Monsters & Memories - Old School Style MMO by Niche Worlds Cult

[Norfleet]

I am pretty sure more than 800 people played Evercrack, though.

 

[GhostCow]

I am pretty sure more than 800 people played Evercrack, though.

Not in a single zone. You do realize that a single server in an MMO is multiple computers strung together running different zones, right? You generally did not have more than 100 people in a zone at a time in EQ. If MnM can handle more people in a zone then it can handle a higher total population too. They just didn't have a bunch of zones to spread the players across. Everyone was in Night Harbor pounding a single cpu.

The test showed them where the bottlenecks were and cpu usage has already been reduced drastically since then. They could have reduced it more during the test too, but that would have required patching the client.

 

[GhostCow]

Full findings from the test, as well as the server specs and some other stuff can be found in this pdf: https://files.catbox.moe/qt4zfs.pdf

 

[fuzz]

So, it's primitive and basic, and yet somehow, the performance is horrific as even the basic test population is melting a 2023 server, whereas Evercrap was able to host larger populations on a 1999 server.

They could, not at the start though. Things stabilize after the population spreads out of the various race starting zones.
Project 1999 launch was a great sight to behold but even when the zones were stable, it was tricky to progress - every fuckin' Decaying Skeleton's spawn-point camped.

(...) When EverQuest's servers first went live, they quickly crashed. To keep EverQuest online, three employees would sit in that freezing cold network room wearing parkas and manually reboot the servers. "Keeping that game up when you didn't know what you were doing, which we didn't, was very hard," Smedley says. "Back then there was no one with launch experience. We were just making it up as we went along."

Few, if anyone, could reliably play EverQuest that day. Smedley, Sites, and the networking team were left scratching their heads until they finally discovered the source of the problem. "One of our network programmers had done his math wrong and it meant we were using eight times more bandwidth than we thought we were," Smedley laughs.

EverQuest was using a network managed by a local service provider called UUnet, also used by several major San Diego corporations. But demand for EverQuest was so much greater than Verant Interactive had planned for that it was exceeding the physical limits of the internet pipeline into San Diego. As a result, not only could thousands of players not explore Norrath, several massive corporations had their networking operations accidentally sabotaged. "Once you go over the limit, it basically boots everyone off the network," Sites explains. (...)

sauce: https://www.pcgamer.com/breaking-th...of-everquest-the-mmo-that-changed-everything/

 

[GhostCow]

Update 31 includes all the stuff from the pdf I posted earlier and more

https://monstersandmemories.com/updates/update-31-stress-test-results

 

[Ol'man]

Servers up for the good ol' 4th of July.

Or for whatever reason. They're up.

 

[ADL]

https://monstersandmemories.com/play
https://monstersandmemories.com/early-access-faq
January 2026 early access release announced.

 

[fuzz]

Haven't been following this closely, but at this rate they've got like Freeport, Northern Desert of Ro and one dungeon "done"? Cool to see nonetheless.

Antonica

This will take a while. Not even whole vanilla EQ on that map.

 

[GhostCow]

Haven't been following this closely, but at this rate they've got like Freeport, Northern Desert of Ro and one dungeon "done"? Cool to see nonetheless.

Antonica

This will take a while. Not even whole vanilla EQ on that map.

I don't think they have a single zone completely finished. The first city had huge portions that were still greybox last time I played a few months ago. Sadly this game is going to get launched far earlier than I wanted it to be, but they are a bunch of guys doing this for free in their free time so it's a miracle if they release at all I guess.

 

[ThewDev]

You wouldn't normally be able to play a game so freely during this stage of development. They're still 18 months out from early access launch, so some grayboxing in the huge city zone doesn't seem concerning.

I've honestly been impressed with the pace of their development. It's been refreshing to see a well-managed classic MMO project, after watching the flaming trash fire that is Pantheon sink into the ocean.

 

[Late Bloomer]

Shawn, Creative Director, has a long-form discussion with small-time, slightly stuttery brit, SuperBitsandBob. It so far, has proven to be an interesting talk.