What's the current record for the number of players in an online game?

Azureth

Azureth

Supreme [H]ardness
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I wonder about this, particularly in regards to action games like Warhawk. I know Resistance 2 has modes that support something like 60 players, but I was wondering if any game has gone higher. I suspect some MMORPGs would, although I'm not sure if those are as action-intensive as something like Warhawk (which for the uninformed supports 32 players online).

The reason I ask is because I've been daydreaming about Starhawk lately, hoping it's a PS3 sequel to Warhawk and that it doubles the number of players in an online match, bringing the total to 64 players for even bigger battles. I wasn't sure if current technology could support that many players, or if it could support them smoothly for that matter (I've never seen the Warhawk engine stutter, even at 32 players).

The idea of 32v32, or 16v16v16v16, is tasty.
 
IL2:1946 Supports up to 128 players.

but its a combat flight sim..so not your typical action game.
 
Everquest had 72-person raids in The Planes Of Power expansion. And by that I mean that if you didn't have 72 people show up for the raid, you were probably going to fail it (especially the Plane Of Water raid). After that, SOE backed off, eventually reducing the raid limit to 48 for future expansions.
 
From what I've heard, EVE Online gets past a thousand on occasion. Not that the servers cope with it particularly well...
 
Col_Hogan said:
IL2:1946 Supports up to 128 players.

but its a combat flight sim..so not your typical action game.
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Indeed, and those furballs can be CRAZY. Doesn't happen often, though (most servers only seem to do that on special occasions), and it benefits a lot from the fact that aircraft can only do so much. You can't be moving forward and suddenly move backwards or double-jump in three different directions. Oh, and as ammo is REALLY limited on WW2 fighters, there usually isn't any shooting happening (and when it does, it's in very short bursts).

As to more conventional FPSs, I think Planetside counts. An attack on a continents 'capital' base would regularly peg the cap at 200 players. And it's a shooter. An honest-to-gods "aim at the target, pull the trigger" shooter, no stats affecting accuracy or damage or any of that. (FWIW, Planetside was CRAZY fun in its heyday - all it needed was competent dev support instead of SOE and a graphics update or two and it would still be rocking today)
 
Massive Action Game (MAG) is supposed to have 256-player mode:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massive_Action_Game

"The game will utilize a new server architecture to support online battles with up to 256 players, with users divided into 8-player squads. Each squad will be led by a player who has advanced through the game's ranking system.
# 256-player Domination mode. Attackers and defenders. Outer layer of defense and inner layer. Once through the outer layer 'hell breaks loose'. Anti-aircraft and radar are vulnerable. If your faction wins a lot it gets the contract for that game mode and gets XP bonuses and perks.
# Three other game modes: Acquisition (128-player escort-style mode. Steal 2 prototype armored transports and bring to extraction zone). Sabotage (64-player, control 2 points for X time then a demolition objective is revealed which must be destroyed). Suppression (64-player team deathmatch)"
 
Azureth said:
I wonder about this, particularly in regards to action games like Warhawk. I know Resistance 2 has modes that support something like 60 players, but I was wondering if any game has gone higher. I suspect some MMORPGs would, although I'm not sure if those are as action-intensive as something like Warhawk (which for the uninformed supports 32 players online).

The reason I ask is because I've been daydreaming about Starhawk lately, hoping it's a PS3 sequel to Warhawk and that it doubles the number of players in an online match, bringing the total to 64 players for even bigger battles. I wasn't sure if current technology could support that many players, or if it could support them smoothly for that matter (I've never seen the Warhawk engine stutter, even at 32 players).

The idea of 32v32, or 16v16v16v16, is tasty.
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WoW - 40 vs 40 AV

although that is usually more of both sides passing each other on mounts and racing to PvE
 
WoW... join a Wintergrasp battle anytime between noon and midnight. THAT is massive multiplayer gaming. At least 4 or 5 full raids (at 40 ppl each raid... x2 factions... so... 400+ people. easily)
 
Atlantica Online is bringing out 100v100 battles soon. No one really seems to know how that'll work, yet. Eve Online and the Tarren Mill in the earlier days of WoW probably beat out everything else, though...
 
Well most people in an open world is a tough one, since many MMO's have instancing... But the bar is always being pushed, and I'm sure you will find that even some older FPS can support a plethora of players at once with ease.
 
