Account Question

G

Guest

Guest
Archived from groups: alt.games.coh (More info?)

Does anyone know how long before COH delete's characters from an inactive
account?

Clem Clambake
 
G

Guest

Guest
Archived from groups: alt.games.coh (More info?)

Clem Clambake wrote:
> Does anyone know how long before COH delete's characters from an
inactive
> account?

They don't.
 
G

Guest

Guest
Archived from groups: alt.games.coh (More info?)

On Wed, 06 Apr 2005 04:56:38 GMT, "Clem Clambake"
<clemclambake@yahoo.coma> wrote:

>Does anyone know how long before COH delete's characters from an inactive
>account?
>
>Clem Clambake

As with most MMO's, they haven't ever wiped inactive accounts. Some
MMO's may say they'll delete characters after the account has been
active x number of months, but I haven't heard of them actually doing
it. So far, CoH hasn't even said they'd do it. Characters tend to take
up very little storage space, so there's really no reason to, and
whether the characters are still there could often be the deciding
factor in whether or not a canceled account is reactivated. Thus, it
is in their best interest to leave them.

--
Dark Tyger

Stop the madness! (Marvel Vs Cryptic Studios petition)
http://www.petitiononline.com/marvscoh/petition.html

Hey, everyone else is doing it. Free iPod:
http://www.freeiPods.com/?r=15728814
 
G

Guest

Guest
Archived from groups: alt.games.coh (More info?)

On 6 Apr 2005 00:14:19 -0700, The Black Guardian <blakgard@aol.com> wrote:
> Clem Clambake wrote:
>> Does anyone know how long before COH delete's characters from an
> inactive account?
>
> They don't.

I don't know if that is official, but at least it hasn't happened so far.
Besides, deleting would be rather stupid, since the cost of having a
backed-up account is only a few cents at most, and a returning customer
would earn them thousands of those pretty quickly. ^_^

--
"When someone starts bragging about how much debt they have, it's not a
good sign." -G
 
G

Guest

Guest
Archived from groups: alt.games.coh (More info?)

>I don't know if that is official, but at least it hasn't happened so
far.
>Besides, deleting would be rather stupid, since the cost of having a
>backed-up account is only a few cents at most, and a returning
customer
>would earn them thousands of those pretty quickly. ^_^

But it all adds up. A few years down line it might be a toss up between
buying more disc space or deleting accounts that haven't been used in
years. NCSoft might well decide to delete the account.
 
G

Guest

Guest
Archived from groups: alt.games.coh (More info?)

On Wed, 06 Apr 2005 07:48:40 -0700, Dark Tyger
<darktiger@somewhere.net> wrote:

>On Wed, 06 Apr 2005 04:56:38 GMT, "Clem Clambake"
><clemclambake@yahoo.coma> wrote:
>
>>Does anyone know how long before COH delete's characters from an inactive
>>account?
>>
>>Clem Clambake
>
>As with most MMO's, they haven't ever wiped inactive accounts. Some
>MMO's may say they'll delete characters after the account has been
>active x number of months, but I haven't heard of them actually doing
>it. So far, CoH hasn't even said they'd do it. Characters tend to take
>up very little storage space, so there's really no reason to, and
>whether the characters are still there could often be the deciding
>factor in whether or not a canceled account is reactivated. Thus, it
>is in their best interest to leave them.
Add to the fact that lots of people, for whatever reason,do take
breaks from the games that they play. ( left EQ for about 6 months
and came back. I already took one break from CoH for over a month.

Hell, I know this is a bit off topic, but I used to be a fanatic about
this game Alpha Centaury, and very fecently started playing it again
after I don't know how many years... One day I just decided that I
hadn't played it in so long, and I got hooked on the game all over
again. I can see this being an even more common phenomenon with MMOGs
because the game can change a good deal after that lenght of time.
 
G

Guest

Guest
Archived from groups: alt.games.coh (More info?)

bombaymix wrote:
>> I don't know if that is official, but at least it hasn't happened so
>> far. Besides, deleting would be rather stupid, since the cost of
>> having a backed-up account is only a few cents at most, and a
returning
>> customer would earn them thousands of those pretty quickly. ^_^
>
> But it all adds up. A few years down line it might be a toss up
between
> buying more disc space or deleting accounts that haven't been used in
> years. NCSoft might well decide to delete the account.

