Modeling system performance in MMORPG

Massive multiplayer online games are becoming popular and prosperous rapidly. Although many papers have been published on system performance for online games in recent years, most of them are focusing on network perspective in first personal shooter (FPS) or strategy games. This paper describes a method to modeling network traffic and game server performance in a standard MMORPG (massive multiplayer online role play game). Experimental results show that there exists strong linear relationship between performance metrics in server side and the concurrent player number online. Utilization of two kinds of resources, including network traffic and server, can be calculated via using the concurrent player number as a determinative variable. Player-related distribution patterns are also analyzed which form the basis for resource provisioning and load balancing.