If Istaria ever closes - please sell "private - server" copies of Istaria.

[medweasel]

Hello, I was thinking the other night that it would be great if Virtrium would sell private servers of Istaria kind of like Minions of Mirth does. I wouldn't really want them to do this now because I don't want people leaving the regular servers or anything but thought that if Istaria is ever going to be shut down then this might be a way to preserve it forever and for Virtrium to make a little extra cash too.

Or they could do private servers that are linked to your account and you'd still have to pay for an account each month in order to use it or something like that. I don't know. I just don't want this game to ever leave. Istaria is such a beautiful and unique world. They just don't make mmo's like this anymore, heck I don't think they've ever made one like this. The world is simply huge and the locations are varied. I love going to Kion or Chiconis and seeing the different styles of architecture and geography. I love how the music reflects the region and how the npc's attitudes change with their environment. I love looking up at the stars on a slightly cloudy night in Istaria. Frankly Istaria is the most beautiful fantasy world I've ever been in and I would always like some way of being able to visit it anytime I like.

I can't think of the specifics, maybe someone can help with that but I would love my own virtual Istaria, even if I was the only person in it, I'd still like to watch the clouds go by in the moonlit starry night.

[awdz]

i think somewhere on the forums is a thread about off line access to istaria, from a couple of years back, might be worth your checking out. they gave similar reasons for why they'd want to do that (and successfully had).

[Vaz]

I agree. Officially providing server software and allowing people to run it was how Uru Live survived to become Myst Online: URU Live when Cyan Worlds regained ability to support and develop it. MO:UL was later closed, sadly, but that had absolutely nothing to do with the private servers (which went through a Cyan employee's authentication server and thus ceased to function when MO:UL was born).

[Vermithraxx]

Somebody remind me how...

There IS a way to run Istaria "offline". As I recall, you can select your character, no players, no monsters, and no plots, but if you choose dragon you can fly around, etc. I just don't remember the commands to do it.

As for server software, I agree it would be cool to have if Virtrium ever decides to shut it down... tho I have to wonder whether it would work.

Specifically, we'd have to have somebody on the hardware side of Virtrium's life chime in about what it takes to run this bowl of spaghetti. (Because this is the biggest batch of spaghetti code I'VE ever seen )

It was written back in, what, 2002? So we know it could run on whatever hardware was available back then, but code that's THIS non-optimized is going to hit functional limits even with modern hardware.

i.e. Could you run the server on your home computer, and actually have it run well?

Would be fun tho, private servers popping up everywhere, give yourself all the materials you need to finish any project in a day, your own little Istarian Construction Kit.

[Valornyx]

Given Istaria's (Horizon's) refusal to die over the years despite the abuse that has been heaped upon it by parties that there is no need to name - it survives and prospers to this day.

Indeed there is some anecdotal evidence that it is having some kind of resurgence with the Doom and especially Vista compatability http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/244317

Lets all hope that Vi can continue to build the world to greater heights and that it does not come down to running private server versions of the game.

[LOVWYRM]

crazy people- those Istarians are

So I admit that I sign all what medweasel and Valornyx said.

Long live VI- and Istaria

[Raeshlavik]

There does seem to be a bit of a renaissance happening in Istaria right now so I don't think we'll be seeing Virtrium dropping the world any time soon.

Additionally, according to Virtrium's web site (and some assumptions on my part); Virtrium appears to be advertising Istaria's back end technology for use by other prospective MMO/shared space developers. If this is the case, Istaria is their tech-demo and if they manage to re-sell the technology that means more money for more employees and more updates to the world. (yay!)

As for allowing private servers, I don't think that's possible given the middleware used in the game (Granny, Miles, Intrinsic, etc, etc) - I'd guess there would be quite a few licensing snags involved. This is on top of the fact that in MMO parlance, "Server" usually means "rack of expensive hardware, each with discrete functions".

While it is possible to reverse engineer the encryption and the client-server communications to create a private server instance for an MMO, the performance degradation due to not having a separate world DB, inventory DB, comms, login, and other servers usually makes the experience clunky at best. Additionally, in-world scripting is usually executed on the server-side and without those scripts (hopefully something like python, but probably proprietary in Istaria’s case), the world is pretty static.

Oh, and Istaria uses a streaming technology to deliver the world… I have to assume that the typical 1Mb upstream connection for most Internet users these days would make getting more than 1-2 people into the private server at the same time difficult - and the lag would be pretty bad as well...

And no, I’ve never run a private server… My day job is designing and executing test harnesses (custom headless clients, scripted interfaces, load and performance profiling, etc.) for massive client-server architectures used in the interactive entertainment industry. So rather than build fake servers for real users, I build fake users for real servers.

[AmonGwareth]

Specifically, we'd have to have somebody on the hardware side of Virtrium's life chime in about what it takes to run this bowl of spaghetti. (Because this is the biggest batch of spaghetti code I'VE ever seen )

Kind of an assumption, isn't it, since you've never seen the code. Just because an application is old doesn't mean it is poorly written. Now, I'm not defending parts of the game. I'm sure there are parts that are badly written, but not all of it.

Heck, I'm sure you can find spaghetti code in just about any game, including WoW.

It was written back in, what, 2002? So we know it could run on whatever hardware was available back then, but code that's THIS non-optimized is going to hit functional limits even with modern hardware.

i.e. Could you run the server on your home computer, and actually have it run well?

Dual-Xeon IBM Blades is what it ran on at launch I believe. 10 to 12 blades per shard. Fewer now, obviously, but it won't run on a single machine WITH monsters and npcs or more than a single player.

And, it helps to have the database server on a separate box.

As with the spaghetti code, without having seen the code you do not know that it is non-optimized.