Indeed. Especially when you consider the amount of information that
Cryptic stores about each character.
 
G

Guest

Guest
Archived from groups: alt.games.coh (More info?)

"The Black Guardian" <blakgard@aol.com> looked up from reading the
entrails of the porn spammer to utter "The Augury is good, the signs
say:

>bombaymix wrote:
>>> I don't know if that is official, but at least it hasn't happened so
>>> far. Besides, deleting would be rather stupid, since the cost of
>>> having a backed-up account is only a few cents at most, and a
>returning
>>> customer would earn them thousands of those pretty quickly. ^_^
>>
>> But it all adds up. A few years down line it might be a toss up
>between
>> buying more disc space or deleting accounts that haven't been used in
>> years. NCSoft might well decide to delete the account.
>
>Indeed. Especially when you consider the amount of information that
>Cryptic stores about each character.

Oh please.

Think about it for a second, just how much information is there since
there's loot or items.

A hero planner data file for a character - showing all the levels and
the slotting, is about 3k in size.
Even taking into account having to record the type of enhancement
(TO/DO/SO/HO), badges and such, you're still probably talking under
15kbytes per character.
So if you had 8 toons on every server, that still only adds up to 1.32
meg, uncompressed. Most people have considerably less than that.

Xocyll
--
I don't particularly want you to FOAD, myself. You'll be more of
a cautionary example if you'll FO And Get Chronically, Incurably,
Painfully, Progressively, Expensively, Debilitatingly Ill. So
FOAGCIPPEDI. -- Mike Andrews responding to an idiot in asr
 
G

Guest

Guest
Archived from groups: alt.games.coh (More info?)

Xocyll <Xocyll@kingston.net> wrote in
news:935d51t6tas7ofl02j5oqsurvil3l2oof4@4ax.com:

> So if you had 8 toons on every server, that still only adds up to 1.32
> meg, uncompressed. Most people have considerably less than that.

And when you consider that Cryptic/NCSoft almost definately has all of the
toons stored in some database somewhere, the file size drops considerably.
all everybodies toons will boil down to is a long line of
1 23 54 a 4 ij ....

--
Marcel
http://mudbunny.blogspot.com/
 
G

Guest

Guest
Archived from groups: alt.games.coh (More info?)

"The Black Guardian" <blakgard@aol.com> wrote:
> Indeed. Especially when you consider the amount of information that
> Cryptic stores about each character.

So it's a whole megabyte per character - which is probably 10x the real
amount. Remember, they don't store lengthy descriptions; I'd bet that a
complete character appearance, including all costume details, fits into
less than a single kilobyte.

A perfectly reasonable alternative is to archive all characters older than
x years, and make it a 24-hour restore option for people who come back to
the game after that long of a delay. Or something even more transparent:
offload the char data to a separate server where it might take 5-10 minutes
for the data to be restored, much like copying characters to Test.

--
-= Victory Server =-
-= Shenanigunner: Level 38 Natural Tanker, Fire/SS, M =-
-= Sgt Glory B: Level 29 Tech Blaster, Electric/Energy, F =-
-= Mean Mr Mustard: Level 8 Science Scrapper, Dark/Regen, M =-
-= Always looking for reliable teammates - look me up! =-
-= See you on HEROICA! - http://www.dgath.com/coh/ =-
-= The Keybind & Macro Guide is now available! =-
 
G

Guest

Guest
Archived from groups: alt.games.coh (More info?)

On Fri, 08 Apr 2005 16:01:37 -0000, Shenanigunner
<shenanigunner@NOdgathSPAM.kom> wrote:

>"The Black Guardian" <blakgard@aol.com> wrote:
>> Indeed. Especially when you consider the amount of information that
>> Cryptic stores about each character.
>
>So it's a whole megabyte per character - which is probably 10x the real
>amount.

True. I honestly doubt even EQ2 characters come up to that much per
character. I'd really have to see some official numbers and real
justification for why if they're bigger than that, because I don't see
any reason for it beyond shoddy and -EXTREMELY- inefficient
programming.

