The worst part of MMO development is when you have to put a great deal of work into something important but fiddly that most of your players aren’t going to understand. Case in point, one of the big things being changed for Otherland’s next update is the network communication standard being used by the game. This is no doubt a large amount of work, and for most people it is completely impenetrable. You don’t know the difference between TCP and UDP; you know that you connect to the wifi on the Internet Box and then you can do what you want to do.
Of course, the post explaining this change does outline why the change is being made and why it’s relevant. In short, UDP (what the game currently uses) often gets put at a lower priority than TCP (what’s being put into the game) which can result in lag and disconnections, so changing it now is a way of heading off more widespread problems later. And you don’t need to know the technical details in full. Just know it’s being worked on, and the end result will be better for players. This is rather important, as it’s part of the rather comprehensive effort to improve and revitalize the game.