Hooligan said:
WoW... join a Wintergrasp battle anytime between noon and midnight. THAT is massive multiplayer gaming. At least 4 or 5 full raids (at 40 ppl each raid... x2 factions... so... 400+ people. easily)
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It's also laggier then any other game so not sure it can count. I've lost many battles on my server do to this lag, sometimes with seconds left.
 
Planetside an FPS MMO originally supported a player cap of something in the order of ~133 per team, with a max of 3 teams.

So on any one continent you could get ~399 people, thats a more modern cap with smaller servers, Im sure it was higher at one point, possibly 166 per side or something of that order, either way its a crap load of people.
 
Frostex said:
Eve is massively instanced, despite what people seem to think.
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I've seen 1100+ in a single system, in a single battle.

Can't remember how the sides actually compared, but that's the biggest I can think of.
 
Hauki said:
I've seen 1100+ in a single system, in a single battle.

Can't remember how the sides actually compared, but that's the biggest I can think of.
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We hit 1400 the other day in a single system.
 
64 players at one time is not new to the action scene. quake 2 had maps released that were a compilation of couple regular maps put together with addictional areas for 64 players. I believe at one of the quakecons they had a challenge with quake 3 that was called crash the server. where they stacked like around 115-130 peeple trying to crash the then released athlon chip on q3dm17. didnt happened.. funny thing with that, was some guy grabed a quad damage and shot the middle!
 
DAoC Used to hit 300vs300 on the EU servers sometimes more. the battles were great :D
 
Hooligan said:
WoW... join a Wintergrasp battle anytime between noon and midnight. THAT is massive multiplayer gaming. At least 4 or 5 full raids (at 40 ppl each raid... x2 factions... so... 400+ people. easily)
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Which is almost unplayable due to lag. No thanks. I'll go back to grinding leathers.
 
OldPueblo said:
What's your definition of instanced and is it the same as other MMORPGs? That's the point.
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Instances have technical meaning, it's a copy of code or in an MMO a copy of a particular part of the game, to allow many people to experience the same content without overloading the server or in some cases spoiling the content.

Eve instances many of its areas in fact Eve really isn't one large open universe its just 1000's of seperate very large areas.

Eve specifically instances all the areas you go on missions, so if I go mission running Im basically spending about 80% of my time in intanced space on my lonesome.

Its easy to cram 1400 players into the same area when most of the time all the players are basically blips on a radar, rarely are you close up enough to another ship to actually make out any detail.

I've said this before about eve, but it could easily be a browser based "MMO", in fact it would benefit greatly from it in many ways.
 
True, however unlike other MMORPG's you have the ability to get right to the action with everyone, it's not fully walled off. I can jump across the entire EVE universe or warp to anywhere in a system.
 
Frostex said:
Eve specifically instances all the areas you go on missions, so if I go mission running Im basically spending about 80% of my time in intanced space on my lonesome.
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When you're running your mission, you're in the same space as everyone else. You can be tracked, probed and subsequently killed. I do it all the time.

The point being, all 51,000 players CAN interact with each other. With other MMO's that's 100% impossible.
 
Frostex said:
Planetside an FPS MMO originally supported a player cap of something in the order of ~133 per team, with a max of 3 teams.

So on any one continent you could get ~399 people, thats a more modern cap with smaller servers, Im sure it was higher at one point, possibly 166 per side or something of that order, either way its a crap load of people.
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Dude, that game was totally friggin insane!!!!!! The Lasher is stupid overpowered now, but yeah great game in it's day.
 
Frostex said:
Instances have technical meaning, it's a copy of code or in an MMO a copy of a particular part of the game, to allow many people to experience the same content without overloading the server or in some cases spoiling the content.

Eve instances many of its areas in fact Eve really isn't one large open universe its just 1000's of seperate very large areas.

Eve specifically instances all the areas you go on missions, so if I go mission running Im basically spending about 80% of my time in intanced space on my lonesome.

Its easy to cram 1400 players into the same area when most of the time all the players are basically blips on a radar, rarely are you close up enough to another ship to actually make out any detail.

