16 people online - Big freaking deal?

[Anthony1]

When it comes to playing games online on a console like PS2 or XBOX, it's pretty dissapointing to me that you are limited to 16 people being in the game at a time.

I mean, you really can't have a epic Halo 2 battle with only 16 people running around at a time. 8 people against 8 people, big freaking deal.

When are we going to see online games for consoles where you can have a real virtual war going on?

I mean like at least 32 people vs 32 people. 8 on 8 in my opinion is a dud, 16 on 16 would definitely be better, but still not that impressive. I think I would be pretty damned impressed with 32 on 32, I would certainly much rather have a 100 or more people running around in the game, but I think I could live with 32 on 32.

So what is it going to take for this to happen? Does everybody need fiber all the way into their actual house, for this to happen? I'm not very knowledgeable on this subject, but from what I know, most people don't actually have fiber going all the way to their actual house. Usually the fiber goes to a certain location in a neighborhood, and then a different kind of wire goes to the actual house. I've heard of some companies actually wiring neighborhoods with fiber all the way, even the so called "last mile". And these people usually have unbelievable downloading speeds, and uploading speeds.

Or do we need some new type of technology that is actually beyond fiber optics?

Also, whatever happened to the idea of having a basketball game with all 10 players on the floor being controlled by a real person? Or a baseball game with 9 people playing another 9 people simultaneously. I remember before XBOX live came along, Microsoft was talking about "imagine playing a football game with every player on the field being controlled by a different "real" person. Whatever happened to that?

I just think that all these first person shooting games, that allow 8 people to go against another 8 people, is just getting kinda redundant, and it just doesn't seem like this is the "future" of gaming like some people seem to think. 16 people in a game just doesn't seem that damn impressive to me.

I mean it's cool and all, better than nothing, but not what I was expecting from the whole broadband and video game thing.

[Phosphor Dot Fossils]

You have to keep in mind how online gaming, out of necessity where present technology is concerned, works.

Even something fancy and cutting-edge like Halo 2 ultimately boils down, on the server side, to something not unlike a 2-D, overhead-view, real-time strategy game. Every point on the map is a tile. Every tile has a current status, so the server can tell your Xbox which graphic to put there - is it a wall? Is it ground? Is it water? If it's a wall or the ground, has it sustained damage? Add to this the players, and any stray weapons or items strewn about the map, and the server is probably feeding the current status of every point of something like an 800x800 map, plus the current status of every "live" object or player in the game, constantly to 16 people. The server isn't feeding anything graphical at all, just data. All the graphical and audio work aside from voice is handled by the console itself.

Believe it or not, that's probably maxing out your whole broadband connection right there, that constant feed of information. Add live voice to that, and computations for how far away they are from a firing weapon or anything else making a sound, and that's a lot of stuff for the server to constantly feed to 16 client Xboxes.

It may be a while before anything more advanced comes along - there'll have to be advances in the server technology, connection speed, or both.

[Anthony1]

Well, certainly I can understand all of that, and I get your point, but still, I would be lying if I said that I wasn't a little dissapointed about the current online experience that is available right now.

Now please understand that I don't believe that the current online situation sucks, or is a horrible thing, or anything like that, but I guess I was just thinking that so much more was possible.

I guess the holy grail for me would be a world like a Grand Theft Auto San Andreas, except with the graphics of Need For Speed Underground 2, and about 100 freaking people running around in the game causing mayhem.

But the question then is, when is something like this actually going to happen?

5 years?

10 years?

15 years?

more?

I mean, the restrictions that we are dealing with really have nothing to do with the power of the console, it has mostly everything to do with the fact that the broadband infrastructure is what it is.

I mean, I don't see any dramatic changes of the broadband infrastructure occuring in the next 15 years or even more.

The way I understand it, is that the backbone of the internet, the core of the internet is like a really old football stadium, say Lambeau Field in Green Bay. And what has happened is that everything around this backbone has been re-built and is brand new and state of the art and up to date, like how they upgraded Lambeau Field recently, but the actual core of the physical structure is very old and very outdated.

So you have this really old backbone of the internet, and then you have all this brand new infrastructure and state of the art stuff connected to it, but eventually you run into these huge bottlenecks that will never be fully corrected unless they just throw the old backbone in the trash and start over from scratch. I remember reading awhile back that a "new" internet would be created, and that eventually everyone would move over to the "new" internet, and the old internet would go back to it's original purpose, which was primarily for university professors and stuff to exchange ideas.

