To: Goa GM's, about Prydscal cluster change as mentioned in the chronicles.

[RS|Phil]

Multi-language = problem solved for most people! I'm all for extreme measures if need be but I keep saying over and over again that there's only one option and I'm yet to read a counterpoint to it tbh.

( ich versuchen zu erlernen Deutschez )

 

[Nate]

Oh well, the grey mist that shrouds GOA HQ remains no idea whats going to happen, I guess it must be looking like 30 people primetime for a cluster..would be good for GOA then they won't have any community left to deal with, and can focus on the valued customers(french/german players)

 

[Gamah]

Well its not like if the English GM's lose the English pop they lose thier jobs, they have WAR to look forward too

 

[Kaun_IA]

Start learning German or French m8 they Fucked Glastonbury up for English speakers we all be moving to Camlan soon


Soulja

too late for that.. it has been owned by french and germans long time

 

[Bluesky]

I have to wholeheartedly agree with some previous posters in that imo we NEED to cluster excal/pryd with another euro cluster sooner rather than later. Viable is a very vague word Requiel and i sincerely hope viable doesn't mean the same for excal/pryd as it did for Glaston.

Although the RvR zerg scene has livened up a bit in the past 2-3 weeks the pve scene is totally dead in mid and from the looks of the hib forums that looks the same. I personally have had to cancel my last 3 dragon raids due to not enough people interested and with not a single raid posted in the mid forum its looking bleak. Clustering pve zones imo is irrelevant to the much larger problem.

I would urge GOA to start thinking of clustering excal/pryd with another cluster asap.

 

[Drungan]

I would urge GOA to start thinking of clustering excal/pryd with another cluster asap.

i can only second that. though i had some fun again when i hopped in for a short visit over xmas week after half a year (rl takes its toll atm) i must say the server looks more deserted now than it already was in the summer/autumn.

when clustering with a german server, goa could aswell make a poll and ask the server pop if they would mind playing in english. atleast it's THE international language, and it's tought not too bad in germany, many speak it here, and speak it reasonably good.

i'm german myself, still excal is my home since beta. i just like it in english, it fits daoc/rpg background (items names and all the other stuff) way better than the german translation. (hard to do a good translation in mmorgs) my school english got quite boosted through playin daoc atleast

 

[IainC]

To allay some concerns:
We aren't going to let Pryd/Excal get to the same point as Glastonbury was at before we move. We are looking into the options that will be available to us when the time comes to act.

Viable is a vague term, however I can't express it any more precisely than that. I'm not going to come out and say that we will do X when the primetime population reaches Y because it's not that simple.

All I'm doing at the moment is squashing rumours that the English cluster is going to be clustered with a foreign cluster or moved to a different language soon. That absolutely isn't the case, it doesn't mean that we aren't keeping an aye on the situation and formulating plans for the future. All I'm saying is that the rumours going around aren't true.

At the moment there's a normal population dip that we see every year around this time. Despite that, the primetime population is still healthy and we'll keep an eye on it as time goes on.

 

[Zordax_Thaist]

If they change the language to french or german, i will quit this game or join camlann for ever never gonan return back, how we know do quest etc? if language change? /Suicide ftw!!!

 

[Soulja_IA_]

At the moment there's a normal population dip that we see every year around this time. Despite that, the primetime population is still healthy and we'll keep an eye on it as time goes on.

Dip seems like a Bigger Dip than you think Requiel server numbers have dropped into the abyss.

I can understand when server population has dropped over years but we talking a lot of players within last year Requiel believe Goa need to be looking at a viable solution now rather than later.

Can understand that Glastonbury is thriving atm but believe you will find that has to do with more of the German population being able to play 2 realms rather than the 1 nothing to do with Glastonbury players coming back.Looked other day and glastonbury had more people playing than Excal/Pryd had online nothing to do with English players boosting that number.

Goa need to be looking at it now Requiel as more and more players are ditching this server of Excal/Pryd everyday.

Soulja

 

[Fatload BoysDoCry]

There is more people on the Caerleon cluster now with the time being 6-10am in the morning stateside than on the Excal cluster at 15:51gmt. I can't believe GoA aren't in the process of sorting the cluster now, its clear as day the last few months drop in population doesn't follow the normal trend as the players haven't mainly quit, just moved away from that specific cluster.

