Moving the servers to Europe?

[Littlebear 3]

Norad is japanese

[Malaclypse 3]

Norad is japanese

Norad-san wa nihon ni haite imasu ka

People often confuse nationality and location...

[vinius 1,496]

Norad-chan wa kawaii desuka

[Epic Server 0]

there are acutally alot of jap players. i roleplay'd pearl harbor with them 2 days ago

[Scribbles 1]

In a game where the average action timer takes around ten seconds, I can't imagine having your ping go from 200 to 400 will make such a massive impact. Europeans have been dealing with it for ages. Wurm Online does not have any twitch gameplay that requires you to have a good ping, in fact, the lag on Freedom has been pretty bad the last few days, and it hasn't messed with the playability one bit.

If this server move is beneficial to Wurm's development, then it is a good move.

[KyleBooze 451]

If this server move is beneficial to Wurm's development, then it is a good move.

Just like PvP on the home servers was beneficial to Wurm's development?

[Scribbles 1]

If this server move is beneficial to Wurm's development, then it is a good move.

Just like PvP on the home servers was beneficial to Wurm's development?

What does that have to do with anything? That's completely unrelated to anything being discussed.

[Friend 2]

he means that it can be a problem in pvp.

in 1v1's, lag is used to get behind enemies

[Gavin 971]

For example Japan, there are alot of Japanese players in wurm - even a few villages dedicated to Japanese players only:

You're just making this up.

I'm not, Gummo is one that has made themselves well known and was extremely active on wild, and now are on Freedom, from what I understand not all of them speak English which is why they don't post poop on the forums all day which may make you think there are no Japanese wurm players, when really, there are. There are more villages dedicated to Japanese people on Freedom, but the names of them escape me. There is also two Japanese players on my village on wild. You could even possibly go so far to argue Rockcliff on Freedom is a village dedicated to Australians as the majority of them are last I talked with them ;-)

Regardless of who plays Wurm or not there are 6.7 billion in this planet, only 0.7 of those reside in Europe. Statistically, Europe is only 10% of the world, why some don't see moving a server to a location that will negatively impact almost all of the remaining 90% when Europe already have fantastic pings into USA as a poor idea is beyond me.

In a game where the average action timer takes around ten seconds

Exactly, it's bad enough as is..

I can't imagine having your ping go from 200 to 400 will make such a massive impact.

200 to 400 adds one fifth of a second to each action, for each 5 actions you do that is one second, do 50 actions - that is 10 seconds.

Considering Wurm is a game where just to make a crappy 1x1 house takes thousands of actions, it certainly will be a massive impact.

Europeans have been dealing with it for ages.

Are you reading my posts at all?? No they are not... It's 70ms from London to New York, they are not dealing with sht...

Did you look at all the traces I posted from various locations a page back?? It clearly showed every country taking a detour through USA to get to Europe..

Yeah, poor Europeans, a whole 70ms lag, many put up with 250-300 on a daily basis, but it's okay, because they are not Europe who is apparently the earth revolves around?

Wurm Online does not have any twitch gameplay that requires you to have a good ping, in fact, the lag on Freedom has been pretty bad the last few days, and it hasn't messed with the playability one bit.

Well, for a start the wild server practically revolves around 'twitch gameplay' - but that aside as pointed out above Wurm requires you to do several hundred actions for even simple tasks, and moderate tasks will be tens of thousands - it all adds up quickly.

If this server move is beneficial to Wurm's development, then it is a good move.

No one has provided any reasoning as to why it is beneficial yet, time zones are a non issue, and Rolf can use his own server gear via co-location.

If something is beneficial to the game I'll certainly entertain the idea, I even recently made a topic suggesting some possible solutions to get the player cap on Freedom lifted, so Rolf buying these new servers may have been caused by me, we need a new server badly, I agree, simply locking Wurm players out with a cap is not a good option - but I see absolutely zero reason to move the server to a location that will provide a horrible playing experience to over 85% of the world should they decide to try Wurm.