--
Dark Tyger

Stop the madness! (Marvel Vs Cryptic Studios petition)
http://www.petitiononline.com/marvscoh/petition.html

Hey, everyone else is doing it. Free iPod:
http://www.freeiPods.com/?r=15728814
 
G

Guest

Guest
Archived from groups: alt.games.coh (More info?)

Shenanigunner <shenanigunner@NOdgathSPAM.kom> wrote in
news:Xns96325B7D4E8B7nitropressatnitrosyn@216.168.3.44:

> "The Black Guardian" <blakgard@aol.com> wrote:
>> Indeed. Especially when you consider the amount of information that
>> Cryptic stores about each character.
>
> So it's a whole megabyte per character - which is probably 10x the
> real amount. Remember, they don't store lengthy descriptions; I'd bet
> that a complete character appearance, including all costume details,
> fits into less than a single kilobyte.

Ummm... No.

(I'm a DB/CGI programmer, so I'm not pulling numbers out of my bum :)

There's a *ton* of information stored per character, that would take far
more than a kilobyte.

Just off the top of my head:

All of the costume options (x 4 slots)
Aura type, intensity, etc (x 4 slots)
Cape type, style, colours (x 4 slots)
All contacts met
All contact missions done, active, status, etc
All maps, explored vs unexplored
influence
powers, enhancements
temp powers
clue data
arc data
SG data
mobs killed data
power use data (this might not be stored per char, but states has said he
mines this for balancing issues)

and a ton more that I'm not even aware of.

A kilobyte ? Not even close (That would only be 1024 yes/no on/off bits
of data)

Now multiply this by 8 character slots by ten servers. It's a *lot* of
data. They'll start deleting characters at some point in the future, even
if just to speed up disk access and/or make names available again. Near
future? Probably not. Year 3 or 4 ? Probably.


--
Marc Bissonnette
CGI / Database / Web Management Tools: http://www.internalysis.com
Looking for a new ISP? http://www.canadianisp.com
 
G

Guest

Guest
Archived from groups: alt.games.coh (More info?)

On Fri, 08 Apr 2005 19:48:02 GMT, Marc Bissonnette
<dragnet@internalysis.com> wrote:

>Shenanigunner <shenanigunner@NOdgathSPAM.kom> wrote in
>news:Xns96325B7D4E8B7nitropressatnitrosyn@216.168.3.44:
>
>> "The Black Guardian" <blakgard@aol.com> wrote:
>>> Indeed. Especially when you consider the amount of information that
>>> Cryptic stores about each character.
>>
>> So it's a whole megabyte per character - which is probably 10x the
>> real amount. Remember, they don't store lengthy descriptions; I'd bet
>> that a complete character appearance, including all costume details,
>> fits into less than a single kilobyte.
>
>Ummm... No.
>
>(I'm a DB/CGI programmer, so I'm not pulling numbers out of my bum :)
>
>There's a *ton* of information stored per character, that would take far
>more than a kilobyte.
>
>Just off the top of my head:
>
>All of the costume options (x 4 slots)
>Aura type, intensity, etc (x 4 slots)
>Cape type, style, colours (x 4 slots)
>All contacts met
>All contact missions done, active, status, etc
>All maps, explored vs unexplored
>influence
>powers, enhancements
>temp powers
>clue data
>arc data
>SG data
>mobs killed data
>power use data (this might not be stored per char, but states has said he
>mines this for balancing issues)
>
>and a ton more that I'm not even aware of.

All of this can be condensed easily into a line of text per item at
most. Several of these can be condensed into 5 characters or less.

Costume: A line per slot: <slot><option number><colors><pattern>

Quite honestly, the biggest chunk of data might be the "fog of war"
data for the zone maps. Even that can't be very big.

More than a kilobyte, yeah, definitely, I'll give you that. But if it
reaches or even approaches a megabyte, I'd have to question the skill
of the programmers.

--
Dark Tyger

Stop the madness! (Marvel Vs Cryptic Studios petition)
http://www.petitiononline.com/marvscoh/petition.html

Hey, everyone else is doing it. Free iPod:
http://www.freeiPods.com/?r=15728814
 
G

Guest

Guest
Archived from groups: alt.games.coh (More info?)

