Solving the Shard Crisis

Calam · **Posted:** Tue Dec 16, 2008 10:48 pm

As I said in another thread, I don't mind having lots of different shards. If every single person in the community wants to have a shard, fine. They can do whatever they want in there. There is nothing wrong with having lots of different instances of Uru.

The problem people are afraid will happen is that the community will fracture along with all these shards. People are worried their content and stories will not get noticed. There is a potential solution to this.

I don't mind lots of shards. But I want at least one shard that is considered "the" shard; the main shard, the shard of shards; the New D'mala, if you will. The one that remains at least mostly constant throughout the chaos. The difference is we must organize this, since Cyan isn't doing it. Perhaps a Guild could host it. I don't know. Maybe a shard for each Guild, each relatively constant to the other.

I still want to be able to see some level of consistency between "official" shards; if someone adds a cool Age to one of them, it should go in all of them. This also provides a level of UCC quality-control; only the stuff that the Guilds see as stable, original, and at least decently enjoyable get into those shards. Did your Age of Brown Cubes get rejected from one of the "main" shards? Did your "I'm With Stupid" T-shirt get slapped down? No problemo! Go stick it on someone else's who likes it, or put it on your own.

But this is a situation where everybody cannot have what they want. We can have lots of shards, as long as there is some central hub of community AND new content where things remain consistent, constant, and reliable. There is no need for a "dictatorship", or a central leader. Players will go where the content is good, the environment is stable, and it stays true to Uru. If they want something else, they can find a shard that suits their needs. But we must have a core shard or shards, hosted by Guilds or somesuch party that can manage them.

Rookie86 · **Joined:** Tue Dec 16, 2008 1:59 pm **Posts:** 7

Quote:

But this is a situation where everybody cannot have what they want. We can have lots of shards, as long as there is some central hub of community AND new content where things remain consistent, constant, and reliable.

i think the situation now's normal, many user have their ideas. our assignemt is to collect all this idea and work out a solution who contains as many ideas as possible. this is the only way to make ONE shard and prevent the creation of thousends of shard.

Calam · **Posted:** Tue Dec 16, 2008 11:01 pm

Rookie86 wrote:

Quote:

But this is a situation where everybody cannot have what they want. We can have lots of shards, as long as there is some central hub of community AND new content where things remain consistent, constant, and reliable.

i think the situation now's normal, many user have their ideas. our assignemt is to collect all this idea and work out a solution who contains as many ideas as possible. this is the only way to make ONE shard and prevent the creation of thousends of shard.

I just don't think that's going to happen. And like I said, I don't want to prevent the creation of many shards; on the contrary, that will create a sense of diversity and change for the game, as well as be a place where Age Creators can test their creations. No, multiple shards isn't the problem.

Rusty_Russell · **Posted:** Tue Dec 16, 2008 11:10 pm

Calam, find the shard that Alahmnat belongs to and join it. (He says, only half-joking). There are people out there who share your view and are actively doing things about it.

Rookie86 · **Joined:** Tue Dec 16, 2008 1:59 pm **Posts:** 7

Quote:

I just don't think that's going to happen. And like I said, I don't want to prevent the creation of many shards; on the contrary, that will create a sense of diversity and change for the game, as well as be a place where Age Creators can test their creations. No, multiple shards isn't the problem.

sorry, i should write thousands of "main-shards". i think also that multiple sharts aren't a problem, but too many groups who want to have the "shards of shards" are a problem. they only split up the community.

Neereus · **Joined:** Sat Nov 18, 2006 7:22 pm **Posts:** 243

From what I'm reading in the article, that's exactly what we will be getting. There will be those that go on their own and have their server separate from others and doing their own thing, but then there will be those that link up as one as described in the article. Either way though, we need more information, which wont come until the next year.

Side note: We will no longer really be using the "shard" structure, so calling them shards is technically incorrect.

Rusty_Russell · **Posted:** Tue Dec 16, 2008 11:14 pm

We won't? What do you understand by a) the shard structure and b) what we're getting?

Neereus · **Joined:** Sat Nov 18, 2006 7:22 pm **Posts:** 243

Rusty_Russell wrote:

We won't? What do you understand by a) the shard structure and b) what we're getting?

