World server is down.

[Jotunhammer]

No reason for compensation yet, not even close.

true but still ppl were already asking, heh

[Forteofgray]

This was resolved after a few hours, but I'm still surprised Blizzard considers their on-prem servers being so overloaded every major expansion release as ok. This also is a recurring problem really every significant patch as players are anxious to get into the new content. Only Blizzard knows if it's network, processing, or storage...but there's definitely a resource issue during those heavy load times. Cloud would absolutely fix that despite some comments to the contrary here. Cloud isn't infinite (very few things are), but AWS/Azure/etc. all have exponentially many times more capacity on-demand than Blizzard has on-prem in their own datacenter, for these types of specific circumstances that repeat periodically.

And yes there are charges for it, but there are also indirect costs with problem launches and customers getting a bad experience off the start for a new product. It's definitely a fixable problem, but a choice by Blizzard to consider that experience acceptable. Just something to keep in mind next time in 10.1, 10.2, 11.0, etc. when we're back here debating this overloaded on-prem servers issue again.

It was not resolved over a few hours. It was going on the day before launch up til server maintenance. I was experiencing it the day before, so were others on the official forums.

[Fullmetal89]

Area52 here, it's the usual server issues. Can't say I'm surprised. At least I have fun laughing at people in chat fighting over WoW and FFXIV.

[Sansnom]

The issue could have been totally solved if they provided, say, 10x server capacity versus their expected values. Or even 100x. It doesn’t matter as this is only needed for a first day or two, and since all resources are virtualized it’s very easy to scale up and down without incurring additional costs, we are talking about 2-3% increase in server operational expense for the first month.

Is it really that easy to scale up and then down 100x or even just 10x without additional costs? And is it really virtualized? You still need hardware from somewhere to provide the additional capacity.

I assume Blizzard run their own servers backends so where is that extra HW coming from?

How do you know all this? I am no server engineer so my knowledge is zero.

[Drudi]

Is it really that easy to scale up and then down 100x or even just 10x without additional costs? And is it really virtualized? You still need hardware from somewhere to provide the additional capacity.

I assume Blizzard run their own servers backends so where is that extra HW coming from?

How do you know all this? I am no server engineer so my knowledge is zero.

Everyone and their mom is using virtualized resources. The one who is not is providing such services.

There are some costs of course; my point is, it’s only opex for running a dozen extra servers for a few days and there isn’t a blocking upfront cost that you’d otherwise face with having to purchase hardware.

You click a button and your preconfigured server is running from a template like 15 minutes later, as low as $200/month.

So we are really talking about blizzard not willing to include an extra couple thousand dollars of one-time opex.

- - - Updated - - -

Let me give you an example on “how easy”. A company that is in worldwide top 5 antivirus vendors, is, naturally, testing their products.

To do so, they have to roll out a couple dozen of product editions on a several dozen of OS versions, on another several dozen of language configurations.

They do this every time new major build is delivered by the dev team - so basically at least once a day.

We are talking about close to 10k virtual machines being deployed automatically from templates, product installed there, automated tests being run (sometimes several hundred per product version). Then data is collected and all virtual machines are decommissioned.

Yes, they do it every day. Sometimes more than once a day. It’s all easy and automated.

[Cracked]

day 2 of unplayable shitty experience

some people seem fine, for my character trying to loot or turn in quest results in 30+ second lag

[Aucald]

Once you get out of the major population bottlenecks things seem fine, more or less. A couple of issues with instability that boots you out now and again, but I've not gotten any anomalous queues or failures to be able to log back in. Yesterday at the transport hub to get to the Isles was a nightmare, but I think that was more or less down to the huge presses of people just causing lag issues and the like - once past that, relatively smooth sailing.

[Gorsameth]

Everyone and their mom is using virtualized resources. The one who is not is providing such services.

There are some costs of course; my point is, it’s only opex for running a dozen extra servers for a few days and there isn’t a blocking upfront cost that you’d otherwise face with having to purchase hardware.

You click a button and your preconfigured server is running from a template like 15 minutes later, as low as $200/month.

So we are really talking about blizzard not willing to include an extra couple thousand dollars of one-time opex.

- - - Updated - - -

Let me give you an example on “how easy”. A company that is in worldwide top 5 antivirus vendors, is, naturally, testing their products.

To do so, they have to roll out a couple dozen of product editions on a several dozen of OS versions, on another several dozen of language configurations.

They do this every time new major build is delivered by the dev team - so basically at least once a day.

We are talking about close to 10k virtual machines being deployed automatically from templates, product installed there, automated tests being run (sometimes several hundred per product version). Then data is collected and all virtual machines are decommissioned.

Yes, they do it every day. Sometimes more than once a day. It’s all easy and automated.

I imagine WoW servers are a little more complicated, Your not talking about starting 100 completely separate and isolated virtual machines, there are a lot more interconnected systems like player data that needs to be shared by all is extra capacity that could cause bottlenecks.
And I wonder if there is enough idle hardware doing nothing in these datacenters that Blizzard can even just get 5x (or more) their usual capacity. Which I assume is pretty substantial at normal load.

[Drudi]

You should really read about cloud computing and how it works. It’s a service; you pay for it, you get what you paid for, you get it immediately (within minutes) and you pay as you go.

And saying that blizzard’s servers are more complex that testing 10k configurations several times a day - all while managing these configurations and templates - only shows your total inexperience in IT area.

As I said it earlier, we’re talking about $2-3k savings, one time savings, at blizzard side.

Just pure greed.

[Gorsameth]

You should really read about cloud computing and how it works. It’s a service; you pay for it, you get what you paid for, you get it immediately (within minutes) and you pay as you go.

And saying that blizzard’s servers are more complex that testing 10k configurations several times a day - all while managing these configurations and templates - only shows your total inexperience in IT area.

As I said it earlier, we’re talking about $2-3k savings, one time savings, at blizzard side.

Just pure greed.

they ran some new servers with Classis from the cloud but that was an entire server somewhere else that was later moved to their datacentres.

Expanding existing servers to run both local at their datacentre and cloud for additional capacity is bound to run into lag issues.

Sorry but I'm going to take Blizzard, and basically all other companies that all have issues with massive temporary load increases, trying to fix it for years and years with varying levels of success over some random guy on the internet saying its ez and would only cost 2k.

[Trumpcat]

Did you figure out fixing it? I had to go into the WTF folder and. Changing around a couple file names and deleting one

I read about that fix, but for me both the .old and the .txt files were identical with 2kb size and it didn't work. Such a mess

[Omians]

I read about that fix, but for me both the .old and the .txt files were identical with 2kb size and it didn't work. Such a mess

i had to delete the .txt and rename the .old into txt. but i also had to do it in the main folder and on 1 character to resave the Loadouts and that forced it back onto all my other characters

[ClassicPeon]

Probably because there are thousands more people trying to log into Dragonflight than WOTLK!

Why are you telling me that?

[Aucald]

As this is no longer the case since launch, no real need for this thread to remain. Closing this.