Dark Tyger <darktiger@somewhere.net> wrote in
news:87ud519s1s2amapve3bs14fmm03lf04vn0@4ax.com:

> On Fri, 08 Apr 2005 19:48:02 GMT, Marc Bissonnette
> <dragnet@internalysis.com> wrote:
>
>>Shenanigunner <shenanigunner@NOdgathSPAM.kom> wrote in
>>news:Xns96325B7D4E8B7nitropressatnitrosyn@216.168.3.44:
>>
>>> "The Black Guardian" <blakgard@aol.com> wrote:
>>>> Indeed. Especially when you consider the amount of information that
>>>> Cryptic stores about each character.
>>>
>>> So it's a whole megabyte per character - which is probably 10x the
>>> real amount. Remember, they don't store lengthy descriptions; I'd
>>> bet that a complete character appearance, including all costume
>>> details, fits into less than a single kilobyte.
>>
>>Ummm... No.
>>
>>(I'm a DB/CGI programmer, so I'm not pulling numbers out of my bum :)
>>
>>There's a *ton* of information stored per character, that would take
>>far more than a kilobyte.
>>
>>Just off the top of my head:
>>
>>All of the costume options (x 4 slots)
>>Aura type, intensity, etc (x 4 slots)
>>Cape type, style, colours (x 4 slots)
>>All contacts met
>>All contact missions done, active, status, etc
>>All maps, explored vs unexplored
>>influence
>>powers, enhancements
>>temp powers
>>clue data
>>arc data
>>SG data
>>mobs killed data
>>power use data (this might not be stored per char, but states has said
>>he mines this for balancing issues)
>>
>>and a ton more that I'm not even aware of.
>
> All of this can be condensed easily into a line of text per item at
> most. Several of these can be condensed into 5 characters or less.
>
> Costume: A line per slot: <slot><option number><colors><pattern>
>
> Quite honestly, the biggest chunk of data might be the "fog of war"
> data for the zone maps. Even that can't be very big.
>
> More than a kilobyte, yeah, definitely, I'll give you that. But if it
> reaches or even approaches a megabyte, I'd have to question the skill
> of the programmers.

A meg per char ? Nah, I doubt it. It's probably in the 10-20K range,
though, at least. Then multiply that by the following:

total number of customer accounts * 8 * 10 * 15 (picking the mid-range of
kilobytes)
let's say there are 100,000 accounts:
((100000 * 8) * 10) * 15 =
(800000) * 10) * 15 =
8000000 * 15 =
120,000,000 kilobytes
or 117187.5 megabytes
or 117.19 gigabytes for the US servers alone. That is, of course,
assuming that every single customer has 8 alts on all 10 servers. While
this obviously isn't the case (I, for example, have 7 alts on one server
only), it has to be *planned* to be so. I would guess that total
character data is probably around the 30-50 gigabyte mark, if my numbers
are close-ish, which I think they are.

Equally obviously, it's not like the servers are searching through the
entire data structure to find bits and pieces (gotta love relational
DB's), but over time, it really, really does add up in terms of speed and
performance hits.

I've seen this myself where a customer *insisted* on keeping millions of
lines of ordering data in their order database, even though some of them
were years old (I wanted to, at the very least, duplicate the DB
structure and move everything that wasn't in the current or previous year
to it, but they thought they knew better) Long story short: When they
finally listened to me and let me archive older data that wasn't being
used anymore, the entire application sped up *massively*, (And, of
course, they were 'surprised' at the speed increase).

Storage is always cheap, but performance never is :)



--
Marc Bissonnette
CGI / Database / Web Management Tools: http://www.internalysis.com
Looking for a new ISP? http://www.canadianisp.com
 
G

Guest

Guest
Archived from groups: alt.games.coh (More info?)

Marc Bissonnette <dragnet@internalysis.com> wrote:
>> So it's a whole megabyte per character - which is probably 10x the
>> real amount. Remember, they don't store lengthy descriptions; I'd bet
>> that a complete character appearance, including all costume details,
>> fits into less than a single kilobyte.

> Ummm... No.
> There's a *ton* of information stored per character, that would take
> far more than a kilobyte.

Character *appearance*. Only.

All the rest would easily fit into the meg I started with.

