Official Live! prices announced

[Powderkeg]

Well, you can chat with people playing different Blizzard games.

Then it's an inferior service.

Also, if I'm playing one game, do I really want an invite to a different one?

You might. You might be sitting around bored, decide to play a game, and suddenly you get an invite from your best friend, but he's playing a different one. Would you rather sit and play your game not knowing anyone who you are playing with, or switch games, and play with or against your best friend?

And I don't want video chat while I'm playing a game.

It's optional, but it's there. I'm sure there are a lot of people that would like that feature. I wouldn't use it, but others would. Again, it's superior to what you are offered on the PC.

Don't get me wrong, I'm a PC gamer before a console gamer, but Live offers features and a level of standardization that simply aren't found in PC games.

 

[The Postman]

What does Live offer over standard free gaming on PC's or PS2?

Live doesnt have people on dial up lagging everyone else (which alone is worth $50 if you ask me), its a hell of a lot faster then battle.net and other such free services, it has way less cheaters, standard voice chat, same user name across all games and many other things I can't be bothered to list. All round it is far superior to the other services provided.

 

[Reznor007]

Then it's an inferior service.



You might. You might be sitting around bored, decide to play a game, and suddenly you get an invite from your best friend, but he's playing a different one. Would you rather sit and play your game not knowing anyone who you are playing with, or switch games, and play with or against your best friend?



It's optional, but it's there. I'm sure there are a lot of people that would like that feature. I wouldn't use it, but others would. Again, it's superior to what you are offered on the PC.

Don't get me wrong, I'm a PC gamer before a console gamer, but Live offers features and a level of standardization that simply aren't found in PC games.

About game invitations...sure it's nice and all, but since I would have to get up and change the game disc, how is that any more convenient than say, me playing D2 and have a friend message me saying come play War3? I have to quit the game and load War3(and on PC you can use disc images to avoid swapping discs). On my computer it's as easy as hitting quit, then clicking on War3. On a console you'd have to get up, pull out your current game, put in the new one and sit back down.

And just because Live requires ethernet doesn't mean everyone has high speed. Some people use satellite internet which is horribly slow(latency wise), some use 256kb dsl. Most people that play PC games online use high speed only.

 

[mesyn191]

Iif Blizzard includes a lifetime of free service into their normally priced PC games, why can't MS?

Because thier bandwidth and server hosting costs are near zero thanks to the inheritly low bandwidth/server space needed in thier games, so they can get away with "hiding" the upkeep costs in the retail price. X360 gaming servers will have MUCH higher bandwidth costs and upkeep expenses and ping should be all around better to (FYI I've got 5MB Cox cable connection but always ping over 200 in WoW and D2 I regularly lag out, to many DoD servers on the other hand I can get sub 20ms pings in game... Bnet's servers suck ass folks...).

 

[Reznor007]

Iif Blizzard includes a lifetime of free service into their normally priced PC games, why can't MS?

Because thier bandwidth and server hosting costs are near zero thanks to the inheritly low bandwidth/server space needed in thier games, so they can get away with "hiding" the upkeep costs in the retail price. X360 gaming servers will have MUCH higher bandwidth costs and upkeep expenses and ping should be all around better to (FYI I've got 5MB Cox cable connection but always ping over 200 in WoW and D2 I regularly lag out, to many DoD servers on the other hand I can get sub 20ms pings in game... Bnet's servers suck ass folks...).

I frequently get a ping of 50 in D2 on my 3meg DSL connection(and I live way out in the country). I used to be on 5meg Cox cable also(my roomate works for Cox by the way), and still had 50-90 ping(had to cancel cable when I moved). I don't see how you say that their server costs are nothing. For D2 alone each account can have 8 characters, and you can make an unlimited number of accounts, many people have 2-3 extra accounts just to store extra items. During the game the server generates the levels at random(some places are predetermined though), and randomly generates enemy groups and random names/abilities for "unique" monsters. When you kill an enemy it generates item drops based on the monsters level and your own stats. The server runs the entire game, you are just a client telling your character where to go.

This past Thursday night there were over 25,000 games of D2-LOD running at once, and that's just the D2 expansion, not basic D2 or any other game. Over 21,000 right now, comprising over 64,000 users(on a Sunday morning). Are you saying it costs nothing to personally host over 25,000 games at once and store all of those users characters?

What will the Live servers be doing that will drasticly increase their needed bandwidth?

