Hi there! You are currently browsing as a guest. Why not create an account? Then you get less ads, can thank creators, post feedback, keep a list of your favourites, and more!
Field Researcher
#51 Old 14th May 2009 at 1:03 PM
Quote: Originally posted by McNum
It makes a lot of sense for EA to stagger the release over a week. They don't want to repeat the Spore fiasco where the registration server died. Granted, Sims 3 does not need online activation like Spore, but getting a free neighborhood for registering is a mighty fine deal. So I expect the servers to be slammed by eager new Sims 3 owners.

If every single player buying the game on day 1 worldwide had to access the server within the first 24 hours, it will die. It happened for Spore, it happened for Half-Life 2 way back when that was released, it will happen for Sims 3 if everyone registers at the same time. So the release is staggered. There'll probably be some server trouble, anyway, but hopefully it will be manageable.

I expect to get mine on the 4th, June 5th is a national holiday here, so we'll get the game the day before a three day weekend. Handy.

I totally agree with you there!
Advertisement
#52 Old 14th May 2009 at 1:42 PM
Well you might be right, but I cant help but wonder why we get it after the US in Europe, and not before. We typically get bummed on these things.
#53 Old 14th May 2009 at 1:55 PM
Quote: Originally posted by Arcadus
Well you might be right, but I cant help but wonder why we get it after the US in Europe, and not before. We typically get bummed on these things.

Probably due to language and shipping. EA likes to localize for pretty much any language in Europe, and while the language programming is done already each country has to get its own covers, manuals, and disks printed. On the bright side, the Danish manuals are usually hilarious, not because they're good, but because of the... interesting choices of translation. No manual beats the Super Smash Bros. Melee manual in Danish (which literally encourages you to hurt yourself in order to perform some moves), but the The Sims 2 and expansions manuals come close.

That and they're probably doing it on purpose. Look on the bright side: If there are server problems anyway, us who are getting the game 3-4 days later will avoid most of it.
#54 Old 14th May 2009 at 3:32 PM
Quote: Originally posted by McNum
It makes a lot of sense for EA to stagger the release over a week. They don't want to repeat the Spore fiasco where the registration server died. Granted, Sims 3 does not need online activation like Spore, but getting a free neighborhood for registering is a mighty fine deal. So I expect the servers to be slammed by eager new Sims 3 owners.

If every single player buying the game on day 1 worldwide had to access the server within the first 24 hours, it will die. It happened for Spore, it happened for Half-Life 2 way back when that was released, it will happen for Sims 3 if everyone registers at the same time. So the release is staggered. There'll probably be some server trouble, anyway, but hopefully it will be manageable.

I dont really buy that. Why can't they just 'bottleneck' the amount of people registering at one time? That way, 95% of us would probably get a 'server busy. try later' message on launch day, but so what? At least the game would be in our hands, and on June 3rd we can simply try again.

This would be much fairer!
#55 Old 14th May 2009 at 4:50 PM
Quote: Originally posted by tizerist_
I dont really buy that. Why can't they just 'bottleneck' the amount of people registering at one time? That way, 95% of us would probably get a 'server busy. try later' message on launch day, but so what? At least the game would be in our hands, and on June 3rd we can simply try again.

This would be much fairer!


Again, it's sheer volume. It's not hard to imagine Sims 3 selling close to a million worldwide on all the day ones combined, and the game apparently heavily hints that registering it at EA is a good idea, so let's lowball and say 50% of the people buying the game will register it on day one. 500,000 registrations. Now each of these will be allowed to download Riverside, a completely new neighborhood. For a comparison, TS2 Strangetown is by default 92MB, and with the whole baked in terrain and open neighborhood thing going on, I'd be surprised if Riverside isn't at least three times that.

500,000 * 300MB = 150,000,000MB = 150TB.

But granted, we don't all have to download at the same time of day, so let's account for time zones and such and divide it by 24 hours.

150TB/day / 24 = 6.25TB/hour.

Divide again to find per minute.

6,250GB/hour / 60 = 104GB/minute.

And finally:

104GB/minute / 60 = 1.74GB/second.

To put into perspective, EA servers would have to pump out the equivalent of the The Sims 2 base game every two seconds for this.

Now, EA has a lot of cash, yes, they could afford a 2GB/second connection. But this is a conservative estimate on my part, if Riverview is 500MB, I wouldn't be surprised, and this isn't counting people spending their free $10 on the Sims 3 Store.

So a staggered release is annoying to us on the slow end, but to EA, it's a necessary evil. With it, the servers are going to be slow, without it, they'll die. Expect slowness on day one, and throughout the launch week.

And bottlenecking won't work. There's too much hamster in us for that. What do I mean?

"The Sims 3 server is busy, please try again later."
*RELOAD*
"The Sims 3 server is busy, please try again later."
*RELOAD*
"The Sims 3 server is busy, please try again later."
*RELOAD*
"The Sims 3 server is busy, please try again later."
*RELOAD*
...

You get the idea. And don't tell me you wouldn't. I know I would. That will combined turn into an unintentional DDoS attack on the servers, crippling them even more.

It's all about numbers here. You don't think EA would love to have our cash sooner? They pretty much have to do it like this, or face an angry mob of... well... us.
#56 Old 14th May 2009 at 5:12 PM
Or they could just set up a download client with P2P functionality and minimize server load.
#57 Old 14th May 2009 at 9:13 PM
That and they're probably doing it on purpose. Look on the bright side: If there are server problems anyway, us who are getting the game 3-4 days later will avoid most of it.
#58 Old 14th May 2009 at 9:52 PM
Quote: Originally posted by McNum
"The Sims 3 server is busy, please try again later."
*RELOAD*
"The Sims 3 server is busy, please try again later."
*RELOAD*
...

You get the idea. And don't tell me you wouldn't. I know I would.


Oh no, I totally would, if I was eager enough :evilnod:

They could get round this issue if they really wanted to, and they won't!!
Argh!
Quote: Originally posted by Arcadus
Or they could just set up a download client with P2P functionality and minimize server load.

Yes, there it is. It can be done.
#59 Old 14th May 2009 at 10:41 PM
Yeah, they could P2P it, I think World of Warcraft does that. But, you know, it's EA. Getting them to drop SecuROM and mandatory online activation was hard enough.

Having them decentralize the content server? Yeah... no. That's not the EA way. They want that EA Download Manager installed everywhere, and for that they need a central server and then sucking up the bandwidth bills. The hardcore geek inside me wants to know the monthly bandwidth use of EA combined, but I usually ignore him...

*looks at my previous post*

Usually.
Page 3 of 3
Back to top