If Rolf provided a good reason as to why he was moving them on his blog, I'd deal w/ it, but he didn't, and I see no logical reason to do so.

[Gavin 971]

and your speaking to someone who knows what they are talking about when you call

lol !

Have you ever been in contact with a data center that isn't some backyard operation before?

[ago 470]

Event though I might get slower roundtrip times if the servers were located I think Gavin brings some good arguments. Putting the servers in the center of the network traffic is definitly a good option.

But I also think it's rather useless to argue about how many people are locate where in the world. Rolf lives in Sweden and having the servers close to his location is a valid option too. So it's basicly in Rolfs hand to decide now that he got good arguments opposed to the move.

[sirex 0]

and your speaking to someone who knows what they are talking about when you call

lol !

Have you ever been in contact with a data center that isn't some backyard operation before?

I'd certainly hope so, it's essentially the bulk of my job.

edit: Anyhow this is all an aside. 250ms ping on wurm isnt going to be a problem. So i'm backing rolf's logic (for once)

[Gavin 971]

I'd certainly hope so, it's essentially the bulk of my job.

Strange. I have dealt with some large US server providers, such as Softlayer and Layeredtech and even in the middle of US night I always got stuff sorted almost instantly.

edit: Anyhow this is all an aside. 250ms ping on wurm isnt going to be a problem. So i'm backing rolf's logic (for once)

-edit- most of the countries I list already get 250ms or more ping to wurm, as is.

[Scribbles 1]

Wurm Online does not have any twitch gameplay that requires you to have a good ping, in fact, the lag on Freedom has been pretty bad the last few days, and it hasn't messed with the playability one bit.

Well, for a start the wild server practically revolves around 'twitch gameplay' - but that aside as pointed out above Wurm requires you to do several hundred actions for even simple tasks, and moderate tasks will be tens of thousands - it all adds up quickly.

The only time someone should ever use 'Wurm PVP' in a discussion is when it's being used as a punchline.

[Wolfram 30]

Being an Australian, I find this topic extremely interesting. I have to say that I agree that leaving the servers in the US would be best for the whole community. However, I assume that Rolf's main incentive is monetary. There is no doubt that wurm still is (& if we are honest, probably always will be) a fairly small operation. Therefore, if the servers get moved to Europe, then that's ok with me.

I want to point out though are that Wurm's population is a lot more diverse than some people are suggesting.

Here's a quick example. There are so many Japanese players that they have their own wiki here:

http://wurm.mmorpgplayer.com/ (it's in japanese so run it through google translate or something) I first found out about this wiki a couple of years ago & it already had a fair amount of info. Here are some stats (in broken translator english):

2010-12-08

phentermine

Help

Comments / diary to Kitou

RecentChanges

2010-12-02

Wurm + Online

2010-11-26

Wurm Online

2010-11-23

Guest

2010-11-17

??? � Ó? È / ¤ Æ ¤? ¤ È ¤ | Æü??

2010-11-14

RecentDeleted

2010-07-29

Dog

Counter 36 034

That's last updated 2 days ago & the site has had 34k page hits.

Gavin is right, these players tend to keep to themselves, probably because many of them don't speak english.

The other thing to keep in mind is that almost everyone tends to play at primetime. Therefore, they will most commonly encounter people who are from the same country. Talk to some of the players we have who, for various reasons like physical pain &/or injury, play around the clock. They will most likely have friends from all over the world.

Unfortunately, I've never seen the analytics that contain the data on where players hail from, but I do seem to recall Rolf or Notch once expressing surprise at how diverse our community really is.

[Othob Rithol 700]

For doubting freedomites - there is a sizable population of Japanese players that keep mostly to the area between Akhenaten and Tenakill. The area looks empty on the map because they don't generally interact with this forum or the central Wurm community. But there are some nice people there and I don't think they should be shafted just because a few of you feel snarky.

A good question for you routing specialists would be what areas in Europe are their good connections to that a source in these more remote pacific areas do usually have a good route to generally? (Thanks by the way Emerald, because you might have already answered that.)