--
-= Victory Server =-
-= Shenanigunner: Level 38 Natural Tanker, Fire/SS, M =-
-= Sgt Glory B: Level 29 Tech Blaster, Electric/Energy, F =-
-= Mean Mr Mustard: Level 8 Science Scrapper, Dark/Regen, M =-
-= Always looking for reliable teammates - look me up! =-
-= See you on HEROICA! - http://www.dgath.com/coh/ =-
-= The Keybind & Macro Guide is now available! =-
 
G

Guest

Guest
Archived from groups: alt.games.coh (More info?)

On Fri, 08 Apr 2005 22:48:25 -0000, Shenanigunner
<shenanigunner@NOdgathSPAM.kom> wrote:

>Marc Bissonnette <dragnet@internalysis.com> wrote:
>>> So it's a whole megabyte per character - which is probably 10x the
>>> real amount. Remember, they don't store lengthy descriptions; I'd bet
>>> that a complete character appearance, including all costume details,
>>> fits into less than a single kilobyte.
>
>> Ummm... No.
>> There's a *ton* of information stored per character, that would take
>> far more than a kilobyte.
>
>Character *appearance*. Only.
>
>All the rest would easily fit into the meg I started with.

Even the character appearance doesn't require much. Take each listing
on the character creator. It's probably a 2-3 digit number for each
option in there.

--
Dark Tyger

Stop the madness! (Marvel Vs Cryptic Studios petition)
http://www.petitiononline.com/marvscoh/petition.html

Hey, everyone else is doing it. Free iPod:
http://www.freeiPods.com/?r=15728814
 
G

Guest

Guest
Archived from groups: alt.games.coh (More info?)

Marc Bissonnette <dragnet@internalysis.com> once tried to test me with:

> (I'm a DB/CGI programmer, so I'm not pulling numbers out of my bum :)
>
> There's a *ton* of information stored per character, that would take
> far more than a kilobyte.
>
> A kilobyte ? Not even close (That would only be 1024 yes/no on/off
> bits of data)

You're a programmer, and you don't know that a kiloBYTE can store a hell of
a lot more than 1024 yes/no bits of data? I think you need to go back to
school.

A BYTE is 8 bits. So that's 8 different yes/no values per BYTE. And that's
1024 of those.

This is basic CS 101 stuff. It doesn't get any more basic than this. :/

Besides which, the data they'll be storing is most likely NOT a series of
yes/no values. They're probably using numerical codes that mean something
specific, like a code for each face-style, etc.

--

Knight37 - http://knightgames.blogspot.com

Once a Gamer, Always a Gamer.
 
G

Guest

Guest
Archived from groups: alt.games.coh (More info?)

On 9 Apr 2005 07:46:11 GMT, Knight37 <knight37m@email.com> wrote:

>Marc Bissonnette <dragnet@internalysis.com> once tried to test me with:
>
>> (I'm a DB/CGI programmer, so I'm not pulling numbers out of my bum :)
>>
>> There's a *ton* of information stored per character, that would take
>> far more than a kilobyte.
>>
>> A kilobyte ? Not even close (That would only be 1024 yes/no on/off
>> bits of data)
>
>You're a programmer, and you don't know that a kiloBYTE can store a hell of
>a lot more than 1024 yes/no bits of data? I think you need to go back to
>school.

Curious how everyone on Usenet is suddenly a programmer when it is
convenient to lend credibility to their side of an argument, isn't it?
;)

--
Dark Tyger

Stop the madness! (Marvel Vs Cryptic Studios petition)
http://www.petitiononline.com/marvscoh/petition.html

Hey, everyone else is doing it. Free iPod:
http://www.freeiPods.com/?r=15728814
 
G

Guest

Guest
Archived from groups: alt.games.coh (More info?)

