Have a look at the link yourself, its been a very long time since i bothered making a post, or pointing out just how unacceptable Blizzards treatment is to Warcraft 3, but this pushed my buttons yet again.
Remember the 800 employe firing ? around that time there was a new CEO i think, they were hired and heavily pushed a cutting costs mindset, correct me if i’m wrong but i think they no longer work there anymore. but the effects of these types of decisions heavily impacted War3.
It is absolutely UNACCEPTABLE for Warcraft III and WoW to share servers and interrupt or bother eachother like this, dear Blizzard, how CHEAP can you be ? you mightaswell run the game on a tractor engine for dedicated servers at this point.
Are you REALLY going to put us in a position where you imply War3 doesn’t even deserve its own dedicated servers ? what does Warcraft 3 deserve in your eyes anyway ?
Server sharing is common practice in industry in general. It not only saves costs, but also can be good for the environment as it improves hardware utilisation and energy efficiency. From a technical point of view there is not a down side to such sharing, as long as resources are sufficient.
Be aware that large services like game servers might use a load balancer. As such despite sharing the same IP address, if it even does, the servers that get connected to might be running on physically different machines, and might even vary between players.
You should stop posting unneeded stuff, you have 1652 posts and you have not helped a single person.
Each of these posts occupies memory and takes computing power to memorise and show every time. Please save the environment by posting less, or shutting off your computer permanently. Thank you.
Nah, it doesn’t matter. Diablo 2 sold like hot pancakes, millions are drooling for Diablo IV. People do not learn. At this point it seems Actiblizz can start sacrificing children live and there’ll be the colourful personalities ready to throw money at them. Until they will actully get really hurt in money dept - nothing will change. And they won’t. Best case scenario - Blizzard gets dismantled and consumed by activision to produce more soccer, football and call of duty.
What he says is correct. That is a very good solution to the problem.
Then, if we talk about how it has been implemented it is another topic.
But he wasn’t referring to the implementation, he was referring to the concept, that is indeed correct.
When almost 20 years ago they removed resources from WC3 servers and allocated them to WOW they did the exact same thing but everything was working like a charm.
Ask yourself why it is not working now…
one thing could be that the hardware is getting old. as hardware gets old it starts running slower. then there is bandwidth costs to consider, faster connections costs more. then there is development costs, which keeps increasing as games looks better and better.
it is not that easy. development costs increase because of the graphical qualify of overwatch 2 and diablo 4. they will not earn money until they are available for pre-purchase. until blizzard earns money on new games, they have to cut costs somewhere. they are not obligated to host their old games forever. they could however migrate many of their games to steam and gog.
running a server have 2 costs: energy and bandwitdh, energy cost fluctuates based on cpu load on the server and the price in the market while bandwitdh costs is usually fixed each month. in order to run the battle.net servers, blizzard needs to run server computers and have them connected to the internet.
a server to show the hosted game for saying 1000 users costs around 100$ per year… that’s all…
I’m not talking about WOW servers, I’m talking about the old battle.net for custom games. I told you, I host games on my computer and people can join. The load on their server is 0.
The only load is when the game gets advised or the chat and some other functions.
That’s less than a simple website with a forum.
facepalm. i will explain how this works in detail, though this is my last try. each player`s stats is loaded from the server as long as that player is logged on. when that player logges off, the information is saved in the database. databases is not that large so, they just need a storage medium. blizzard usually runs at least 3 servers per game, some times more. those are run locally to reduce ping. in each country where there is a server blizzard needs to pay montly costs to an internet service provider. that cost is based on how much bandwitdh they want, higher bandwitdh costs more. in additional to internet service costs(which is fixed), they also need energy which costs fluctuates according to the energy market. it costs less during wet summers in countries that produces energy from water. it costs more during cold winters. blizzard needs to pay whatever it costs to keep the servers running at all times. under a high load, the server uses more power because the hardware works more.
i will not tell you what i do not know. i know how a server works, because i have been running servers myself. freelancer for example requires a server to be run in multiplayer, though that uses a very limited database structure that saves character data only. the server however have to keep a stable connection between all linked players. warcraft s servers got full(back in the old days).
diablo 2`s server(back in the old days) got full. blizzard changed the server structure for warcraft 3 when its popularity went down though i do not know what they changed exactly, as they did not reveal that. despite being smart however, people does not trust me. blizzard pays for lots of separate ip adresses and have servers in at least 20 countries just for hosting world of warcraft. that costs a lot. that is 20 separate energy bills and 20 separate internet bills.
but do you realize what I’m trying to say since like 5 posts ago?
BATTLENET SERVICE FOR CUSTOM GAMES.
What you are describing is the whole infrastructure for all of their games, running on different servers in different countries for which some of them must have a real time response.
That’s the cost you are describing.
Having a server just for login and advertising a game even with 1 second delay costs nothing…
It does not consume bandwidth for running the game. The only bandwidth is used for a bit of chat text if you whisper to someone outside the game and for pinging bnet server now and then for updates.
So, it costs nothing.
If they didn’t remove the normal hosting of games they would not be in such a shameful situation… because players had an alternative.
I mean, that’s kinda ingenuous to say. In this situation, I’m more willing to accept andrea’s explanation.
Even if it was just for a service that advertised custom games in a different service entirely, his explanation makes sense. Sure, it might cost a lot less compared to the full package, but it does still cost money to run.
I have definitely noticed Blizzard doing this while in other games i play they either hide it very well and prevent issues from happening, or they dont do that.
As long as Warcraft III - WoW - and maybe Diablo 2 (?) can interrupt eachothers connection quality with player spikes i will remain to be staunchly against this malicious practice. my ping in War3 should not be hammered down because there is a spike or burden of usage from non War3 games.
It saves “costs” for micromanaging and minmaxing egomaniac investors of billion dollar companies, which is irrelevant to me. if anything it just shows how much they dont care and how cheap are they willing to go.
This entire damned project should be named Warcraft III the Budget Edition.
Outsourced models for cheap cost.
Browser based WebUI for cheap costs that prevents people who can run the Classic Mode but not Reforged to actually get into the game which is literal scam.
Budget servers by sharing it with other games and not caring if they interrupt eachother, i mean seriously what in Gods name does a Warcraft 3 Player have to pay for waiting in a line because ANOTHER game has hoards of players pouring in.
And please dont give me this snarky comment about the enviroment, the world has alot more dangerous stuff plaguing its enviroment then some online servers. anyone got balls to stand up to China yet do they ?