Do you have any sources on this? I am genuinely curious.

I’d ask the same of you. I tried looking into it a bit more, but I couldn’t find much information on how they actually split up resources among those 6 servers. I was just listing out some examples of how they could separate the workload between them.

I’m not familiar with Dark Age of Camelot (DAoC) beyond what I can find scanning through some twitch streams. The maps seem tiny (big for its time, but tiny compared to Star Citizen). I am much more familiar with other games that are more comparable to Star Citizen’s scale (like No Man’s Sky, Eve Online, or Elite Dangerous).

In DAoC, I see that there are 4 different “Realms” that make up a gamespace. https://camelotinsider.github.io/albion.html

I’m not sure what’s required to go from realm to realm. Looking at the map from that link it looks like there is some sort of separation between them.

I see loading screens for players jumping into caves:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tt5lbZIdt50&t=70s
Which means that those are most likely handled by a different server.

I also see players being teleported when going into/out of some sort of fort:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOPy3WAlNFk&t=600s

For instance, the player walks up to the door and they can’t see any of the players that are outside of the door/fort. Once they teleport outside of the fort, they look back and can’t see any players that were inside (player tags/names). I’m certain that if anyone tried to peak in through the windows of the fort they wouldn’t see players either.

Server meshing overcomes limitations like that.

So, it seems more likely that some of these 6 servers are dedicated to running different parts of the world and any interaction between those parts are handled with teleporting/loading screens. And then maybe 1 or 2 servers are dedicated to some universal backend database/services that brings everything together.

Most games work hard to disguise loading screens and these separation of boundaries. That’s why we’re seeing a lot more quick cutscenes between areas, or even animations where you crawl through a tight space and conveniently can’t see what was on the other side before doing so. It’s the easy way to handle things and that’s totally fine.

It’s something that Star Citizen doesn’t do, which is why you can be inside a space station and look out the window at players flying around, or be inside a massive ship locked in FPS combat while the pilot is taking you through the wormhole that connects one solar system to another.

That doesn’t sound like server meshing, that just sounds like 6 servers sharing the work load for one area. Most likely a case where one server handles all AI/NPC logic, another handles trading/transactions, another handles health/damage/combat, another handles chat, etc.

Using your Dark Age of Camelot example, server meshing would be expanding the map using 2 different “gamespaces” and allowing players the ability to transition between those gamespaces seamlessly without any loading screens and without realizing that they even crossed a boundary at some point. It let’s you massively expand the area in which you can travel without loading screens.

Thanks for typing that out. I really appreciate the example from your own experience. I’m glad your city didn’t get in too deep with that scammer.

There are a lot of different kinds of scams, not all of them are the best for comparing to something like game development, so maybe we can find something a bit more applicable (like No Man’s Sky).

No Man’s Sky made a lot of big promises leading up to it’s initial release.

Was No Man’s Sky a scam while it was under initial development?

Was No Man’s Sky a scam when it first released?

If yes, was it still a scam while Sean continued to improve the game with the first few updates?

Would you consider No Man’s Sky to be a scam in its current state today?

It really depends on how you define “scam”. It’s not a scam by how I would define it.
With the loosest definition possible, sure. I bought into a scam. I’m not a fan of all their marketing tactics.

But the game is playable enough for me and I really enjoy playing it. I did my research and I knew what I was paying into at the time. I’ve gotten my money’s worth already and I’m still enjoying it, which is a lot better than what I can say for some other games out there.

I mean, that really depends on how you define server meshing.

Star Citizen is the only MMO I’ve seen where you can be standing in one server, look at players/objects in a different server (a few feet away) and actually shoot/interact with those objects without noticing any difference.

The only way you can even tell they’re in a different server is by keeping an eye on a server identifier using some console commands, and walking/flying over the boundary.

In every other MMO the servers are either completely separate, or there’s some sort of loading screen between areas.

For me, I followed the development for about 1-2 years before buying into a starter package. Then, I didn’t spend anything else until I was confident that they would continue to deliver updates (about a year later).

I’ve continued to fund them here and there over the years when I feel like they’ve released some good content, but that’s because I’m comfortable supporting them.

No one actually needs to do that. With $45 you can just go out and do some FPS missions where, at the end, you’re rewarded with some of the higher end ships (Contested Zone gameplay).

Even easier is that you can just hijack an NPC/abandoned ship and, as long as you store it in your hangar at the end of each session, you can keep on using it for anything.

There’s really no need to actually pay for anything beyond the initial starter ship because almost everything else is earnable/hijackable in-game.

I don’t recommend that anyone spend money on this without knowing what they’re actually getting into. $40-45 is all you need to access everything that the game has to offer.

There’s a “freefly” event coming up sometime next month if you want to try it out for yourself and see if you like it or not.

If you do decide to try it out, keep an eye out on the Bug Avoidance Thread that we posted over here: https://lemmy.world/post/27541360

The game can be very buggy, but knowing how to avoid the worst bugs can make a big difference. Even then, there are still bugs that will get you. It’s not for the faint of heart.