Electricity to run the servers, and to cool the servers, and someone to babysit the servers, and to do weekly maintenance on them is not a free endeavor. Does anyone actually have a cost associated with any of this? My guess is that the babysitters alone cost at least $160 grand a year based on 3 people working 8 hour shifts at $35k a year and the normal 50% markup for labor that companies incur.
The number I found when looking around quickly was around 50 million dollars per year, when it comes to server upkeep. That was stated in 2010. At another place in 2008, they claimed that a Blizzard employee stated that they had spent a total of 200 million on all of WoW's upkeep, since the launch in 2004
I didn't find a source that I am comfortable with trusting when it comes to its accuracy though.
Will the player base of retail really dislike Classic so much that servers will die without sharding? If that's true it's no wonder the current game is in such a sorry state.
Unfortunately, we have no way of knowing how many players will leave compared to how many players will join during a given period. So there is a need to plan for multiple scenarios. We canāt bet on populations being stable, nor can we bet on the game being so terrible that players leave in droves.
One thing is certain: It will be very important to keep the server population caps at or below the correct Vanilla cap for launch. Itās a lot simpler to merge servers than split them up or force 3k players to sit in a queue because a 6k server stayed full.
You think always buying new servers, installing them, getting rid of the old ones over and over again, to keep the tech updated is cheap. NO it's not.
The servers are virtualized.
The servers are virtualized.
I am not sure what your point is. Blizzard has server facilities. That hardware costs a lot to maintain and to upgrade etc. It's one of the biggest expenses when it comes
to maintaining world of warcraft.
Then a few months in, most of those servers die down to low population,
Low population server isn't a dead server.
Sharding doesn't prevent people from leaving servers nor does it fix a problem that has yet to happen.
11/08/2018 12:50 AMPosted by
Mini Sharding allows them to keep higher player populations on realms once the tourists that they have said to be expecting on launch leave with out having to come up with other ideas for dead servers.
Okay, I respect your opinion. But this is Blizzard's opinion on the matter. And a poster who uses Blizzard's opinion makes it sound like all other options have been discovered, and all other options are inferior.
Since Wrath Beta, I have been debating people who just restate Blizzard's opinion back at me concerning changes that have driven me and millions away from the game.
Since Wrath Beta.
11/08/2018 12:50 AMPosted by
Mini once I leave the starting zone because those players where always there as opposed to logging in with thousands of other people around me for a week and then only hundreds logged on at a time after that.
The starter zones are huge for creating server identity and for "Wow-ing" new audiences. And I highly doubt sharding will stop there, nor will more changes not just be accepted by many so called "Vanilla-enthusiasts" just to get the game released earlier.
A person who loves Vanilla would welcome Classic having server crashes and login queue times. They wouldn't want it, but it'd be just another hurdle to get back to that experience. That game would be a success because it is Vanilla, not some gimmick jerry-rigged to resemble Vanilla enough to be 'genuine' or 'authentic.' (Actually look those terms up to realize they are marketing terms that specifically say something is not what they are saying it is.)
I'm done arguing the same arguments since 2008. My suggestions may not be correct ones. But at least I'm looking at alternatives that are closer to Vanilla. And I'm well aware of Blizzard's current opinion.
You think always buying new servers, installing them, getting rid of the old ones over and over again, to keep the tech updated is cheap. NO it's not.
The servers are virtualized.
Oh man, I wouldn't bother with the guy you are quoting he is off in his own lalaland. Just let him play house on here so his parents don't have to worry about him
Oh man, I wouldn't bother with the guy you are quoting he is off in his own lalaland. Just let him play house on here so his parents don't have to worry about him
Says the guy who thinks server upkeep isn't expensive at all.
Posted by Klinkiniak
One of the big costs when it comes to keeping WoW running is what? Yeah that's right, the servers.
Wrong. Servers are cheap AF nowadays.
lol
The reason people sit in lines at the font of a club..? You want to go where the people are.
If you have to sit in a queue onto a full server initially you have to sit in a queue.
Eventually the populations settle down and a lot of people will stop playing... the real server demand then kicks in.
Some servers will still be overloaded on one faction or both and blizzard can just offer free transfers from one server to another.
The best thing is if there is a limit for how many of each faction can log in... it will encourage faction balancing. If anything I would ask that they be 100% transparent on how many of each faction are on each server so you can choose one where your faction is the lower pop to skip queues.
I have not thought that much about what would should be done, to make things go well if sharding isn't used.
The onus is on Blizzard when it comes to that, that's what we pay them for. Figure it out Blizzard, stop letting quality suffer because it makes you more money short term.
Time to upgrade the server system's hardware that's most likely subpar compared to what they could have in its place.
Think big picture and longterm. Should be self-evident why being able to deal with huge crowds in a MMORPG would be a great thing when it comes to profit.
11/06/2018 04:27 PMPosted by
Priapis 11/06/2018 04:23 PMPosted by
Meemuu Yeah, because not having sharding killed WoW during its initial launch...
Initially, wow also had a much much smaller playerbase and a pop cap that was fairly low compared to today's capability.
This statement is hilarious.
TBC and Wrath had 2-4 times as many players at their launch as retail.
Ive played on the fresh private servers, day one they are packed, hour one you have a hard time logging in.
I dont mind this one bit, as i then get to see all the people and interact with them ALL.
A sharded server will just feel like a dead server.
I want to play with EVERYONE not just a few people.
They have the technology to easily accommodate all the people, even if the first few days are plagued with crashes and not everyone can log in, i dont care, i will wait.
1 Like
Do you think blizzard is a small indie company who even blinks at 500k per year?
You realize if they spend one million dollars per year on servers alone it would be 1 hundredth of a percent in their annual income?
One of the numbers I found when looking at figures of the yearly cost for the server upkeep in the past, was 50 times more than the number you stated.
Here's a clip that shows you how one of these facilities look https://youtu.be/avMuSgjbM7g?t=467 Made it so it starts at the relevant time. There are 17 of those world wide. It should now be clear that I was right about that it's one of their biggest expenses.
If you think not having to remove all that hardware and replace it with new one, every time new superior hardware is available on the market, wouldn't save them a lot of millions, well then there's no hope for you.
Donāt see why people think sharding will make the game more enjoyable. If you donāt shard then you will have the good players and players who spend a lot of hours get ahead and get into the later zones first. This will spread the population out nicely in a few days anyways. Donāt see why people canāt see this.