Knight37 <knight37m@email.com> wrote in
news:Xns96331C2EE4182knight37m@130.133.1.4:

> Marc Bissonnette <dragnet@internalysis.com> once tried to test me
> with:
>
>> (I'm a DB/CGI programmer, so I'm not pulling numbers out of my bum :)
>>
>> There's a *ton* of information stored per character, that would take
>> far more than a kilobyte.
>>
>> A kilobyte ? Not even close (That would only be 1024 yes/no on/off
>> bits of data)
>
> You're a programmer, and you don't know that a kiloBYTE can store a
> hell of a lot more than 1024 yes/no bits of data? I think you need to
> go back to school.
>
> A BYTE is 8 bits. So that's 8 different yes/no values per BYTE. And
> that's 1024 of those.
>
> This is basic CS 101 stuff. It doesn't get any more basic than this.
> :/
>
> Besides which, the data they'll be storing is most likely NOT a series
> of yes/no values. They're probably using numerical codes that mean
> something specific, like a code for each face-style, etc.

<Rolls eyes>

So, lemme get this straight: You think that all the character data is
stored in a single kiloBYTE on their servers ?

Of course, in the classic newb-to-usenet fashion, you snipped the rest of
my comment, which stated that there is probably, on average, 10-20K of
data per character, minimum.

Given even the volume of data stored, this just makes sense. Obviously,
however, to geniuses like you, it can all magically be squeezed into a
byte or three, eh ?

You *do* know, by the way, that storing a byte with eight bits of
*usable* data is only true if they're communicating directly in binary,
eh ?

Ya caught me on my slip-up with the 8 bits to a byte - however, there are
1024 bytes to a kilobyte, which is, generally, still 1024 pieces of
useable information.

(Try it: type "1" 1024 times in a text file and see how big the file
is...)

Thanks ever so much for your gentlemanly response.

--
Marc Bissonnette
CGI / Database / Web Management Tools: http://www.internalysis.com
Looking for a new ISP? http://www.canadianisp.com
 
G

Guest

Guest
Archived from groups: alt.games.coh (More info?)

On Sat, 09 Apr 2005 16:30:11 GMT, Marc Bissonnette
<dragnet@internalysis.com> wrote:

>Because he jumped on the fact that I misquoted the bits-for bytes fact (8
>bits to a byte, etc). Further down in my post, I said 10-20 K per
>character file, which should rather easily show what was getting at with
>regards to storage space per character.
>
>Of course, in his rush to prove how superior he was, he quoted only the
>'1024 usable bits of information' part of the post.

NOWHERE in the quoted post did you say ANYTHING about 10-20k per
character file... Unless you'd be kind enough to point it out in the
quote which is, once again, below and contains the ENTIRE post he was
quoting a part of.

Before you accuse someone of being a "newb-to-usenet" and snipping out
information from your post, make DAMN sure that said information was
actually in the post that he quoted.

>>
>>>Ummm... No.
>>>
>>>(I'm a DB/CGI programmer, so I'm not pulling numbers out of my bum :)
>>>
>>>There's a *ton* of information stored per character, that would take
>>>far more than a kilobyte.
>>>
>>>Just off the top of my head:
>>>
>>>All of the costume options (x 4 slots)
>>>Aura type, intensity, etc (x 4 slots)
>>>Cape type, style, colours (x 4 slots)
>>>All contacts met
>>>All contact missions done, active, status, etc
>>>All maps, explored vs unexplored
>>>influence
>>>powers, enhancements
>>>temp powers
>>>clue data
>>>arc data
>>>SG data
>>>mobs killed data
>>>power use data (this might not be stored per char, but states has said
>>>he mines this for balancing issues)
>>>
>>>and a ton more that I'm not even aware of.
>>>
>>>A kilobyte ? Not even close (That would only be 1024 yes/no on/off
>>>bits of data)
>>>
>>>Now multiply this by 8 character slots by ten servers. It's a *lot* of
>>>data. They'll start deleting characters at some point in the future,
>>>even if just to speed up disk access and/or make names available
>>>again. Near future? Probably not. Year 3 or 4 ? Probably.
>>


--
Dark Tyger

Stop the madness! (Marvel Vs Cryptic Studios petition)
http://www.petitiononline.com/marvscoh/petition.html

Hey, everyone else is doing it. Free iPod:
http://www.freeiPods.com/?r=15728814
 
G

Guest

Guest
Archived from groups: alt.games.coh (More info?)