 

[RS|Phil]

Can understand that Glastonbury is thriving atm but believe you will find that has to do with more of the German population being able to play 2 realms rather than the 1 nothing to do with Glastonbury players coming back.Looked other day and glastonbury had more people playing than Excal/Pryd had online nothing to do with English players boosting that number.

That's just not true. At least, not to that extent. You do have a fair few German alts running around but we're a busy little guild and alliance again atm since most of the regulars came back for cluster, me included.

 

[Sharkith]

There is more people on the Caerleon cluster now with the time being 6-10am in the morning stateside than on the Excal cluster at 15:51gmt. I can't believe GoA aren't in the process of sorting the cluster now, its clear as day the last few months drop in population doesn't follow the normal trend as the players haven't mainly quit, just moved away from that specific cluster.

Fatload you are a clever guy but think carefully it would be a mistake for GOA to admit right now that the server population is in trouble especially after the whole TT incident. It might be construed that their decision precipitated a significant change. Personally I think there is no way in hell GOA will cluster now it would be too close of an admission that they might have made a mistake. I would see the sense in that to be honest.

They will leave things a bit let them settle and then look to cluster after a decent gap so the two things cannot be said to be linked. You will see.

I mean already the cluster has lower population than prydwen had before they asked us about clustering with excal. For now on Mondays the population is very good otherwise it was hovering below or around 700 primetime (there is a particularly bad dip over Christmas every year as far as I remember anyway).

GOA are not stupid they would never do anything that would look like an admission that something was handled badly. Even if perhaps it could have been handled very 'differently'.

There are most likely other reasons for this as well since they have indicated that here but without knowing the full details there is no real point speculating.

Sharkith

 

[IainC]

Sharkith, you are putting too much weight in conspiracy theories. Firstly there has not been a significant shift in numbers following the TT incident. Some people, primarily from the FGvFG scene moved, the vast majority of people stayed where they were. The perception that I see expressed on the forums that 'half the server left' isn't borne out ingame.

I don't see how us taking action over low population can be construed as an admission of anything other than low populations. We aren't going to make a kneejerk reaction, we are going to make sure that we make the right decision based on all the data and not fly into a panic because someone on a forum says that their friends have rerolled on a different server. There were 200 people in NF on the cluster last night, there's a healthy population despite what the doomsayers would have you believe.

In any case, when Prydwen had a low population, there was a clear and obvious solution available to us - the cluster with Excalibur - and we had clear data showing a gradual and consistent decline in population. The situation now isn't as clear cut, there are many temporary and seasonal factors affecting the cluster population and we'll get a much truer picture of what is happening after the new year.

 

[Nate]

You haven't seen a massive decrease in the population of hibernia? I'm shocked...I haven't seen very many hibs out lately at all, and chronicles shows this too.

 

[Ingafgrinn Macabre]

Requiel, you apparently have chosen not to respond on my post #19 for reasons unknown to me, but like I posted there, I really doubt it's that much data. Lord of the Rings, which is a pretty big book is about 1300 pages big. Also if the datafile would be several gigabytes as you said, I'd reckon the translation would also take a lot lot longer, or you'd have several hundred translators there in the office in Paris, which I also doubt. Also, users don't need to have all languages on their pc locally. Just the languages they use in folders like \daoc\language_EN and \daoc\language_FR.


Isn't there an option to make the language client-side instead of server-side? It'd make the work for the translation team also a lot easier and reduce the chance of bugs since they wouldn't have to browse thru the hardcoded text and accidentally change a "FOR" statement in a "SI" statement if transtlating to french

 

[IainC]

Ingafgrinn. I'm sorry I didn't reply earlier. I've actually been thinking about this topic and trying to come up with a way of explaining it that doesn't require me to explain in boring detail how the game works.

