Well just some information this is a bit out of date as Blizzard has redone how the servers operate. Just to give an example of the complexity of the servers Blizzard uses for World of Warcraft.
They have an authentication server acting as the login. You character is then stored on a database that is only for characters. Each continent is on its own server. So each could go down as long as your server stays up you are fine, all loot items are on a separate database server this is why sometimes the world server could be running fine but looting could take up to a minute. Battlegrounds are hosted on their own separate battlegroup servers. If you go into a dungeon you are running on an instance server that is separate from your world servers.
Note these are logical servers and not all physical. Each could be made up of more then one blade especially in the early days.
So that means we have
Login server
Player database
Item database
World servers
Battlegroup servers
Instance servers
Each of these could have been made up by multiple server blades like this one.
The database servers run Redhat Linux.
WoW’s infrastructure includes 13,250 server blades, 75,000 CPU cores, and 112.5 terabytes of blade RAM.
This data is several years old and the game probably runs on even beefier more expensive hardware.
Running MMOs are not cheap it is why you see so many fail even if you get enough sales that would be considered good with any other type of game it is nothing because you need the cash to run the server infrastructure for the game.
Scalable enterprise tech like an MMO server is NOT cheap, not even close.
To give you an idea, at my work we use an IBM AS400 server. We were thinking of upgrading since ours is 7 years old and IBM is dropping support for the OS it's running. I'm not exactly sure of the specifications we asked for, but I know what we want is on the lower end of the spectrum. It'll cost $100,000.
So yeah, these servers cost hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars. On top of that, they require full time staff to maintain.
It's hard to tell with a game like WoW honestly, the amount of pure game servers they have alone last I checked was something like the 200+ range, and that's just logical player servers, each one of those is split into multiple continents as well as instance and battleground servers and such, it's a very large infrastructure.
They also don't have all their servers in one place, as far as I know they keep them in regional data centers to try and give players better performance to more local servers, that's why servers are set to the timeclock of the server machine and you have a lot of pacific and eastern servers.
In terms of determining cost it'd be very difficult, especially since things like the login servers are shared between all the game servers and they probably simply scale those up whenever they start getting near the breaking point. It's definitely expensive, but if you consider each server can handle a couple hundred players and that's at minimum 15 dollars a month each plus the cost of expansions, they're not going broke.
There's also a bit of a disconnect here with pricing, in reality you are NOT just paying for servers, MMO's are constantly growing beasts and every MMO will have a relatively large team of people working on new content in most cases, these people cost money to hire as well, so blizzard is also paying for everyone even remotely related to WoW, including legal staff and other random jobs, taking that into account the servers probably make up a decent chunk of expenses but are not the sole contributor.
The server cost is still ignoring the networking side of this. You can't just get a linksys router and some old Cisco switch you found the local high school throwing out. Even the older Cisco equipment I use setting up networks costs more then my Car.
Ah I see.
Another thing I've been interested about. Do free to play MMOs make more money than the subscription ones?
This depends on the game itself.
But Tera went subscription and saw slightly declining numbers. They then went F2P later on and ended up with a 300% player increase over the next half a year. And now they are making more money from cosmetic microtransactions than they ever were from the $15/month.
We're at a transition period right now between sub and f2p, before now sub would always make more money, but people are less thrilled about subs nowadays so f2p is making a killing.
The server cost is still ignoring the networking side of this. You can't just get a linksys router and some old Cisco switch you found the local high school throwing out. Even the older Cisco equipment I use setting up networks costs more then my Car.
And that's just for your tiny, by comparison, setup.
But Tera went subscription and saw slightly declining numbers. They then went F2P later on and ended up with a 300% player increase over the next half a year. And now they are making more money from cosmetic microtransactions than they ever were from the $15/month.
*OffTopic*
Is Tera a good game? I might get into it.
*OnTopic*
It's kinda weird how much people love getting cosmetic items in MMOs. I mean, I'm sorta guilty of this too, but the money they get from these things are insane.
*OffTopic*
Is Tera a good game? I might get into it.
*OnTopic*
*Shrug*, try it for yourself. Or watch some gameplay. I have beta footage on twitch but it's 2 years old.
It's kinda weird how much people love getting cosmetic items in MMOs. I mean, I'm sorta guilty of this too, but the money they get from these things are insane.
*OffTopic*
Is Tera a good game? I might get into it.