Dark Tyger <darktiger@somewhere.net> wrote in
news:a2rf51hfbbidqom6qvd2ncmft3378a2k9d@4ax.com:

> On 9 Apr 2005 07:46:11 GMT, Knight37 <knight37m@email.com> wrote:
>
>>Marc Bissonnette <dragnet@internalysis.com> once tried to test me
>>with:
>>
>>> (I'm a DB/CGI programmer, so I'm not pulling numbers out of my bum
>>> :)
>>>
>>> There's a *ton* of information stored per character, that would take
>>> far more than a kilobyte.
>>>
>>> A kilobyte ? Not even close (That would only be 1024 yes/no on/off
>>> bits of data)
>>
>>You're a programmer, and you don't know that a kiloBYTE can store a
>>hell of a lot more than 1024 yes/no bits of data? I think you need to
>>go back to school.
>
> Curious how everyone on Usenet is suddenly a programmer when it is
> convenient to lend credibility to their side of an argument, isn't it?
> ;)

Curious how you don't read the .sig file of every post I've made to this or
any other newsgroup that says that yes, I've always been a programmer,
isn't it ?



--
Marc Bissonnette
CGI / Database / Web Management Tools: http://www.internalysis.com
Looking for a new ISP? http://www.canadianisp.com
 
G

Guest

Guest
Archived from groups: alt.games.coh (More info?)

On Sat, 09 Apr 2005 16:31:11 GMT, Marc Bissonnette
<dragnet@internalysis.com> wrote:

>Dark Tyger <darktiger@somewhere.net> wrote in
>news:a2rf51hfbbidqom6qvd2ncmft3378a2k9d@4ax.com:
>
>> On 9 Apr 2005 07:46:11 GMT, Knight37 <knight37m@email.com> wrote:
>>
>>>Marc Bissonnette <dragnet@internalysis.com> once tried to test me
>>>with:
>>>
>>>> (I'm a DB/CGI programmer, so I'm not pulling numbers out of my bum
>>>> :)
>>>>
>>>> There's a *ton* of information stored per character, that would take
>>>> far more than a kilobyte.
>>>>
>>>> A kilobyte ? Not even close (That would only be 1024 yes/no on/off
>>>> bits of data)
>>>
>>>You're a programmer, and you don't know that a kiloBYTE can store a
>>>hell of a lot more than 1024 yes/no bits of data? I think you need to
>>>go back to school.
>>
>> Curious how everyone on Usenet is suddenly a programmer when it is
>> convenient to lend credibility to their side of an argument, isn't it?
>> ;)
>
>Curious how you don't read the .sig file of every post I've made to this or
>any other newsgroup that says that yes, I've always been a programmer,
>isn't it ?

....curious how you think that linking to DB management tool sites
automatically tells people you're a programmer and not just whoring
traffic to a website. And how you assume in classic newb-to-usenet
style that everyone even bothers to read sigs (many (in fact, I'd
wager most) don't).

--
Dark Tyger

Stop the madness! (Marvel Vs Cryptic Studios petition)
http://www.petitiononline.com/marvscoh/petition.html

Hey, everyone else is doing it. Free iPod:
http://www.freeiPods.com/?r=15728814
 
G

Guest

Guest
Archived from groups: alt.games.coh (More info?)

On 7 Apr 2005 04:05:53 -0700, bombaymix <bombaymix@altavista.co.uk> wrote:

>> I don't know if that is official, but at least it hasn't happened so
>> far.
>> Besides, deleting would be rather stupid, since the cost of having a
>> backed-up account is only a few cents at most, and a returning customer
>> would earn them thousands of those pretty quickly. ^_^
>
> But it all adds up. A few years down line it might be a toss up between
> buying more disc space or deleting accounts that haven't been used in
> years. NCSoft might well decide to delete the account.

I believe that for the projected lifetime of this game, the cost of disk
storage is likely to fall faster than NCSoft can accumulate retired
characters. But yeah, I suppose they may want to speed up the servers by
moving retired chars out to some "vault" disks, from which it might take a
minute to load back onto active server after registration. But even if
they stored it on tape, no one would notice, since it already takes some
time (an hour or so last I tried) from you sign up till you get the
confirmation e-mail for a new account.

--
"When someone starts bragging about how much debt they have, it's not a
good sign." -G
 
G

Guest

Guest
Archived from groups: alt.games.coh (More info?)