 

[mesyn191]

I frequently get a ping of 50 in D2 on my 3meg DSL connection(and I live way out in the country). I used to be on 5meg Cox cable also(my roomate works for Cox by the way), and still had 50-90 ping(had to cancel cable when I moved).

Then consider yourself lucky, lots more people are in the same boat as me...

I don't see how you say that their server costs are nothing. For D2 alone each account can have 8 characters, and you can make an unlimited number of accounts, many people have 2-3 extra accounts just to store extra items. During the game the server generates the levels at random(some places are predetermined though), and randomly generates enemy groups and random names/abilities for "unique" monsters. When you kill an enemy it generates item drops based on the monsters level and your own stats. The server runs the entire game, you are just a client telling your character where to go.

Quit looking at that crap, the only thing that matters is the size of the game save which again is somewhere around 1MB... Processing wise it don't take much to run D2, and alot of that processing power is used up because almost all the work in the D2 graphics engine is done by the CPU. The server side of the game doesn't have to do any of the crap since it doesn't display anything so processing requirements are really, reallly low.

This past Thursday night there were over 25,000 games of D2-LOD running at once, and that's just the D2 expansion, not basic D2 or any other game. Over 21,000 right now, comprising over 64,000 users(on a Sunday morning). Are you saying it costs nothing to personally host over 25,000 games at once and store all of those users characters?

For DII games, for a big developer like Blizz, sure the cost is minimal. For you or me? No way we'd be able to afford it...

What will the Live servers be doing that will drasticly increase their needed bandwidth?

Physics, voice chat, will eat up massive amounts of server side processing time and bandwidth, not to mention more than double the amount of players on a server...

 

[Reznor007]

Blizzard has made 7 PC games(and 4 expansions). If 7 makes you a big developer, then MS must be a gigantic developer(I see a few dozen games here http://www.microsoft.com/games/pc/default.aspx )

The server side of D2 is a bit different from the client side. The server must be able to process the game world in 8 different places at once since all 8 players could be somewhere else at the same time.

And I don't think physics will increase bandwidth to a significant degree. The CPU requirements for the server will go up a bit, but it's not huge. A HalfLife2 server doesn't require too much.

Think about something like Steam where you download several gigs of data+updates per game. You get full friend support, voice chat, and physics, and 32+ players per server, yet there's no online charge there either.

On Xbox360 Live they won't even have to worry about game patches/updates since the hard drive is an optional thing, so games can't really require an update(unless the game says it requires a HD on the box). A fair bit of bandwidth saved there.

 

[mesyn191]

Blizzard has made 7 PC games(and 4 expansions). If 7 makes you a big developer, then MS must be a gigantic developer(I see a few dozen games here http://www.microsoft.com/games/pc/default.aspx )

1) I never brought up how many games Blizz makes so I don't see how this statement is relevant to the discussion...

2) Its not the number of games you make its how they sell, and Blizz tends to sell lots and lots.

The server side of D2 is a bit different from the client side. The server must be able to process the game world in 8 different places at once since all 8 players could be somewhere else at the same time.

Nonsense, you're doing the same thing with the client side of the game as well you know, the server side version just keeps track of everything to make sure no one hacks. The only thing different about the server side version is that it doesn't have to display anything so you can run hundreds of games on a very low spec server with ease.

And I don't think physics will increase bandwidth to a significant degree. The CPU requirements for the server will go up a bit, but it's not huge. A HalfLife2 server doesn't require too much.

Compared to what is needed to run 1 instance of a D2 game its quite a bit I bet...

Think about something like Steam where you download several gigs of data+updates per game. You get full friend support, voice chat, and physics, and 32+ players per server, yet there's no online charge there either.

1) Steam uses Bittorrent-like data distribution system to lower costs greatly with them only owning a relatively few seed servers to keep things moving along, comparisons to what MS will be offering or BNet are not valid...

2) Those game servers that you play on are not free!!! People are paying money to run them and allow others like yourself to play on them for free (and if you note while playing many of them will constantly be flashing test across your screen to donate to thier server upkeep and stuff)... Go try and start your own DoD or HL2 server for yourself if you don't believe me.

On Xbox360 Live they won't even have to worry about game patches/updates since the hard drive is an optional thing, so games can't really require an update(unless the game says it requires a HD on the box). A fair bit of bandwidth saved there.

