Unless you're talking techie-geek stuff -- bits, bytes, and all that -- 256 isn't a very practical number. Yet that's the magical number of players that MAG (which previously stood for "Massive Action Game") supports. With each match lasting 20 minutes or longer, it seems that "practical" is an impossible concept with so many people playing this shooter at once.

Can it work? We had a ton of questions and concerns...and we found the answers at this past E3....

Why 256 players?

For the techie geeks out there, 256 is a good number for server packets.

Also, on the lowest level, you can organize eight players in a squad, 32 players (four squads) in a platoon, and 128 players (four platoons) in one company. Have two opposing companies and you end up with 256 players.

What about the lag?

MAG will be running on dedicated servers, which means many fewer problems related to other players' bad connections. Also, the game will be running on a unique network architecture, where it'll do more local updating -- that is, it'll send info back and forth more often for everything nearby than for faraway action, optimizing the data pipeline.

This doesn't mean you won't see any lag, mind you. We won't know until we're playing under real-world, at-home conditions. But lag is something the developers are obviously very mindful of.

Can you join as groups of larger than eight players?

Not when MAG launches, no. But developer Zipper is looking at support for larger group sizes as a possible post-launch, downloadable update. But you might be able to trick the system into letting all 127 of your friends into the same game (though probably not all in the same side/company), if you all try to join at the same time, because...

How will the system fill out 256-player games without forcing people to wait forever in lobbies?

All players looking for a game at any given time will be thrown into a single master queue. Therefore, instead of having dozens or hundreds of open lobbies looking for players at one time, the system will keep pouring players into one massive game until it fills up or a certain time limit is up (for those slow nights). Then, that game launches and a new queue opens up. It's sort of like an amusement park line.

This seems like a very smart system, but we don't know if that'll make for a huge mess when it comes to player ranks and matchmaking.

How will voice chat work?

The eight players in a squad can chat, and the platoon leader can chat with all squad leaders, while company leaders can chat to platoon and squad leaders. Company leaders can also broadcast to everyone at once if he chooses to do so.

Zipper hopes that the ranking system will help to put the right players in those leadership roles to avoid assholes from taking over the airwaves. You can lose experience points for team kills, bad play, losing, etc., so on paper, only the serious, dedicated players will rise up to leadership positions.