Vaultaccount wrote on Dec 21
st, 2016 at 12:06pm:
I don't understand why MMOs have "wolrds" anyways.
When EverQuest was first released, the server hardware(top of the line for it's day) could only support about 250 players at a time.
The purpose of having different "worlds" or "servers" is because, until relatively recently, the technology to support massive game populations on a single server didn't exist. More recently, the technology has existed, but was VERY expensive, requiring something called a "cluster" to run.
Today, cluster technology is a hell of a lot cheaper, but 10 years ago when DDO was made? The whole reason we *have* a heavily-instanced game like we do(public instances, private) is because its way cheaper to build and maintain.
There's also a question of game availability - having multiple servers means if one goes down for some reason, gamers can play on another. Granted, most times its all or none with DDO's servers, but the idea is still there.
Now, they COULD do something like that god awful side-scrolling MMO who's name escapes me, wherin your character is stored on a single log-in server and transferred to the game world of your choice every time you log in(changing DDO over to this model would be damn near impossible, but its an option for any new games).
But that's a brief overview of why MMOs have multiple servers.