The space MMO Dual Universe demonstrates what “Massively” is. How many players need to interact simultaneously for this criterion to be met? With 30,000 concurrent players, the online game shows what this must look like.
What could Dual Universe achieve? On March 6th, 30,000 simulated players could be deployed simultaneously in the online game. This represented a significant technical achievement, which is important when thousands of players interact in the released title.
An important simulation
What are simulated players? The new MMO Dual Universe has not yet been released. However, testing how many concurrent players the servers can handle needs to start now. Hence, these had to be simulated. They were not real players. Nonetheless, members of the community accompanied these “NPCs”.
Why is this particularly important for Dual Universe? Many MMOs distribute players across multiple servers and worlds. As a result, only a few thousand effectively play together in one “world”. The current world record for the “most players competing against each other simultaneously in a single multiplayer video game battle” is 6,142 and was achieved on January 23, 2018, in EVE Online.
In Dual Universe, it is different. All players act in the same universe. That is why it is so important that the servers can handle this.
Players look forward to the Beta
How representative is this simulation? The simulated players are, of course, not comparable to real humans. They behave completely differently. Additionally, the players’ constructions in the world must be taken into account. Nevertheless, this simulation represents a start and already gives insight into how such a number of players functions.
How did the test go? As seen in the simulation video, this test went well. There were no major issues. The performance was not optimal, but Dual Universe is still in Alpha and will continue to be optimized.
How are the players reacting to this? The community is impressed by the simulation and is already looking forward to when the Beta starts next year and perhaps 30,000 real players will roam the planets – or maybe even more.