A couple of quick points though. The game language is English and that doesn't get translated at all. Boolean requirements and the like are all AND OR NEQUAL etc. Likewise the names of fields aren't translated only the contents of those fields.
You're correct, we don't have hundreds of translators here in the Goa offices, we do however make heavy use of outsourced agencies whenever there's a particularly heavy translation workload (for example when preparing a new expansion). Our translation teams are probably the busiest people in the office.

Now moving all text clientside may be possible. I'm trying to think through all the situations where text is called from the server and each time I think of new ones. I'm also thinking about how each of those could be moved to the client and I'm not convinced it could be in all cases.
There are three main areas where the server talks to you in its own language. One is the names of objects, monsters, zones etc. These are all stored as part of the relevant database entry for that item. The database is of course server side. When the server spawns monster X it knows what it's called because the database entry for monster X includes the name. Putting a lookup table for every item, monster, spell, ability, zone, class, race, quest etc in the game on a client isn't a trivial task and there are security ramifications to doing that also.

The second one and the most obvious to most people is dialogue. Whenever an NPC talks to you, the line of dialogue is referenced by a number which points to an entry in a very, very large database. This is probably the simplest thing to send client side. However. Let's say the NPC wants a keyword for a quest. That's actually defined as part of the NPC. If the keyword in English is [ready] then that value is coded into the monster's AI control and I can't see a simple way of making it look up a multilingual list of acceptable responses. Not without scrapping the entire system that governs monster and NPC behaviours and creating a new one. I really don't see that happening any time soon.

The third instance is server strings. Messages directly to you from the server. combat messages and the like. Moving these to the client would probably be fairly straightforward and just have the server reporting numerical info to the client but again there is a significant security concern to be overcome.

It isn't a simple operation and there are at least as many disadvantages as there are benefits. I know that the combined databases for the game are in the order of several hundred GB at least (or they were when I last asked a couple of years ago) I will admit to not knowing how much of that could be condensed for a client side application.

 

[rampant]

Requiel, I cant believe that you are stating that 200 people in NF is a healthy server!!!

I believe that GOA are sticking their heads in the sands over the current population issue - look what you said in the summer when the real decline started 'seasonal blahblahblah' - you are repeating the same message now.

You (GOA) need to think very quickly about what on earth you are going to do with this game - to me it seems like you are hoping for an early release of WHO to combat the problem!

 

[IainC]

200 people mid week at a traditionally low time is not evidence of a serious issue. As I said, we'll get a much truer picture of what the real numbers are in the new year when everything gets back to normal. For now though all indications are that the population average over the past month is not more than a couple of percent different to how it was 5-6 months ago.

Anyhow, I'm off for the weekend. Have a good new year and I'll see you all in 2007.

 

[Succi]

'200 people' is quite misleading , as im willing to bet at least 70 of those are buffbots... especially with the fg scene now being pretty extinct and mainly soloers/zergers remaining.

unless your of course talking about different ip's connected :F

 

[RS|Phil]

Whilst not disagreeing about the issues I am a bit curious about what the problem is in some respects when it comes to having a multi-language server, for example reporting damage taken in the user's language, or stats, or even RvR guard spam information. That's more a space issue surely ( btw this is assuming that the current cliernt/server situation is kept the same as I can totally understand the security issues behind letting people rename the mobs, armour, enemies, etc etc <endless list> on their home PC - the more information is kept at home the more it can be hacked etc ).

The quests, well, that's another matter true but why does it necessarily have to be client based anyway? If it's possible to transmit the next phase of the quest from a database already (which it obviously is) then why is it so much more strenuous on the existing system to store... oooh... lets say the ten most common languages used in DAoC (I don't think there's actually that many tbh) and transmit them as required, calling upon a different database fileld? Yes, this may require ten times the amount of space as it currently does PER database BUT then you've got like ...er... (cba to login actually)...all those languages already stored across many servers So the space requirements are already there.

You do kinda go into why multilingual isn't going to work but you do have to accept that this is simply the only way forward? At least, part-multilingual (like RvR mesages, Crafting etc etc - you could probably satisfy most people with 90% of the content being in their own language to be frank - questng we can deal with as it's a ONE TIME THING) Again, I totally empathise with the problems and why GOA aren't able to do it really. It is a total rebuild and that's really up to Mythic or at least a collaboration of you both.

