Crytek ETA?

[kygon]

most MMO-server-apps are done in house. there are some complete MMO-engines out there, but neither GB nor CE2 is one of them.

generally:what we refer to as 'game-engine' are graphic-engines with some additional functionality (such as having a main-loop, some networking functionalities (i.e. sending and recieving TCP / UDP without need for low-lvl-coding sockets and manually queuing), some serialization functionalities (for saving game-states), animation-functionalities, import/export tools, sound, etc..

a typical game-engine is not designed to do what a MMO-server-app has to do: acessing one or usually many databases, persisting object states, horizontal or vertical load-balancing, handling thousands of network-connections, etc..
for all those tasks, you don't need a game-engine at all. mostly because there is usually no need for any gfx-output at the server.
all these tasks are done by a custom written application (in the realworld often a set of networked applications).

yes, many gameengines can do networking to be cappable of MP (multiplayer 16 - 100), often by making use of remote procedure calling, or not.. this, however, is a totally different thing to MMP (massive MP 100 - 10000)..

so, without knowing for sure, i'm strongly assuming that the server-apps of MA are inhouse-developed applications that calculate and persist our EU, and send messages to our clients, that utilize a game-engine to display all the colorful stuff..

techinically a MMO could be client-agnostic (doesn't know what 'brand of' client it is connected to) as long as the client provides a fitting message-send/receive interface to communicate with the server.

as i mentioned, there are some all-in-one-solutions for MMOs out there (100k$ - 2M$), but neither GB nor CE is such.

i could be totally off, but i'm quite positive i'm right..

EDIT: i found a pic with an basic example how an MMO could work (there are endless varieties on that though). look, you see the small 'laptops'? they represent our machines where the client runs on. this is the only place where a game-engine does make sense. all the other rest is tough, non-trivial stuff that is far beyond the scope of any game-engine..

good post