The Quantum Rise expansion for EVE Online brought with it numerous server side and database improvements, and brings us a bit closer to the ideal of having smooth fleet battles with thousands of ships. So after the expansion rolled out, with the promise of improving the game experience, why was performance subpar at first? The latest CCP Games dev blog points out the culprit -- it's the client.
CCP Atlas (aka Jon Bjarnason), EVE's Technical Director, has written a dev blog on the performance issue. He states, "In hindsight, we should have caught this, but we didn't. Needless to say the week after Quantum Rise wasn't exactly our proudest moment. Although we had improved server and database performance in Quantum Rise, due to the client issues the perception was that overall performance had degraded. And perception is reality, doubly so in virtual worlds."
His blog post, "The EVE Client - A Love Story", is a walk through the iterations of the Quantum Rise expansion, which explains how they've solved performance problems through each patch. If you're really into knowing about the nuts and bolts of how CCP is trying to boost the game's performance, Bjarnason's dev blog goes into great detail. If you've got something else you want to know, why not ask CCP Atlas yourself? He's been answering questions from the players in a related thread on the EVE Online forums since his dev blog went live, and patch notes for Wednesday's fixes are posted as well.
