Revealed

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Jaysheel D Bhavsar

• Revealed
• Presented by Jaysheel D Bhavsar

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Game Taxonomy

• MOG (Multi-player Online Games)
• No persistent environment
• Game server all over the place
• E.G Half Life (counter strike), Call of Duty,
  Halo
• MMOG (Massively Multi-player Online Games)
• Role Playing Games (WoW, LoTR)
• First Person Shooter (WW-II online, PlanetSide)
• Real Time Strategy (Mankind, Dreamloads)
• Social Games (SecondLife)

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MMOG Market share
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World of MMO
customized FTP/HTTP server that allow connections
from a game client which is then updated as
required
takes the user name and password from game
clients and authenticates the account against the
entries in the database
The world/zone servers are the boxes that handle
the actual player data for specific areas of the
game world, including load balancing
customized to optimize the data stream between
the database and the auth/world servers for
player data parsing
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What is World of Warcraft?

• Well have a look

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The Game client

• The program installed on a personal computer is
  the client. It has four primary duties.
• decodes and displays the data that make up the
  game world, as well as the user interface (UI)
  and any associated add-ons.
• receives input from user and from a remote server
  and changes the game display accordingly.
• gives feedback to user and the server, based on
  what's happening in the game.
• keeps up with any changes user make to game's
  layout and settings (mods).

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Game play

• Lets play a game

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What do we know so far?

• MMORPGs are real time games, and have highly
  interactive environment
• Gamers/Clients interact with each other, and
  computer AIs via server node
• So far we have been told that UDP is the choice
  of protocol for most real time environments. Let
  review why so.

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Basic Analysis

• WoW and other MMORPGs use TCPwhy???
• Analysis of TCP stream shows that PSH bit is set
  in almost all PDUs transmittedwhy???

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Basic Analysis
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Basic Analysis
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Main Screen
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Time line main screen
Open TCP connection, and use HTTP protocol to
download background, music, patch
open TCP connection to port 3724 (blizwow). Get
server ids, and server IP ads
Open TCP connection and use HTTP protocol to
download news and info
Time
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Dash board
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Time line dashboard
open TCP connection to port 3724 (blizwow).
Authenticate user
open TCP connection and use HTTP protocol to
download game character information
open TCP connection to port 3724 (blizwow). To
the realm of selected user.
Time
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Game Play
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Time line in game
Same connection used to interact between user and
server
open TCP connection and use HTTP protocol to get
gamers data from DB server.
Time
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Acknowledgment

• Dr. K. E. Wommack
• Dr. P. Amer
• Blizzard Entertainment
• http//www.mmogchart.com/
• Philipp Svoboda, Wolfgang Karner, Markus Rupp
  Institute of Communications and Radio-Frequency
  Engineering Vienna University of Technology,
  Austria
• A little fun (http//www.southparkstudios.com/epis
  odes/103797) explicit content

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Misc Slides
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Play-by-play analysis
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Play-by-play cont

• After pulling data from the archives stored on
  the computer's hard drive, the client creates a
  representation of Aragon's surroundings.
• The client informs the server of Aragon's
  position and receives information about
  stationary and mobile objects, or mobs, around
  Aragon. A mob is essentially any wandering object
  in the world, but it's most often used to
  describe attackable enemies.
• When Aragon tries to pick up the stone, the
  client tells the server what Aragon is doing.
  Server also displays a status bar, showing the
  player how long it will take for Aragon to
  retrieve the stone.

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Play-by-play cont

• The client receives information about the
  goblin's attack from the server. Server
  interrupts Aragon's stone collection when the
  goblin hits Aragon. The client sends information
  to the server about how Aragon defends himself,
  and server receives information about the
  goblin's actions and the progression of the
  fight.
• Once Aragon kills the goblin and finishes
  collecting the stone, the client stops displaying
  the stone on the ground and instead displays an
  icon representing the stone in Aragon's
  inventory. Client informs the server that Aragon
  has collected the stone, so other players will no
  longer see it in the game world.

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