I'm a bit heave-ho in some of the above because I wanted to address two points at once

 

[Fatload BoysDoCry]

Fatload you are a clever guy but think carefully it would be a mistake for GOA to admit right now that the server population is in trouble especially after the whole TT incident. It might be construed that their decision precipitated a significant change. Personally I think there is no way in hell GOA will cluster now it would be too close of an admission that they might have made a mistake. I would see the sense in that to be honest.

They will leave things a bit let them settle and then look to cluster after a decent gap so the two things cannot be said to be linked. You will see.

I mean already the cluster has lower population than prydwen had before they asked us about clustering with excal. For now on Mondays the population is very good otherwise it was hovering below or around 700 primetime (there is a particularly bad dip over Christmas every year as far as I remember anyway).

GOA are not stupid they would never do anything that would look like an admission that something was handled badly. Even if perhaps it could have been handled very 'differently'.

There are most likely other reasons for this as well since they have indicated that here but without knowing the full details there is no real point speculating.

Sharkith

I agree with what you say I know GOA won't admit that they have made errors recently and in the past which affected the UK servers in a negative way. Issues such as the non-existent marketing strategy, the banning of TT and an extremely poor service over the last few years (xml constantly down, constant periods of lag on the servers for 1-2 years) have contributed to the dire population that is left here.

I am actually surprised Mythic have given them the Warhammer license after the last 4 years.

 

[Fatload BoysDoCry]

200 people mid week at a traditionally low time is not evidence of a serious issue.

Its almost sigworthy. :worthy:

 

[Dard]

200 people mid week at a traditionally low time is not evidence of a serious issue. As I said, we'll get a much truer picture of what the real numbers are in the new year when everything gets back to normal. For now though all indications are that the population average over the past month is not more than a couple of percent different to how it was 5-6 months ago.

Anyhow, I'm off for the weekend. Have a good new year and I'll see you all in 2007.

Just over a year ago you said the number of active Prydwen players was in the tens of thousands .. what is it now ?

Oh .. & Happy New Year :england:

 

[Imgormiel]

Just over a year ago you said the number of active Prydwen players was in the tens of thousands .. what is it now ?

Oh .. & Happy New Year :england:

Times change Dard...

lies, damned lies and statistics don't work with this one matey. Let the past lie where it is, we all know there is very little we can do on this side regarding low daoc pop. Req himself knows it also from where he is sitting. No doubt something will be done closer to the time of release of WAR that daoc gets a marketing push again for a sustained amount of time imo. We'll see.

All the best from me also:england:

 

[Matriarch|Sneakers]

Why can't they have the servers in english for pete´s sake.

I'm quite sure more ppl today speak english more or less well then they speak german.

Neither german or french are "world" languages anymore, spanish and english/variations of chineese are the top spoken languages, so to me this is just dumb.

More Germans speak "ok" english then english speaking ppl speak "ok" german.

After all the game is called "Dark age of Camelot" and not "Dunkles Alter von Camelot"...

 

[SkarIronfist]

Requiel,


Since I am not clear on the limitations that you have to work under.

I assume that some basic table restructuring is out of the question?

Moving the text of a mob, item, quest into a seperate table keyed on item/mob uniqure identifier and language key. To be fair the extracts and merging of this would be relatively straight forward, making langauge the addition to the unique key on import.

What would be alot more work would changing server side code, to include Language identifier in all queries. The client would have to include language in all transmissions, or at least set language when they connect to a specific server. To be honest I would make language an option in the client, since that way if someone wanted to improve there French and play in french. then they could recieve all transmissions in English/French or whatever.

At the moment I am unsure if you send all of your text for quests/objext via the network. If so then there is no additional overhead. if you don't then you will know better than any what the extra traffic could imply for network performance.

Making sure that item/mob stats are held only one location, to make sure item stat inconsistences don't occur.

I don't believe that moving item/mob text to the client is the correct thing to do. Hold the text on the server, you have more control and will not have to worry about holding different language versions on the same pc and updating the respective language files and the problems that may go forward.

To be honest everything should be held at the back end. Bar exe's graphics and audio.


