What is a server and what does it do ?
Arbitrarily splits the playerbase up
So it isnt a physical thing separated from other physical things ? a computer at Blizz headquarters can have several servers ?
A server in terms of WoW is more or less just a process running on a machine. This machine is most probably virtual nowadays.
Servers are physical systems that exist in data centres around the world. They literally stacks of server units that have their own components but they use server specific hardware which is designed for handling large numbers of parallel operations (multi-threaded operations) (Multiple Server CPUs, Higher RAM support, ECC RAM support, larger data cache etc) as well as server specific operating systems capable of handling thousands of concurrent processes.
I would expect that in the case of an mmo, these server units stacked together work by hot swapping connections depending on some parameters, perhaps location, this is to help limit how much network input/output (I/O) is going through a single server unit.
We see this retail wow all the time with technology such as Sharding or Phasing, a group of people in an area that are split up into groups that connect to different server units so that more people can be in one area and even interacting with people from other realms.
On a smaller scale, it could be possible for one powerful server stack to be running multiple virtual servers, this is probably how games like Fornite work, as each game only needs to support 100 players, you could have a server capable of handling 500 players that runs 5 virtual servers.
In the case of wow, one mega server wouldn’t be possible. We can’t run a server that support 100000 people without tech like sharding, simply put, that is too much data going in and out at the same time with limited bandwidth.
But considering the issues we are facing now with these queues, it would be possible for blizzard to largely increase the server capacity with modern hardware, the reason they don’t is probably just cost, it would cost a lot of replace and upgrade every single server unit, as well as the time it would take and the potential issues it could cause (Lots of Server software is written for specific operating systems and hardware, so hardware changes lead to software changes).
And this is why people are annoyed, could these queues be improved, could better solutions be put in place for content launches? Almost certainly, but as always, in a few weeks the demand will begin to drop, queues will shorten and the complaining will stop it Activision probably just don’t think it is worth the cost just for the initial launch rush.
This is just generic knowledge of multiplayer games though, blizzard could be working some magic I know nothing about, so take it with a grain of salt.
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A miserable little pile of secrets.
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Thanks for the indepth !
What a horrible night to have a queue
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It’s a box that contains the entirety of Thekal, connected to a hamster wheel housing an extremely tired, underfed hamster named Billy.
Blizzard can’t afford to feed Billy properly, you see, as buying Billy that new hamster wheel caused Bobby to have to wait another two days to buy his newest gold-plated yacht, and we all know what happens when Bobby doesn’t get his yachts on schedule.
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