Of course then again, I really don't know crap about this stuff, and I might just be talking out my arse.

I'm sure somebody here knows this stuff inside and out, and could maybe give us a better insight into the future of broadband gaming in the United States.


Again, the question is, when we will be able to play a game like GTA San Andreas with Need for Speed Underground visuals and 100 people running around causing major mayhem?

[Flack]

I mean, I don't see any dramatic changes of the broadband infrastructure occuring in the next 15 years or even more.

I think this is a really naive statement. 15 years ago I was running 1200 baud on my Commodore 64. Hell, over the past few years I've watched my cable modem speeds increase from 1.5 mbit to 3 mbit to just recently, 4 mbit. I read just a week or so ago that the FCC has now approved the delivery of high speed Internet over power lines. There are technological changes going on every day. I understand the premise that the Internet is old technology, but to think high speed access times won't change over the next 15 years is just dumb.

[NE146]

I mean, I don't see any dramatic changes of the broadband infrastructure occuring in the next 15 years or even more.

Huh.. why do you say that. I think you'll end up eating your words on that one :P

Change happens. And in technology, it happens even faster :)

[Phosphor Dot Fossils]

I put my money on 3-5 years, actually.

You'll get your wish, Anthony. Just sit tight and enjoy the 16 player experience while you can - I'm sure when that number balloons, it'll be "Man, remember when you only had 16 people playing at a time?" :)

Oh, and hey - ain't nothin' wrong with Lambeau Field. I used to live within walking distance of it. ;)

[orangemage]

yeah your kinda right when you say the backbone is outdated it is basiclly built on the old phone network but the reason they did this is because that network i worth around 200 billion dollars, so they try and get the most out of this while they builld new a new network (which that are doing now) i wolud say in 10 years we should be on fiber lines....well hopefully :-P

[EnemyZero]

I dont think we will see that in console gaming for a while yet, your talkin lan games here.

[IcewynG]

Sure, when you compare PC games (32-64 players) with XBOX (16) it might seems a more boring experience, but I really think it isn't. I'd rather have a great 8 vs 8 game on Halo 2 any day than a big FFA with 64 players that don't know anything about team work. :)

It's all a matter of perception I guess. I think the voice factor makes it a lot more interesting (even though we get usual bunch of "trash talkers") and the simplicity of console gaming is a good match for me.

I'll bett that in about 5 years, we'll have some console 32 players matches. It's only a matter time... with technology, patience is a virtue ;)

[Xtasy]

Well it may be due to hardware and conneciton

On a lan party there are like8 or 9 servers constantly feeding you and the comps are like 3ghz each

COmpare this with the xbox, its furthur you have to use one xbox as a server avarage speed of conn is 512kbps-768kbps and its being processed by a 700mhz processer

I think in ethier the next gen or the gen after that we may see this but for now its just not possible

Not sure i explained it well but there you go

-Xtasy

[Xtasy]

.

I guess the holy grail for me would be a world like a Grand Theft Auto San Andreas, except with the graphics of Need For Speed Underground 2, and about 100 freaking people running around in the game causing mayhem.



Again, the question is, when we will be able to play a game like GTA San Andreas with Need for Speed Underground visuals and 100 people running around causing major mayhem?

Erm you already can but with the PC version of vice city though, its a patch. Gooogle it

-Xtasy

[Predatorxs]

That all got me thinking, in the next few years, there could be huge! wars a couple of hundred on either side, hell why not have 3 or 4 or 5 army's all after each other, imagine 1,000 or so people all "playing in the same warm" But you couldn't just drop out, or go take a break, this is a real frickin war!! you leave you die!

Thats what i think will be in the future of online video gaming!..

Also flack was spot on, literally everyday, new things are happening regarding Broadband (speed). Infact give it another 2 or 3 years and i'm sure there will be a new name, for the new breed of net access. when it's at 100mb or even 1Gig download speed..

It will be crazy, and it's at that point there'll be hundreds (if not thousands?) of people globally fighting the same "Video Game War"

Ahhh back to my drink :drinking:

http://www.xs.dsl.pipex.com/avator/ms_ufo.gif..XS

[calthaer]

Wake up, people, and get a PC if you want to do this kind of gaming. Most FPSes already support 32+ players, and MMOGs are the only place you're going to find major wars going on (i.e. - Planetside).

Consoles may possibly catch up in 10 years - sooner if people are willing to pay $500-1000 for them...and oh wait - it's a PC at that point...

If you want a powerful feature like that, you just have to have the hardware for it, and right now consoles don't.