I've said this before about eve, but it could easily be a browser based "MMO", in fact it would benefit greatly from it in many ways.
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All MMO's are instanced. But in EVE you can see interact with others at any time and any where. You aren't walled off from others. And they hold the record for the most people online in a single game world at somewhere around 55k.
And no, you aren't instanced on a mission.
 
Well I'd agree that technically he is, but maybe instanced isn't the right word. Or at least it can't be applied to both. When you are on a mission you do exist in a different part of space (not the same grid), if you wanted to draw a comparison you could maybe consider it playing TF2 on the same server as someone else, but you are in a different map. But you can teleport back and forth between maps. Also this is a bad analogy. :p
 
Frostex said:
Instances have technical meaning, it's a copy of code or in an MMO a copy of a particular part of the game, to allow many people to experience the same content without overloading the server or in some cases spoiling the content.

Eve instances many of its areas in fact Eve really isn't one large open universe its just 1000's of seperate very large areas.

Eve specifically instances all the areas you go on missions, so if I go mission running Im basically spending about 80% of my time in intanced space on my lonesome.

Its easy to cram 1400 players into the same area when most of the time all the players are basically blips on a radar, rarely are you close up enough to another ship to actually make out any detail.

I've said this before about eve, but it could easily be a browser based "MMO", in fact it would benefit greatly from it in many ways.
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:eek: You don't know what instanced means. Archer75 already explained why. Eve is not instanced.

No MMO is seamless. All that matters is if they give the illusion of being seamless.

For example in WoW to generate the illusion they use advanced techniques to preload anything not within your visibility range. Therefore that the moment you cross over a zone line everything is processed instantly making it feel seamless.

To answer the OP.

The largest mmo with FPS mechanics was Planetside with 360 players in close proximity to each other. (think of the size of football stadium)
But Darkfall I've heard has exceeded that but since that game has a bottleneck on sales since its launch a couple of months back I can't confirm their numbers.

The largest mmo with point and click mechanics is either Eve or a chinese mmo I heard about called ZT Online. I don't play on chinese servers but I read up on some MMO news and pick up on details like this.
 
squishy said:
When you're running your mission, you're in the same space as everyone else. You can be tracked, probed and subsequently killed. I do it all the time.

The point being, all 51,000 players CAN interact with each other. With other MMO's that's 100% impossible.
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EVE Online is listed as one of the MMOs that do instancing, in the wikipedia article on Instance dungeons. I don't play EVE so I don't know how instancing is used there.

I was playing Everquest both before instancing was introduced (in the 6th expansion, Lost Dungeons Of Norrath) and after, and the difference in the way people played was dramatic. Before, guilds were constantly in heavy conflict with each other over who got to use a zone. Afterwards, you could go weeks without ever seeing another guild. It was definitely a mixed result; you got rid of a lot of bad stupid stuff (one guild could deny every other guild on the server access to the upper half of the Planes of Power expansion for six months at a time), but you also got rid of interaction with other guilds entirely, kind of like throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
 
Frostex said:
Eve specifically instances all the areas you go on missions, so if I go mission running Im basically spending about 80% of my time in intanced space on my lonesome.
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Eve instances areas like missions, but this is not an instance in the way most MMO players would know it. In WoW, if I enter a dungeon I get MY copy of that dungeon. You can't come in unless I let you, and if I leave and go back it'll still be there(within the confines of how that system works regarding resets). In Eve, the area and its contents exist for anyone and everyone. There is no "my mission, your mission" in the sense that in other MMO's people are actually given their very own "instance". You may spend that time alone, but that's only because nobody decided to/was able to track you down and harass you/salvage your wrecks etc.

Regardless, the reason *why* Eve operates this way is two-fold. First, having the missions set-up any other way wouldn't really work based on how Eve does things. Second, Eve deals with scales other games can't hope to touch. You could fit every single 3D game "level", lined up in a row, in a single Eve sector, and you likely wouldn't make it out past the orbit of the first planet.

Outer space is huge and empty. What did you expect? To be able to look out your window and say "Oh look, there's Joe 178AU off my starboard side."
 
Planetside for action gaming.

Also, I believe there were some servers that ran 64 players in Tribes 2 if I remember correctly.
 
Mr. Miyagi said:
Damn I miss that game.
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i loved it when it first came out, you had some awesome clans with good servers, then they all just filled up with people who would take a heli with no one on it and leave everyone stranded 20mins from the battle!
 
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