Unfortunately this "language" issue is a basic mistake that alot of companies make when designing databases, they don't separate the text from the object.

I am sure Mythic will have learnt from this language ball ache and the longer term issues that can happen with declining populations.

 

[Sharkith]

Sharkith, you are putting too much weight in conspiracy theories. Firstly there has not been a significant shift in numbers following the TT incident. Some people, primarily from the FGvFG scene moved, the vast majority of people stayed where they were. The perception that I see expressed on the forums that 'half the server left' isn't borne out ingame.

I don't see how us taking action over low population can be construed as an admission of anything other than low populations. We aren't going to make a kneejerk reaction, we are going to make sure that we make the right decision based on all the data and not fly into a panic because someone on a forum says that their friends have rerolled on a different server. There were 200 people in NF on the cluster last night, there's a healthy population despite what the doomsayers would have you believe.

In any case, when Prydwen had a low population, there was a clear and obvious solution available to us - the cluster with Excalibur - and we had clear data showing a gradual and consistent decline in population. The situation now isn't as clear cut, there are many temporary and seasonal factors affecting the cluster population and we'll get a much truer picture of what is happening after the new year.

Requiel,

I appreciate your response. Those ideas are a reflection of how some people will and do read the situation my personal opinion was that you would say exactly what you did to those 'theories'. Apart from that you show the usual slight of hand I have come to expect when on the one hand you try to play down the move by saying 'some' people and on the other deliberately exaggerating that people have claimed that half the server left. Not once have I seen that claim. I don't think you have much to gain by trying to misrepresent people in that way. Anyway at least you have acknowledged that there is a perception that population is an issue otherwise you would not be posting here.

On the prydwen issue if we had the data we could go back to pre cluster with prydwen and I am sure we would find that in fact the cluster question was raised around the time when the population had fallen as far as the current levels on this cluster. I think thats what puzzles people the most. Most people would probably agree with you that you cannot make decisions when there are such big seasonal shifts it all seems very reasonable. Anyway good luck and have a nice New Year !

Sharkith

 

[Manisch Depressiv]

Thanks for the replies Requiel, happy new year to you too.

Overhauling the language system is lots of work but the technology behind it is rather simple, even in a client/server system. The game wasn't designed to have multi-language clients though and now we are in a bad situation because of this, there is no easy way out .

From gamer's perspective, it would be ideal to be able to log in at any time of the day and have some good PvP/RvR action. The servers have been fragmented by too many servers with different languages and different rule sets in my opinion. The population of European DAoC is distributed too much and if there are plans to keep this game up at a small scale after WH is launched something needs to be done.

3 ideas:

1. The best and most realistic idea would be to connect the UK cluster to one of the US clusters, it would require some good cooperation between Mythic and GoA though. All zones beside ToA/capitol/housing shared, it would be amazing action 24/7.

2. I know German better than English, so it isn't a problem for me to play on Avalon but I guess losing English as the language on Prydwen/Excalibur to cluster with some of the german servers is not a good idea.

3. Limited char copy, e.g. allow char copying to a different GoA server under certain conditions (one time one way copy per char or something).

 

[Eleasias]

Charcopy is definately something GOA should take a look at, I have chars I'd love to play on my accounts but theres no point doing it right now because they are on deadish servers. DAoC is simply the best game ever made, the enjoyment and fun you can get out of it is so much more than any other game but for that to happen you need other players. GOA should try to make the playerbase as compact as possible so the players feel the game is alive and active, this makes a happy customerbase that will advertise the game for other players and stay playing for longer.

 

[Raven]

whatever time of the day there are more people on the Killibury cluster than there are on excal/pryd

592 killibury (US)

210 Excal/pryd (EU)

its about 5am new years day in the US atm so its not even close to being prime time.

I think its to late to save excal/pryd, all they can do is cluster it with a german server, better to do it sooner rather than later. clustering to german servers probably isnt practical though, unless they can change the language to be client side rather than server side. even if it means listing quest info and such twice, once in german and once in english would help.

Char copy or even a cluster to US for the english servers would be the best answer imo. cant goa "sell" the servers to mythic? it would keep the UK speaking players happy and goa could just cut their losses.