I found the combat mechanics to be refreshing from almost all other MMOs. This coming from someone who loved playing WoW. Rift, WoW, SWTOR all have the same combat mechanics - TERA is a lot different. Movement is big. You actually have to aim your spells/etc. I didn't play much because of real life, but it was still fun.
*OnTopic*
It's kinda weird how much people love getting cosmetic items in MMOs. I mean, I'm sorta guilty of this too, but the money they get from these things are insane.
It's not weird though. We play these games not as another character in a story. They aren't a Lara Croft or something - all characters are player created. It's the same in Elder Scrolls games or any other game where you create your character. There's a much bigger attachment and the psyche of the person gets into a 'role-playing' mode much moreso than in a Story driven game such as Tomb Raider. As such, it's almost as if we're living a second life (or 10, depending how many characters you level :P) in the game through the character. Economics in MMOs reflect those in real life fairly accurately because the same driving forces are in effect (to an extent).
It's not weird though. We play these games not as another character in a story. They aren't a Lara Croft or something - all characters are player created. It's the same in Elder Scrolls games or any other game where you create your character. There's a much bigger attachment and the psyche of the person gets into a 'role-playing' mode much moreso than in a Story driven game such as Tomb Raider. As such, it's almost as if we're living a second life (or 10, depending how many characters you level ) in the game through the character. Economics in MMOs reflect those in real life fairly accurately because the same driving forces are in effect (to an extent).
Well, in that case, I should start saving some money to get on that myself.
Well, in that case, I should start saving some money to get on that myself.
It depends on your playstyle - I'm entirely an end game raider. I log on for raids and whatever farming I have to do to facilitate raiding, and log off. I don't care about my character's appearance. Some people are the exact opposite. For me, the free to play is great - I don't have to pay to play for any game that isn't pay to win. I'm fine with microtransactions when they don't affect the end game experience. Cosmetics are great. I don't feel that Joe Schmoe down the street who spends $50 on an item in a game should be more powerful than me when I don't spend the money. That ticks me off.
If you like caring about cosmetic stuff, then you value the money differently.
Well, in that case, I should start saving some money to get on that myself.
It's not for everyone. And depends greatly on the person, as BKrenz said.
I used to love raiding, but then went into pcp and loved that, but then i eventually burnt out on both and quested solo for a while. I miss raids though...... Accomplishing things over the course of many hours with a bunch of people was fun.
"Accomplishing" was the key word (IE:kills). 11-14 wipes was usually our limit before we called it a night.
You dont accomplish much during progression, especially when you keep wiping from one specific mechanic or because of lag. (I'm looking at you, geddon, vael, twin emps, razuvious, netherspite, kael, thorim, yogg, mimron, twin valks, blood queen, sindragosa and LK.....)
"Programmers never repeat themselves. They loop."
They have an authentication server acting as the login. You character is then stored on a database that is only for characters. Each continent is on its own server. So each could go down as long as your server stays up you are fine, all loot items are on a separate database server this is why sometimes the world server could be running fine but looting could take up to a minute. Battlegrounds are hosted on their own separate battlegroup servers. If you go into a dungeon you are running on an instance server that is separate from your world servers.
Note these are logical servers and not all physical. Each could be made up of more then one blade especially in the early days.
So that means we have
Login server
Player database
Item database
World servers
Battlegroup servers
Instance servers
Each of these could have been made up by multiple server blades like this one.
The database servers run Redhat Linux.
WoW’s infrastructure includes 13,250 server blades, 75,000 CPU cores, and 112.5 terabytes of blade RAM.
This data is several years old and the game probably runs on even beefier more expensive hardware.
Running MMOs are not cheap it is why you see so many fail even if you get enough sales that would be considered good with any other type of game it is nothing because you need the cash to run the server infrastructure for the game.
To give you an idea, at my work we use an IBM AS400 server. We were thinking of upgrading since ours is 7 years old and IBM is dropping support for the OS it's running. I'm not exactly sure of the specifications we asked for, but I know what we want is on the lower end of the spectrum. It'll cost $100,000.
So yeah, these servers cost hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars. On top of that, they require full time staff to maintain.
They also don't have all their servers in one place, as far as I know they keep them in regional data centers to try and give players better performance to more local servers, that's why servers are set to the timeclock of the server machine and you have a lot of pacific and eastern servers.
In terms of determining cost it'd be very difficult, especially since things like the login servers are shared between all the game servers and they probably simply scale those up whenever they start getting near the breaking point. It's definitely expensive, but if you consider each server can handle a couple hundred players and that's at minimum 15 dollars a month each plus the cost of expansions, they're not going broke.
