My two cents as a IT specialist (I'm a CCNP).
This is why I was talking about sharding. Basically each server is a collection of different servers with one handling traffic flow. Each sub server acts as it's own server sending general updates back and forth with the main server(s) to keep track of were all the players are, there messages and chat, dealing with background task, etc. This doesn't make it limitless but you can deal with a very large user base (EVE is shard based and has a single server that deals with tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands).
In the perfect set up Players only talk to the log in server and the shard they are currently using, the interconnect servers are only used for those background task and inter-shard chat and a secondary transfer server is used for changing shards.
Some claim it breaks immersion, but having to OOC to decide which shard to play on isn't the end of the world and can remove you from issues with trolls/harassment and in general are more efficient than just stacking servers into a single instance. It's about good data management and redundancy but requires a high initial investment.
This is were I think that SE decided not to utilize this system, cost. They could not predict that we would have this large of a player base at once. I'm sure they are using a classic form of zone servers like in FFXI (which is why we have to load into each sub area) but if to many people are on at once in one zone well... there you go.
So yes, more servers can help, alot. AFK timers too. But more servers would only help in the right style of infrastructure, and with them operating on the Zone method I think it would require a lot of time to utilize.
This is why I was talking about sharding. Basically each server is a collection of different servers with one handling traffic flow. Each sub server acts as it's own server sending general updates back and forth with the main server(s) to keep track of were all the players are, there messages and chat, dealing with background task, etc. This doesn't make it limitless but you can deal with a very large user base (EVE is shard based and has a single server that deals with tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands).
In the perfect set up Players only talk to the log in server and the shard they are currently using, the interconnect servers are only used for those background task and inter-shard chat and a secondary transfer server is used for changing shards.
Some claim it breaks immersion, but having to OOC to decide which shard to play on isn't the end of the world and can remove you from issues with trolls/harassment and in general are more efficient than just stacking servers into a single instance. It's about good data management and redundancy but requires a high initial investment.
This is were I think that SE decided not to utilize this system, cost. They could not predict that we would have this large of a player base at once. I'm sure they are using a classic form of zone servers like in FFXI (which is why we have to load into each sub area) but if to many people are on at once in one zone well... there you go.
So yes, more servers can help, alot. AFK timers too. But more servers would only help in the right style of infrastructure, and with them operating on the Zone method I think it would require a lot of time to utilize.