[Porkchop]

I mean, I don't see any dramatic changes of the broadband infrastructure occuring in the next 15 years or even more.

I think this is a really naive statement. 15 years ago I was running 1200 baud on my Commodore 64.

Cool 1200 Baud. Much faster than the 300 baud they started out with. LOL

On the east cost Verizon has started working on running fiberoptic to homes. That will give you the speed that you need, but that will take at least 5 years. Even longer if you live in the country like I do. We just got high speed cable enternet a little over a year ago. If you want high speed multi-player games move to Korea where the government pushed for high speed internet and they have had it for years. Over there high speed multi-player gaming is like a professional sport, which big prizes and celebrities.

[davidbrit2]

Even something fancy and cutting-edge like Halo 2 ultimately boils down, on the server side, to something not unlike a 2-D, overhead-view, real-time strategy game. Every point on the map is a tile. Every tile has a current status, so the server can tell your Xbox which graphic to put there - is it a wall? Is it ground? Is it water? If it's a wall or the ground, has it sustained damage? Add to this the players, and any stray weapons or items strewn about the map, and the server is probably feeding the current status of every point of something like an 800x800 map, plus the current status of every "live" object or player in the game, constantly to 16 people. The server isn't feeding anything graphical at all, just data. All the graphical and audio work aside from voice is handled by the console itself.

Hmm, are you sure that's how it works? That sounds wildly inefficient to me. The way I understand it, the server merely has to transmit position, rotational, and velocity values for dynamic objects in the game, along with other basic stats for the players. That wouldn't take nearly as much effort as sending a huge grid map for every frame, and in fact would be MUCH more precise. The grid map wouldn't give you any 3D data, and position resolution would be pretty bad. The fact that even dial-up is enough to handle an average FPS suggests there isn't TOO much data being thrown back and forth.

[eightbitonline]

if you play online FPS's like battlefield you know that the real thing that's limiting a truly war-like experience isn't the technology, it's the players themselves.

as soon as you gather 32-64 people on a server you're bound to draw hugely different players among those people. about 50% will be average players, 30% will be people who are below average, don't take it seriously and are actually being detrimental to the experience through being racist or ignorant on the comms and killing members of their own team/waiting for planes and then crashing them into the sea immediately, another 10% will be amazingly good so that you have no chance in hell of killing them, and another 10% will be solely interested in exploiting the game's design to boost their stats which usually means they camp your spawn point through one means or another.

it's just like with a forum. you'd like 100% of the posts to be intelligent and affectual, but the quality of the content, and therefore the quality of the experience, has an inverse relationship with the quantity of participants.

my favourite way to play online FPS's is in the clan setting. an 8-on-8, 10-on-10, or 12-on-12 league is definitley the way to go if you take what you're doing seriously and want the real "war" feeling.

but even then you run into the human factor when members of the team don't agree with the team leader, won't listen to instructions, etc.

just enjoy the game with some close buddies, and don't worry about the technology, because technology will progress so much faster than most gamers can mature, and that's the real hinderance to online gaming.

IMHO

[Anthony1]

I mean, I don't see any dramatic changes of the broadband infrastructure occuring in the next 15 years or even more.

I think this is a really naive statement. 15 years ago I was running 1200 baud on my Commodore 64. Hell, over the past few years I've watched my cable modem speeds increase from 1.5 mbit to 3 mbit to just recently, 4 mbit. I read just a week or so ago that the FCC has now approved the delivery of high speed Internet over power lines. There are technological changes going on every day. I understand the premise that the Internet is old technology, but to think high speed access times won't change over the next 15 years is just dumb.




OK, well here is the thing. I really don't know that much about how the whole broadband thing works, but I thought that basically we were using regular narrowband phone lines up to this point, and then the companies wired up neighborhoods to broadband, and the broadband was supposed to be a major leap in speed (which it certainly is over dial up), but that even broadband has it's limits.

Doesn't the current broadband infrastructure have a ceiling in terms of download and more importantly, upload speed?

What I mean is, that all of these companies have spent millions upon millions upon billions to lay all this fiber, and to set up these systems, and I don't see them completely re-doing them with some newer technology any time soon. So if these current broadband infrastructures have a upload ceiling that you hit, and if these companies have spent billions to get it to as many homes as possible, then I just don't see these companies deciding to redo the entire thing anytime in the near future.

That is why I was saying 5 years, 10 years, 15 years or more.

