conflicting with the server structure.
-Rachel-
Quick, buy up some Zen coins so that PWI can afford new servers! >.>
-Rachel-
Interesting theory, but it doesn't hold water.
For one, NW now uses the same engine as STO and CO, which was an MMO engine from the get-go. Your theory posits that they have been having outages for the past year as Cryptic downgraded STO and CO to use the hypothetical NW LAN engine? That'd be really stupid of them.
I'm proposing that retrofitting the NW engine from it's LAN design back up to the MMO structure is what caused the problem. While the Cryptic Engine was originally designed for MMO structuring, Neverwinter originally had that capability removed in favor of LAN design. When they had to go back and add MMO activity back in for PWE's design methodology is when I propose the issue happened.
CO and STO are still using their original engines with no changes. It's the NW engine that is causing the problem, and has been.
-Rachel-
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
All they can do is get it working right, which is what they're doing with each successive crash: Repairing the issues as they arise. This is why, no matter what anyone says, this is a beta.
-Rachel-
To cause their entire infrastructure to crash quickly has got to be something with their core infrastructure supporting all of their linked platforms.
1. Cryptic uses the Cryptic Engine for all of their games. It's their big thing. This is why I assume they used the Cryptic Engine from day 1, rather than creating a separate engine from scratch and then later moving the systems design over to the Cryptic Engine. It's also kind of crazy to assume they'd try to swap engines, since unless the engines are functionally the same all of the previously programmed work would need to be rewritten.
2. Have you ever seen City of Heroes's code? It's Spaghetti. That's one of the things you'll hear from anyone who pigg-dived while it was around or tried to put together a private pirate server after it went down. This is because they went back over the same ground dozens of times re-writing around problems rather than removing them. That's why I'm even entertaining the notion that they did that, here.
3. Fatal Execution Errors can shut down an operating system, whether it's Windows style BSOD or Linux Kernal Panic. Software trying to perform illegal procedures or conflicting ones can instantly lock up a system rather than slowly increase system drain like a memory leak or bandwidth bottlenecking.
If Neverwinter was to have an engine swap the artwork, sound, and character model would be salvageable, based on the input parameters of the new engine, but system design outside of combat theorycrafting would have to be rebuilt from the ground up based on the limitations or functions of the new engine. Any code which didn't get a full re-write would probably cease to function altogether unless the two engines were that closely linked as to allow similar functions.
-Rachel-
If it were just the login servers going down, or a shard crashing, or chat not working (like what happened in the early days of CO), or something along those lines I may agree with what you're saying. I think something is happening at a core level, something that is either at the infrastructure level (NAS, VM backplane etc...), a shared resource for all of the instances that is failing, or a common bug triggered by a global event that crashes all instances (it even took out the login servers).
Would be interesting to find out, but doubt we'll get any concrete reason other than its 'fixed'. But hell, that's what BETA is for, be a bit more annoying if I was still a paying CO or STO subscriber