While flying to SC23 (the 2023 International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage, and Analysis) in Denver, Patrick Kennedy from Serve The Home had a chance encounter with a man on the plane who shared an intriguing story about Blizzard‘s decision to auction off its servers to fans.
World of Warcraft launched in November 2004 and was hugely popular – and even now boasts over a million daily logins. Each player’s character is tied to a specific realm, requiring servers that track the state of all players and NPCs continuously.
In 2005, Blizzard deployed AMD Opteron 275 processors in HP ProLiant BL25p blades, offering significant performance improvements. These servers, essential for saving the state of every player, faced constant database writing.
A wedding…
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