On Sat, 09 Apr 2005 19:35:42 +0200, Magnus Itland <itlandm@online.no>
wrote:

>On 7 Apr 2005 04:05:53 -0700, bombaymix <bombaymix@altavista.co.uk> wrote:
>
>>> I don't know if that is official, but at least it hasn't happened so
>>> far.
>>> Besides, deleting would be rather stupid, since the cost of having a
>>> backed-up account is only a few cents at most, and a returning customer
>>> would earn them thousands of those pretty quickly. ^_^
>>
>> But it all adds up. A few years down line it might be a toss up between
>> buying more disc space or deleting accounts that haven't been used in
>> years. NCSoft might well decide to delete the account.
>
>I believe that for the projected lifetime of this game, the cost of disk
>storage is likely to fall faster than NCSoft can accumulate retired
>characters

Fact is, EQ has never wiped inactive accounts, and they're running on
6 years now. Hell, they even hold backups of deleted characters until
a new one with the same name on the same server is made. I once had a
character that had been deleted for nearly a full year restored.

--
Dark Tyger

Stop the madness! (Marvel Vs Cryptic Studios petition)
http://www.petitiononline.com/marvscoh/petition.html

Hey, everyone else is doing it. Free iPod:
http://www.freeiPods.com/?r=15728814
 
G

Guest

Guest
Archived from groups: alt.games.coh (More info?)

Dark Tyger <darktiger@somewhere.net> wrote in
news:6u5g51dccfic4jm8rgkj9nns4h2muc6c56@4ax.com:

> On Sat, 09 Apr 2005 16:30:11 GMT, Marc Bissonnette
> <dragnet@internalysis.com> wrote:
>
>>Because he jumped on the fact that I misquoted the bits-for bytes fact
>>(8 bits to a byte, etc). Further down in my post, I said 10-20 K per
>>character file, which should rather easily show what was getting at
>>with regards to storage space per character.
>>
>>Of course, in his rush to prove how superior he was, he quoted only
>>the '1024 usable bits of information' part of the post.
>
> NOWHERE in the quoted post did you say ANYTHING about 10-20k per
> character file... Unless you'd be kind enough to point it out in the
> quote which is, once again, below and contains the ENTIRE post he was
> quoting a part of.
>
> Before you accuse someone of being a "newb-to-usenet" and snipping out
> information from your post, make DAMN sure that said information was
> actually in the post that he quoted.


*yawn* Are you done yet or is there some more you need to get off your
chest to vent your feelings of RL inadequacy, "dark tyger" ?

Take a look through the thread and even you should be able to find my
attribution for character storage size.

Just to make you happy, though, I'll let you have the last word on this
with your next post.

You're welcome.

>>>>Ummm... No.
>>>>
>>>>(I'm a DB/CGI programmer, so I'm not pulling numbers out of my bum
>>>>:)
>>>>
>>>>There's a *ton* of information stored per character, that would take
>>>>far more than a kilobyte.
>>>>
>>>>Just off the top of my head:
>>>>
>>>>All of the costume options (x 4 slots)
>>>>Aura type, intensity, etc (x 4 slots)
>>>>Cape type, style, colours (x 4 slots)
>>>>All contacts met
>>>>All contact missions done, active, status, etc
>>>>All maps, explored vs unexplored
>>>>influence
>>>>powers, enhancements
>>>>temp powers
>>>>clue data
>>>>arc data
>>>>SG data
>>>>mobs killed data
>>>>power use data (this might not be stored per char, but states has
>>>>said he mines this for balancing issues)
>>>>
>>>>and a ton more that I'm not even aware of.
>>>>
>>>>A kilobyte ? Not even close (That would only be 1024 yes/no on/off
>>>>bits of data)
>>>>
>>>>Now multiply this by 8 character slots by ten servers. It's a *lot*
>>>>of data. They'll start deleting characters at some point in the
>>>>future, even if just to speed up disk access and/or make names
>>>>available again. Near future? Probably not. Year 3 or 4 ? Probably.
>>>
>
>



--
Marc Bissonnette
CGI / Database / Web Management Tools: http://www.internalysis.com
Looking for a new ISP? http://www.canadianisp.com