There's also a bit of a disconnect here with pricing, in reality you are NOT just paying for servers, MMO's are constantly growing beasts and every MMO will have a relatively large team of people working on new content in most cases, these people cost money to hire as well, so blizzard is also paying for everyone even remotely related to WoW, including legal staff and other random jobs, taking that into account the servers probably make up a decent chunk of expenses but are not the sole contributor.
Neither of those games are "small" by any stretch of the imagination.
Well, they are smaller than WoW.
After digging through google a bit, WoW servers cost something crazy like $137k daily.
Alright, let's get into even smaller MMOs.
What about games like LaTale or Dungeon Fighter Online (Back when that game was a thing, anyway), much simpler and smaller MMOs with 2D sprites.
"Smaller than WoW" is like saying "Smaller than Jupiter".
Yeah, sure, it's smaller, but it's still ENORMOUS.
Again, similar prices. $100-300k per server, another $50-200k per month (or week depending on the game) to run it. And that's just the server itself.
I did not even count bandwidth costs, which will also run you another $100k/month, or possibly $100k/day.
This also isnt counting the networking equipment, or the backups or giant UPSes.
This is why we insist you cannot just "make" an MMO, even if you could, you would never be able to support a playerbase larger than 10 people.
Even with these "smaller" games, you are talking about tens of thousands of people.
Ah I see.
Another thing I've been interested about. Do free to play MMOs make more money than the subscription ones?
But Tera went subscription and saw slightly declining numbers. They then went F2P later on and ended up with a 300% player increase over the next half a year. And now they are making more money from cosmetic microtransactions than they ever were from the $15/month.
We're at a transition period right now between sub and f2p, before now sub would always make more money, but people are less thrilled about subs nowadays so f2p is making a killing.
................. wat even am i reading
Go learn basic networking.
And that's just for your tiny, by comparison, setup.
*OffTopic*
Is Tera a good game? I might get into it.
*OnTopic*
It's kinda weird how much people love getting cosmetic items in MMOs. I mean, I'm sorta guilty of this too, but the money they get from these things are insane.
Not really weird at all.
WoW even has a whole mechanic around it. It was a player request going as far back as the beta.
I found the combat mechanics to be refreshing from almost all other MMOs. This coming from someone who loved playing WoW. Rift, WoW, SWTOR all have the same combat mechanics - TERA is a lot different. Movement is big. You actually have to aim your spells/etc. I didn't play much because of real life, but it was still fun.
It's not weird though. We play these games not as another character in a story. They aren't a Lara Croft or something - all characters are player created. It's the same in Elder Scrolls games or any other game where you create your character. There's a much bigger attachment and the psyche of the person gets into a 'role-playing' mode much moreso than in a Story driven game such as Tomb Raider. As such, it's almost as if we're living a second life (or 10, depending how many characters you level :P) in the game through the character. Economics in MMOs reflect those in real life fairly accurately because the same driving forces are in effect (to an extent).
"Programmers never repeat themselves. They loop."
Well, in that case, I should start saving some money to get on that myself.
It depends on your playstyle - I'm entirely an end game raider. I log on for raids and whatever farming I have to do to facilitate raiding, and log off. I don't care about my character's appearance. Some people are the exact opposite. For me, the free to play is great - I don't have to pay to play for any game that isn't pay to win. I'm fine with microtransactions when they don't affect the end game experience. Cosmetics are great. I don't feel that Joe Schmoe down the street who spends $50 on an item in a game should be more powerful than me when I don't spend the money. That ticks me off.
If you like caring about cosmetic stuff, then you value the money differently.
"Programmers never repeat themselves. They loop."
Although for WoW in particular, the reason was less to get characters looking good (for me at least) and more about nostalgia..........
And also because blizzard's design team has no goddamn clue what "subtlety" means any more.
It's not for everyone. And depends greatly on the person, as BKrenz said.
I used to love raiding, but then went into pcp and loved that, but then i eventually burnt out on both and quested solo for a while. I miss raids though...... Accomplishing things over the course of many hours with a bunch of people was fun.
I think you mean weeks.
"Programmers never repeat themselves. They loop."
You dont accomplish much during progression, especially when you keep wiping from one specific mechanic or because of lag. (I'm looking at you, geddon, vael, twin emps, razuvious, netherspite, kael, thorim, yogg, mimron, twin valks, blood queen, sindragosa and LK.....)