Monsters and Memories, the upcoming EverQuest-inspired MMO by Niche Worlds Cult, recently underwent a public stress test on April 28th and 29th. The response was overwhelming, with more than 2,000 participants registering to take part in the test. In a recent update posted on May 10th, the developers provided a detailed breakdown of the test results and technical analysis.
The stress test was conducted to understand how the game’s servers would handle a large influx of players. The test revealed that the servers were capable of handling up to 1,000 players in a zone, beyond which the performance started to degrade significantly. The developers also identified several technical issues that needed to be addressed, including extended query times, database requirements, and optimizations to logging.
The team implemented a variety of contingencies to deal with the potential traffic influx into their login server and game servers. They also made modifications to the server setup and migrated to a new database management system. During the second stress test, the team slowed down player-to-server packet updates, increased time allocation to navigation, and throttled request spawn entity packets.
Despite the technical challenges faced during the stress test, the Monsters and Memories team expressed their gratitude for the overwhelming participation and the community’s feedback. The team also mentioned that they would be focusing on developing a proof of concept and doing more gameplay-focused testing in the future.