Population... underestimation?

[Toppopia]

Originally Posted by AThreatToYou

What I'm more worried about is how a single server can process, run, and host a game tracking 6000 players at once. From my memory, however, a single "continent" was a single server box in PS1, so they could easily chunk a single server into basically 3 servers linked to a final server that processes all of the overflow over a LAN network. Prioritizing the assets can help to where things like map data, resource amounts, experience gains, kill credits or certification gains are all dumped to another machine as soon as the first one gets loaded. Still, other modern engines such as CryEngine 2/3, Unreal Engine, or Source run into serious problems as soon as all of those 2000 players start shooting, throwing grenades, ducking, dieing and re-spawning. The most powerful server boxes and most modern engines these days just can't handle 2000 players, let alone 1000 players, let alone 200 players. Most engines start to die as soon as they get past 100 players--and this isn't network lag, it's where the server just can't keep track anymore. PlanetSide 2's achievement of 2000 players all at once is, on its own, freaking amazing. I honestly believe we just have to leave it to the programmers who know the ins-and-outs of process management to push the player limit as high as it can reasonably go with today's hardware in a situation where it isn't limited by today's software.

Now imagine all 2000 people running to 1 spot, then fighting eachother, we might end up blowing the whole server complex into a million pieces