It definitely is actually “playable” now, and I’ve had a good amount of fun playing it this year, but it certainly isn’t ready for release or anything.
That said, the network infra they have created is pretty cool: 600+ player servers with relatively little issue, and the goal of 1000 long term is quite a feat of engineering.
They fucked themselves overpromising so much back at the beginning by giving the release dates they did while using like, Unity or something, and now they have the infra/engine to deliver, but nobody trusts them to actually do so.
turmacar@lemmy.world 10 hours ago
Are 600 player servers impressive? I’m sure they have plenty of hardware and engineering involved but that doesn’t sound exceptional as much as expected for the scope they’re aiming for.
WoW is a simpler game, in that it’s effectively 2 dimensions and doesn’t involve physics, but that would be a fairly low server population, especially back in it’s heyday. Ditto for many other big MMOs.
EvE has 600+ player battles on a fairly regular basis, much less on a server instance in general.
boywar3@lemmy.world 1 hour ago
I’m not super knowledgeable with how it works, but it is essentially a system for seamless jumps between multiple servers “meshing” them together so there is zero noticeable lag time between them. There isn’t a single loading screen going across multiple star systems, which is a pretty significant achievement, especially given how detailed the game itself is.
I’ve never played World of Warcraft or really any MMO, but it is my understanding that there are areas to load into new places (a short black screen on entering a building, a “portal” to another zone, etc.).
Kolanaki@pawb.social 9 hours ago
Is it 600+ players on a single server, or is it like WoW/UO/EQ where the game world is spread across multiple servers, so it’s not ever actually that many people on a single server? It was kind of important for PvP to know where the server lines were because crossing them caused a spike of lag as it switched the server you were on.
If it was a single server that would be impressive. Otherwise, it’s pretty laughable.
turmacar@lemmy.world 6 hours ago
I can’t imagine it’s a single physical server anymore but a server instance across many blades / VMs / whatever. But absolutely there are many games where “600+” on a server would be considered a sign of a dying population.