Honestly, personally not much, I'm just going by:

Chogon wrote:

Also, the architecture of the MystOnline servers is a *lot* different than the Until Uru servers. The MystOnline servers are very scalable and with some open source programmer help, it should be possible to have one shard (shard is not really a good term here) that has many servers, spread over the world but to the user playing, it will look like just one big server. And it should be possible to make them safe and secure.

Bold on the part I'm referring too, I could have read it wrong, if so sorry, just trying to keep some clarity in a time of a lot of info exchange. :oops:

Rusty_Russell · **Posted:** Tue Dec 16, 2008 11:23 pm

Ok. The shard term comes from Prologue - a server cluster with one common database.
Servers have come a long way since then, so it may be possible to implement on a single server what used to be on a shard.

Joey Zoonishii · **Joined:** Wed May 10, 2006 11:27 pm **Posts:** 963

Yeah, Chogon said something to the effect that all shards would be linked together as one big thing.

~Joey "Biggie Smalls" Lampstein

Rusty_Russell · **Posted:** Tue Dec 16, 2008 11:25 pm

Where, Joey? There's a discussion about a super-shard and scalability elsewhere in this forum.
RW - URU Skynet.

Sasurael · **Joined:** Mon Dec 15, 2008 2:09 pm **Posts:** 7

Neereus wrote:

Rusty_Russell wrote:

We won't? What do you understand by a) the shard structure and b) what we're getting?

Honestly, personally not much, I'm just going by:

Chogon wrote:

Also, the architecture of the MystOnline servers is a *lot* different than the Until Uru servers. The MystOnline servers are very scalable and with some open source programmer help, it should be possible to have one shard (shard is not really a good term here) that has many servers, spread over the world but to the user playing, it will look like just one big server. And it should be possible to make them safe and secure.

Bold on the part I'm referring too, I could have read it wrong, if so sorry, just trying to keep some clarity in a time of a lot of info exchange. :oops:

i think want he meant by that is in UU the was many shard and each one chould have many server but each shard was by it self.

take some IRC server they are link to each other so they all have the same chat rooms no mater witch one you logon to in the link.

so you have many MOUL server all linked to each other share the same data so to the player no mater witch server they logon to it is like one big server they all share the same data so if i am on server A and you are on server B we can still chat any where and see each other in the public places.

Rusty_Russell · **Posted:** Tue Dec 16, 2008 11:39 pm

Do you think that you're going to get URU Skynet (RW, I love that term!) in the new year?

You have to think about what creating it means in practice initially, then adding another server to it at a later date and spanning the (then) existing database across to it. One server, one specific age?

One common, distributed Oracle10G database? Network with failover capacity? Who implements and manages a network on that scale? What about maintenance and backups?

Quote:

We realize that this could turn UruLive into the "wild west" and lead to many fractured and diverse MystOnline servers. But it is our hope that with the help of dedicated core fans (if you are reading this, it probably means you) that a safe and secure MystOnline server set

My reading of the whole paragraph - many servers (which could group into shards) vs a specific shard (not the only one).

RW. · **Joined:** Fri Nov 10, 2006 12:03 am **Posts:** 213

Quote from Chogon

Quote:

The MystOnline servers are very scalable and with some open source programmer help, it should be possible to have one shard...

There is some phraseology in that statement of Chogon's which is very important I think, such as "with some open source programmer help".

That tells me that though there is progress on scalability, there is work yet to be done on the distributive front. Anyone want to estimate how long that will take? I have no idea. I hope it can happen quickly, and even if the coding and testing can be done, the owners of those servers will have to buy in and give up, I anticipate, some control over their assets in HW and what code is loaded, for a stable setup to be implemented.

EDIT: I really think initially, that we are going to have in function something that looks very much like UU did, separate independent shards. But with Cyan running the dataserver, that should help ensure some uniformity and continuity. Even though, as stated, there will be "wild west" shards as well.

Everyone does know this is all conjecture, right? As yet, Cyan has not released anything except stated desire and intent.

I can tell you though, just the concept, the possibility of it happening, really tickles me.

Mr Goodcat · **Joined:** Thu May 21, 2009 10:16 pm **Posts:** 3

The community should come together and agree on one shard provider. Wheather that be an individual or a group, it does not make a difference. Then each user can submit their creations. You can also set up a system that would allow the individual creator to decide if they wish to coose a payment option for their content or make it free. Kind of like an application store except for ages. I could go into more detail of how I think it could work if anyone is interested!

Solving the Shard Crisis

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