[Gavin 971]

A good question for you routing specialists would be what areas in Europe are their good connections to that a source in these more remote pacific areas do usually have a good route to generally? (Thanks by the way Emerald, because you might have already answered that.)

For the most part, nowhere in Europe really - if you take a look at the traces I posted, or look at www.traceroute.org and mess around with looking glasses in various countries - almost all countries outside of US and Europe + Russia will take a detour through New York to get to Europe. Even places like China and India who are much closer to Europe than US and cables certainly go that direction - it's just something very few ISP's bother with as it's cost prohibitive.

[Malaclypse 3]

If Rolf provided a good reason as to why he was moving them on his blog, I'd deal w/ it, but he didn't, and I see no logical reason to do so.

It's his money, server, game, so he doesn't need to provide a reason.  He thinks will be "better", compared to where it's currently hosted, that reason enough.

I have a hosted server in Oz, and honestly it's a pita at times when you need to speak to a boss or sales rep, or argue over your bill. Being hosted in America is reason enough for the move.  The game will still be playable, at least.

[Othob Rithol 700]

A good question for you routing specialists would be what areas in Europe are their good connections to that a source in these more remote pacific areas do usually have a good route to generally? (Thanks by the way Emerald, because you might have already answered that.)

For the most part, nowhere in Europe really - if you take a look at the traces I posted, or look at www.traceroute.org and mess around with looking glasses in various countries - almost all countries outside of US and Europe + Russia will take a detour through New York to get to Europe. Even places like China and India who are much closer to Europe than US and cables certainly go that direction - it's just something very few ISP's bother with as it's cost prohibitive.

Understood, but that ("not in Europe") is most likely not an option from Rolf's perspective. You've made your case and you've made it well...but you might want to formulate a second suggestion to avoid Rolf saying

sorry can't do it...so the server is going to be in <name place you have universally awful connection to unless you are Europe/E. US>

[Gavin 971]

If Europe is the only option, Frankfurt would likely be the best - largest internet exchange in the world there, center of EU amongst other things.

It's his money, server, game, so he doesn't need to provide a reason.  He thinks will be "better", compared to where it's currently hosted, that reason enough.

Still, nothing wrong with pointing out something that might have been overlooked with said decision.

[Malaclypse 3]

If Europe is the only option, Frankfurt would likely be the best - largest internet exchange in the world there, center of EU amongst other things.

Frankfurt, Amsterdam and London are the main hubs, and the usual places for hosting MMO type applications.  That said, Germany and Scandinavia seem to have a very good infrastructure generally.  About 10 years ago my hotel in Uppsala, Sweden had 10MB fibre connections.  I never had any trouble playing MMO's, never wanted to go home.

It's his money, server, game, so he doesn't need to provide a reason.  He thinks will be "better", compared to where it's currently hosted, that reason enough.

Still, nothing wrong with pointing out something that might have been overlooked with said decision.

Nothing wrong with that, and you've done it very passionately.  But when you start having to justify it, you've probably done it enough.

[maluraq 0]

A good question for you routing specialists would be what areas in Europe are their good connections to that a source in these more remote pacific areas do usually have a good route to generally? (Thanks by the way Emerald, because you might have already answered that.)

For the most part, nowhere in Europe really - if you take a look at the traces I posted, or look at www.traceroute.org and mess around with looking glasses in various countries - almost all countries outside of US and Europe + Russia will take a detour through New York to get to Europe. Even places like China and India who are much closer to Europe than US and cables certainly go that direction - it's just something very few ISP's bother with as it's cost prohibitive.

The Internet reasoning here being peering and route costs.

If China <-> USA has large peering arrangements (high traffic volume) and Europe <-> USA is the same, but China <-> Europe don't have high volumes, then the routes will be sent down the lower cost (high volume) peer links in most cases. 

Modern routing is designed to be cost efficient more than time efficient, for obvious reasons.  As such, any link between two sites with lower-than-normal shared traffic volumes will probably go through a very high volume common intermediary.