I mean, if a company like Comcast has spent over a 100 billion dollars making their broadband infrastructure, and this broadband infrastructure has a maximum speed for download and upload, a ceiling if you will, then why would Comcast go to a newer technology anytime soon? I mean they want to get their money out of their investment. I would think that they will use their current system as long as they can possibly get away with it.

Now, again, I really don't know much about Servers and Routers and all of this stuff, so maybe they can keep their infrastructure and add certain things to the infrastucture to dramaticaly increase the speed. I don't know.

But I can tell you that if it get's to the point where they are going to have to lay down a new type of wire, that ain't gonna happen for a long, long time.

[Raedon]

You could only play a high latency game globally. A game like Unreal Tournament 2k4 or Halo 2 take low pings to play. I get pings of 30-100 from most of the lower US and some backbone places in NY.

Basically a ping of 100 is 1/10th of a second. So you fire a gun and you are getting a ping of 400 then amost half a second will go by before you actually fire. In the old days of UT and dialup you had to lead a target.

With all the technology in the world, you will never get a good ping from, say, Japan because you can't communicate faster then the speed of light (as of 2004.)

Connect to a server in Japan for kicks sometime. fire a gun and 4 to 8 seconds go by. Might be fine for a MMORPG but not a FPS or RTS.

[portnoyd]

That's a FREAKING awesome observation, Anthony1.

[Ed Oscuro]

The way I understand it, the server merely has to transmit position, rotational, and velocity values for dynamic objects in the game, along with other basic stats for the players. That wouldn't take nearly as much effort as sending a huge grid map for every frame, and in fact would be MUCH more precise.
You're also doing voice data (text and voice for some games like Counter-Strike), and authentication of all data with a central server must be done (i.e. I don't tell the server whom I shot, or just as importantly, how far I've moved [in a well made game anyways], just what I've pressed) so it doesn't really boil down to that. Yeah, that's all the server has to send to send out to each client (plus comm), but the clients have to send out a considerable amount as well. Low upload caps will kill you every time.

[Ed Oscuro]

That's a FREAKING awesome observation, Anthony1.
it it INTENSE

*guitar solo*

[Berserker]

It has nothing to do with internet connection, ESPECIALLY when you factor in that Xbox Live is broadband. I used to play games of 20, sometimes 30 players on Quake(that's Quake 1) using a 33.6 modem. Sure, the lag was bad at times, but it was still playable in those days.

The problem is simple, really - your xbox can't handle more players on the screen than that. Given the limitations of the system, coupled with the fact that games like Halo 2 are already pushing it towards it's limit, there's just no way. Your framerate would sink below sea-level.

So, rather than leave the player levels limitless, and field all sorts of complaints when people can't play their games, they likely test how many players the console can handle, and set the limit accordingly.

So, to sum up - the bandwidth by itself leaves the field wide open already, it's the console that's the "bottleneck". When either new systems come out that can handle more polygons, or developers start curbing the advancement of visual pizazz, or perhaps a combination of both - THAT'S when you'll start playing 20, 30, 40-player games on your console.

[Ed Oscuro]

Huh, good point! Corridor 7 did an amazing amount of players like what...12 players simultaneously (you could run right through other players though!) while Rise of the Triad had 11 but I suppose you might have to play something like Eluder instead of Comm-Bat =P

RotT had true voice chat - prerecorded OR real-time, something Quake was going to have but didn't - but again it came down to connection and a bit of machine specs. It's different from title to title, but certainly Berserker's right...current consoles still are gravitating towards limiting onscreen action to only so many players. 16 players onscreen (plus monsters) at one time is pretty crazy, you have to admit.

[Berserker]

Huh, good point! Corridor 7 did an amazing amount of players like what...12 players simultaneously (you could run right through other players though!) while Rise of the Triad had 11 but I suppose you might have to play something like Eluder instead of Comm-Bat =P

Yeah, the Doom/Heretic/Hexen's could support something like 8 players, maybe a little more. Not sure on the numbers for Duke Nukem.

From what I can tell, player limits were basically sent up into the stratosphere when Quake adopted the Server/Client method of setting up multiplayer games that is now pretty much defacto, as opposed to the peer-to-peer type method games were using up to that point. Actually, I think the numbers from setting up an ingame server in Quake were something like 16, but if you ran a dedicated server you could get something like 64.

[Raedon]

That's a FREAKING awesome observation, Anthony1.

Not really, it's not the bandwidth at this point (unless you are on dial-up) it's latency periods and server speeds.

