Reserve a server for your massive EVE Online battles, and get a smoother ass-kicking experience.
EVE Online's chief claim to fame is it's "single-sharded" architecture: It houses tens of thousands of players, simultaneously. The potential for player-versus-player carnage is huge. But the idea isn't always as sound as it seems, especially when hundreds of players gather in a single location for a good old-fashioned fleet fight and the servers struggle to keep up.
To deal with some of the technical issues that arise, the developers at CCP are asking that players notify game masters at least 24 hours before an attack that is predicted to consist of more than 300 players, in order to reserve dedicated server hardware to ensure a smoother combat experience.
Advanced notification isn't mandatory – it's simply an effort to prepare for server-chaos on the administrative end, so that all parties get a satisfying experience. (Except the losers.)
Massive fleet battles have been a problem for years – with a single, unified universe, and no instanced zones, a mass of players gathered in one location and duking it out can become extremely taxing on EVE's hardware. At best, these lag-plagued battles can turn into something resembling an interactive slideshow, while the largest engagements often cause hardware to fail altogether, disconnecting players from the game until the problem can be remedied.
CCP's response has been to improve the server code and the physical hardware, but their latest effort is a bit unorthodox.
EVE Online is no stranger to scandal, and though the potential for abuse here is incredibly slim, it does require a bit of faith on the part of players – a notion that hasn't escaped EVE's population.
To be fair, the announcement is really a service to the game's subscribers, and streamlines a process that would otherwise result in quite a few headaches. But whether or not there's ever a breach of trust –a game master informing their friends of impending doom – the tinfoil-hat crowd will likely be out in full force.
Then again, if you need insider information to figure out that hundreds of enemy ships are approaching your general location, you've got bigger problems than a lack of scruples.
Image courtesy CCP
Planning A Large Fleet Fight? Please Let Us Know [EVE Online]
