As far as scalability goes, there's actually a game we're referencing a lot to help us make it work at the get go called Kingdom of Loathing ( http://www.kingdomofloathing.com ). This game seems to have on average around 1,000-1,500 users on at any given time. I've noticed when visiting the page also, that is sends you to a random mirror of the site such as www2..., www3..., etc.. I'm not sure if those shows that it's directing people to various servers for the website, and that the database is possibly stored on one server by itself. This seems a bit bulky a solution for an online text/2d low res image rpg game, even with 1,000 users playing simultaneously. The point of saving only when I need to I get, and was planning to implement. Such things as exploring around the game world, and, well, that's all really, don't need to be saved as you'll start at the main location each time you log in, but other things like battle, buying/selling/upgrading items and inventory, and quest locations on the map, all need to be saved. I guess one of my bigger concerns about saving is if it would seem natural or strange to have it only save after the end of each battle, because the way the battle system is planned to work is that you attack, it loads the page, says how much dmg you did and the enemy did, then you may have to attack again, loading the page howveer many more times is needed until you die, or the enemy dies. There will be a function to run built in, but aside from that the only other way to get out is to exit the browser. It seems a bit cumbersome to have to access the db everytime an attack takes place, but at the same time the player will be limited to a number of "moves" per day, to make the game more fun, and help the server from dying. From what I recall, mysql database calls take only .002 seconds, or something very quick like that, so I suppose I shouldn't be too worried about the database overloading from people using it, or should I? That's really one of my main concerns. Anyways, thanks for all the help and input so far, it's greatly appreciated.