Yup there is, you still need lots of bandwidth and server processing time just to run the games themselves though.

 

[aaronspink]

The server side of D2 is a bit different from the client side. The server must be able to process the game world in 8 different places at once since all 8 players could be somewhere else at the same time.

the server side of D2 is could practically run on a 1990 machine since it is pretty much doing nothing. The enviroment is static. It just has to keep track of where you and the enemies are and general rewards etc. Pretty light load. Doesn't even need to be anywhere near 1/2 second updates.

And I don't think physics will increase bandwidth to a significant degree. The CPU requirements for the server will go up a bit, but it's not huge. A HalfLife2 server doesn't require too much.

Physics will increase bandwidth a fairly good amount because there are a lot more objects that can be moved and in the type of games where physics will add to game play, update speed is an issue.

Think about something like Steam where you download several gigs of data+updates per game. You get full friend support, voice chat, and physics, and 32+ players per server, yet there's no online charge there either.

Oh, there are a lot of online charges for something like Counter-Strike: Source, etc. Look at what it costs to rent a 32-40 player server for a month from a reputable vendor. A 32 person server will cost in the range of $70 per month to rent/operate. Valve is not paying for the vast majority of the servers out there, and if they had to, they would have to charge more.

If you want to have a ranked 32 player BF2 server, that will be $256 PER MONTH. An unranked server will run ~70 per month.

So, as I said earlier, except for Bnet (which doesn't have any realtime games that are server hosted) and guildwars (which is very similar to diablo in not having a lot of realtime requirements) there aren't any free online games. While some may be free for your use, that is only because someone else is paying to run the server.

Aaron Spink
speaking for myself inc.

 

[Reznor007]

the server side of D2 is could practically run on a 1990 machine since it is pretty much doing nothing. The enviroment is static. It just has to keep track of where you and the enemies are and general rewards etc. Pretty light load. Doesn't even need to be anywhere near 1/2 second updates.

Not really. The environment is randomly generated at game creation(though after that it is static), the server controls the monster AI(not your computer), and the server determines all item drops. It also run at 25updates/sec, since when you shoot a fireball for example, a monster can get out of the way. I don't know if you've tried this, but if you lose your internet connection while playing all the monster just stop and stand where they are.

And yes, dedicated FPS servers can be expensive, but everything I've heard about Live is that there aren't really dedicated servers, the actual game console runs as the server. Live basically operates as a master server for game finding like Quake3 or Unreal Tournament. However, I still haven't paid any money at all for playing any game online outside of buying the game's retail package.

Game servers for FPS games don't require much CPU power either though. At our house we have a dedicated server PC that handles media files and runs dedicated versions of Quake3(with bots), UT2004 Onslaught(with bots), and HalfLife2M all at once, and it's a lowly Duron 800. We don't host online games with it though, just LAN.

 

[Apoc]

And yes, dedicated FPS servers can be expensive, but everything I've heard about Live is that there aren't really dedicated servers, the actual game console runs as the server. Live basically operates as a master server for game finding like Quake3 or Unreal Tournament. However, I still haven't paid any money at all for playing any game online outside of buying the game's retail package.

As I said before, this is not true. All servers are run in MS machines.

 

[Reznor007]

If it's true that all games are run on MS servers, then it might be explainable, but these guys are talking about figuring out how to be the host in Halo2 so that you can get a bit of an advantage http://forums.xbox-scene.com/index.php?showtopic=425913

If the game ran on an MS server there would be no way to force someone else to lag out.

 

[Apoc]

If it's true that all games are run on MS servers, then it might be explainable, but these guys are talking about figuring out how to be the host in Halo2 so that you can get a bit of an advantage http://forums.xbox-scene.com/index.php?showtopic=425913

If the game ran on an MS server there would be no way to force someone else to lag out.

Yes, it's true that games are run on MS servers. I read it from someone at MS many times since xbox live is active. If you read my previous post, I created lots of 16 players games in a 100kbits upload connection, and there is no way the average lag could be keep at 40-50 without choking or lagging if I were the host.

 

[c0_re]

I cannot belive people are complaining about this, for christs sake they let you play for free on the weekends. What grown adult with a real job and life has time to play online during the week anyways?

Hell I'll be lucky to be able to play Oblivian an hour every day between work and the girlfirend\friends.

 

[Mefisutoferesu]

"promotional weekends" not every weekend, so something like 1 weekend out of every 8.