SOOOOOOOO not the point.

When I bought the engine, Conitec had advertised connecting 1000's of users to the engine. This was the case all up until maybe a few months ago and A7.

Q1: Can you guarantee that 1000's of clients can connect to the engine?
And if you can, can you guarantee 1000's of USERS (which implies that GS is doing some logic and not just DPLAY shuffling packets) can connect to the engine?

On your current page, you have multizone for MMOG as well as stating that GS is a commercial game engine. Putting both together and we come up with the promise that GS can create a commercial MMOG.

Q2:Can you guarantee that the engine is up to a commercial MMOG?



Again, not the point.

The current network functions work fine. The problem is that they are not enough for MMOG and they haven't been for years!

Consider:
Back in the A6 days, session_connect was broken. It is an obviously critical part of any MMOG. However, as you attached bug fixes with updates AND THAT UPDATE TOOK 6 MONTHS (or more?), GS Networking was on standstill for 6 months, my project was on stand still for 6 months, and honestly, there has been little improvement since! How is this MMOG friendly? For that matter, how is that Conitec supporting it's MP and MMP comunity?

Consider:
Since Glider what was it 3 years ago? -- there has been the problem of anyone creating a dummy GS program and connecting to any GS server, injecting false data on any network index, and this crashes the server.

As there is no way to prevent someone from sending data once they connect AND there is no way to prevent someone from connecting to the server, how is this MMOG friendly?


Consider:
For at least four years, I have stated that intra-server communication is vital for a mmog network. Right now, I have to route all my player AND server farm traffic through a single server. This means that one application has to take ALL the traffic for the game and puts critical data dangerously close to the internet cloud. Now then, given the current single server bottleneck for the engine, how is this MMOG friendly?

Consider:
For the same amount of time, people have been begging for a server list so that they can create lobby games. This is critical for MP games, especially FPS and RTS games. Yet for years of people asking, nothing has been in this direction. How is this MP friendly?

Q3: So how are we supposed to complete a MMOG if a) there is no guarantee from the engine makers that it's even possible, b)the tools are not there for us and c) when we ask for the tools or changes necessary, they aren't given?



Q4: Finally, are there any MMOG's made with DPLAY? If not, then how can you guarantee that anyone can make one with GS if it's based on DPLAY? If not, then why keep putting time and money and risking our projects to keep supporting a network solution THAT NOBODY IS USING.

Do you have ANY idea how hard it is to have someone take you seriously about an MMOG when you tell them it's DPLAY based?

And if you won't listen to me and others, then perhaps a legend can help you see the light:

[gratuitous name dropping]
When I consulted RICHARD BARTLE about DPLAY and MMOGs on a phone conference, he could not think of a single one.

Furthermore, he expressed reservation at my using it because as he said it "there is a good reason why MS sunset DPLAY and a good reason why there are no MMOGs with it". What that reason is I did not ask because the point is that if Bartle expresses concern over DPLAY, well, I listen...
[/gratuitous name dropping]

... and if you don't listen to me, perhaps you'll listen to him.

(PS: I'd hate for it to come to this, but if you want me to ask the co-father of MMOGs why DPLAY is a bad choice, if this will finally convince you that Conitec's continued support of it is a bad idea, I will be MORE than happy to do so!)

Four questions. One answer:
REPLACE DPLAY AT ONCE.
GIVE GS MP PRIORITY FOR ONCE.