[thegreatescape]

Another important thing to remember is the maps and game technology will have to change for larger player amounts to work properly.
I cant speak for other fps' but in Enemy Territory anything more than 40 players becomes nothing more than a spam fest (insanely annoying), and anything less than 10 can be a bit dull or favours the attacking team.

If I recall correctly the designers of the original unreal were planning to implement a system where the multiplayer maps adjust size depending on the amount of players, but afaik nothing like that is in any current first person shooters, nor are there plans to put it in (probably too many design hurdles or something).

Imagine playing an online fps designed for teams of 50 vs 50 with only 20 people on the server. It would suck :/

Latency shouldnt really be a problem either, as most countries should have local servers. If it came down to me playing ET on american servers against other die hards to get a game I would say its time for me to move on and play something more popular.

[Half Japanese]

From what I'm reading Anthony, I'm assuming you're not actually playing online. This would be like me telling you to improve the mouse trap without ever having seen a rat. I think 8v8 is good enough. While Star Wars: Battlefront gives you a similar feeling (via a ton of AI bots), to me it's not as much fun as a game like Halo 2 or Unreal 2. With more than about 20 players in a match, unless you're playing an enormous map (which sucks when you're stuck on foot) you're going to be dying almost as soon as you spawn. Anyone who's ever been spawn-raped can tell you that's no fun at all. These massive multiplayer games (in the realm of shooters) sound good in theory, but in practice they would probably deliver a less compelling experience than you would be led to think. I don't claim to know how things work on the server side of things, but even without delving into that too deeply, it's pretty obvious that more than 16 or so would be extremely laggy at this point and time given our current technology.

[bargora]

I think that eightbitonline is dead friggin' on. Hell isn't lag. It's other gamers.

BTW, Raedon, I've played perfectly decent Steel Battalion matches with Japanese players before. Sometimes there are periods of higher latency (the dreaded "lag spikes"), but often the game is quite playable, with latency apparently below 200ms. But then, Steel Battalion: LOC uses peer-to-peer networking, so I don't know exactly how that plays into things.

I do know that Capcom/Nude Maker did a pretty damn marginal job programming the netcode for SB:LOC. It was advertised as being capable of up to 5 vs. 5 matches, but that ended up only being the case in Japan. In the U.S., most players rarely, if ever, see more than 3 vs. 3 matches. Part of the difference is apparently because Japan's internet structure is (I've been told) almost entirely fiber optics. Part of it may be that Japan is a much smaller physical space than the U.S. But what I do know is this: Capcom never bothered to do anything about the inability of U.S. and European players to have 5 vs. 5 matches. Capcom basically suggested that we sit down and enjoy some 3 vs. 3. And note that this was the case even if you had the published "required specs" for 5 vs. 5. I heard that a small group of players who all had T1 lines were able to do 5 vs. 5 in the U.S., but I'm not about to spend that kind of money. And many people with perfectly good cable and DSL connections were simply unable to even play 3 vs. 3 matches, which happened to be the minimum room size for the game's "Campaign" mode (the "main" part of the game).

Given the size of the maps in the game, I really do wish we would have been able to play 5 vs. 5 on this side of the ocean. Hell, 6 vs. 6 or 8 vs. 8 would have probably been fun, too. More than that? Might have gotten a bit hectic, given that everybody is in a giant robot and all.

Now what was my point here? *goes back to sleep*

[boatofcar]

just enjoy the game with some close buddies, and don't worry about the technology, because technology will progress so much faster than most gamers can mature, and that's the real hinderance to online gaming.


Great statement. It's intelligent threads like this that keep me coming back to DP, no matter how many innane posts I have to read through.

[Anthony1]

From what I'm reading Anthony, I'm assuming you're not actually playing online. This would be like me telling you to improve the mouse trap without ever having seen a rat. I think 8v8 is good enough. While Star Wars: Battlefront gives you a similar feeling (via a ton of AI bots), to me it's not as much fun as a game like Halo 2 or Unreal 2. With more than about 20 players in a match, unless you're playing an enormous map (which sucks when you're stuck on foot) you're going to be dying almost as soon as you spawn. Anyone who's ever been spawn-raped can tell you that's no fun at all. These massive multiplayer games (in the realm of shooters) sound good in theory, but in practice they would probably deliver a less compelling experience than you would be led to think. I don't claim to know how things work on the server side of things, but even without delving into that too deeply, it's pretty obvious that more than 16 or so would be extremely laggy at this point and time given our current technology.



