http://www.monashreport.com/2007/06/09/technology-of-guild-wars/ Technology ... politics ... marketing ... strategy ... life Tue, 07 Oct 2008 02:35:31 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.5.1 http://www.monashreport.com/2007/06/09/technology-of-guild-wars/#comment-62959 DBMS2 — DataBase Management System Services » Blog Archive » Thoughts on database management in role-playing games Fri, 25 Apr 2008 04:05:20 +0000 http://www.monashreport.com/2007/06/09/technology-of-guild-wars/#comment-62959 [...] I’ve just started a research project on the IT-like technology of games and virtual worlds, especially MMORPGs. My three recent posts on Guild Wars attracted considerable attention in GW’s community, and elicited some interesting commentary, especially for the revelation of Guild Wars’ very simple database architecture. Specifically, pretty much all character information is banged into a BLOB or two, and stored as a string of tokens, with little of the record-level detail one might expect. By way of contrast, Everquest is run on Oracle (and being transitioned to EnterpriseDB), at least one console-based game maker uses StreamBase, and so on. [...] [...] I’ve just started a research project on the IT-like technology of games and virtual worlds, especially MMORPGs. My three recent posts on Guild Wars attracted considerable attention in GW’s community, and elicited some interesting commentary, especially for the revelation of Guild Wars’ very simple database architecture. Specifically, pretty much all character information is banged into a BLOB or two, and stored as a string of tokens, with little of the record-level detail one might expect. By way of contrast, Everquest is run on Oracle (and being transitioned to EnterpriseDB), at least one console-based game maker uses StreamBase, and so on. [...]

]]> http://www.monashreport.com/2007/06/09/technology-of-guild-wars/#comment-62958 DBMS2 — DataBase Management System Services » Blog Archive » The database technology of Guild Wars Fri, 25 Apr 2008 04:05:11 +0000 http://www.monashreport.com/2007/06/09/technology-of-guild-wars/#comment-62958 [...] I have the enviable task of researching online game and virtual world technology for an upcoming Network World column. My first interview, quite naturally, was with the lead developers of a game I actually play – Guild Wars. The overview is in another post; that may provide context for this one, which focuses on the database technology. (I also did a short post just on the implications for Guild Wars players.) It also has a brief description of what Guild Wars is – namely, a MMORPG (Massively MultiPlayer Role-Playing Game) with the unusual feature that most of the game world is instanced rather than utterly shared. [...] [...] I have the enviable task of researching online game and virtual world technology for an upcoming Network World column. My first interview, quite naturally, was with the lead developers of a game I actually play – Guild Wars. The overview is in another post; that may provide context for this one, which focuses on the database technology. (I also did a short post just on the implications for Guild Wars players.) It also has a brief description of what Guild Wars is – namely, a MMORPG (Massively MultiPlayer Role-Playing Game) with the unusual feature that most of the game world is instanced rather than utterly shared. [...]

]]> http://www.monashreport.com/2007/06/09/technology-of-guild-wars/#comment-18661 deviceZero » Technical Guild Wars Facts Tue, 12 Jun 2007 14:43:33 +0000 http://www.monashreport.com/2007/06/09/technology-of-guild-wars/#comment-18661 [...] Some technical facts about Guild Wars from these three articles: [...] [...] Some technical facts about Guild Wars from these three articles: [...]

]]> http://www.monashreport.com/2007/06/09/technology-of-guild-wars/#comment-18376 The Monash Report»Blog Archive » Guild Wars game notes Sun, 10 Jun 2007 02:08:35 +0000 http://www.monashreport.com/2007/06/09/technology-of-guild-wars/#comment-18376 [...] I had the opportunity to interview Mike O’Brien and Pat Wyatt, founders and lead developers for ArenaNet, makers of Guild Wars. This led two lengthy posts on the technology of Guild Wars (overview) and the database technology of Guild Wars. Those were really, as the titles suggest, tech-focused. This post, by way of contrast, is just to share interesting game-related tidbits with fellow Guild Wars players. I came away with three key notes: [...] [...] I had the opportunity to interview Mike O’Brien and Pat Wyatt, founders and lead developers for ArenaNet, makers of Guild Wars. This led two lengthy posts on the technology of Guild Wars (overview) and the database technology of Guild Wars. Those were really, as the titles suggest, tech-focused. This post, by way of contrast, is just to share interesting game-related tidbits with fellow Guild Wars players. I came away with three key notes: [...]

]]>