Well, when XBOX Live first hit, I was there with controller in hand. I was there for the first year of so of XBOX Live, but then I went Retro and lost interest in current Gen games for awhile. Although I play current Gen games now, in addition to the old schools, I haven't gone back to XBOX Live. That has more to do with my only broadband provider being $58 per month, which I think is highway robbery.

But I played plenty of Unreal Tourney and Ghost Recon, to know some of what you are talking about. Still, I believe that you could have some awesome experiences with a much greater amount of people participating, but you would definitely have to have shit organized and private. Basically, you would have to weed out all the dipshits, and make sure that you are playing with people that want to have a really good legitimite experience and not just a free for all frag fest. 8 on 8 is fun, but I just don't feel like I'm really involved in any kind of real battle. More like a skirmish than a real war. If you think about real war, it involves hundreds and thousands of troops at a time, and it's basically a somewhat controlled chaos and free for all.

But imagine if you had a game that basically simulated World War II. With battles going on in France, Poland, Germany, Russia, the Pacific, etc, etc, all simultaneously, with real people controlling the soldiers. Planes, tanks, foot soldiers, navy, etc, etc. Submarines, etc, etc.

In real war, you have commanding officers that lead a troop of 15 people or whatever. Well in a simulation of that, you would have to have the same thing. People that joined the game would have to be up to par to be willing to follow the orders of a commander and basically stick together and not just wander off doing whatever it is they want to. But I guess, in war you also have those awol guys too. So if everything is fair in love and war, then online it should be the same thing. Except if you wanted to really make it real, then there wouldn't be any respawning. You get one life and that's it. You would have to wait for another battle

[GobopopRevisited]

I think its all consoles can handle without spending huge ammounts development money on dedicated servers and stat postings and the likes (Final Fantasy XI: Online) Most 16 player games take huge losses in framerate and overall game speed anyways, not to mention are forced to drop a few things out (Crashes in RaliSport 2 come to mind...)

True Fantasy Live Online :(

[Anthony1]

It has nothing to do with internet connection, ESPECIALLY when you factor in that Xbox Live is broadband. I used to play games of 20, sometimes 30 players on Quake(that's Quake 1) using a 33.6 modem. Sure, the lag was bad at times, but it was still playable in those days.

The problem is simple, really - your xbox can't handle more players on the screen than that. Given the limitations of the system, coupled with the fact that games like Halo 2 are already pushing it towards it's limit, there's just no way. Your framerate would sink below sea-level.

So, rather than leave the player levels limitless, and field all sorts of complaints when people can't play their games, they likely test how many players the console can handle, and set the limit accordingly.

So, to sum up - the bandwidth by itself leaves the field wide open already, it's the console that's the "bottleneck". When either new systems come out that can handle more polygons, or developers start curbing the advancement of visual pizazz, or perhaps a combination of both - THAT'S when you'll start playing 20, 30, 40-player games on your console.


If what you are saying is true, and that the power of the console itself is the main limiting factor, then that would be an awesome situation, because I believe with the next round of consoles, that shouldn't be as much of a bottleneck at all.

The power of the PS3 and XBOX 2 should be at such a high level, that I don't think the console would continue to be the bottleneck.

If what you are saying is correct.

[thegreatescape]

But imagine if you had a game that basically simulated World War II. With battles going on in France, Poland, Germany, Russia, the Pacific, etc, etc, all simultaneously, with real people controlling the soldiers. Planes, tanks, foot soldiers, navy, etc, etc. Submarines, etc, etc.

Actually there was a game that was similar to this, however it was subscription based and buggy as hell. Im sure someone knows the name (blitzkreig online?) , but it wasnt very popular and i think Battlefield 1942 pretty much killed what was left of it off (BF1942 free online play and a superior game regardless of inferior player count).
Total Annihilation used to have a persistent online galaxy where Core vs Arm battled for control of the universe, and there was a map representing what parts of the galaxy were controlled by what faction. From what i recall, the ARM were dominating when Boneyards had the plug pulled when cavedog folded :(

Long live the CORE!

[Berserker]

The power of the PS3 and XBOX 2 should be at such a high level, that I don't think the console would continue to be the bottleneck.

Hmm... that may be jumping the gun a little. You have to take into account how developers are going to aim for the visual "wow" factor when making games for these new systems. Unless they start taking under serious account how new higher-poly models are going to affect the limits of online gaming on consoles, we may just end up going along the same limits but with more "purdy".

Also something to take into consideration, is this nescesarily something everyone would want? What's to say most people would want to sacrifice visual splendor to play in games with more people? That's going to be the real deciding factor here.

How about you? Would you sacrifice polygons for people?