ELI5: Why the absolute hell did SE not use Azure or AWS as a temporary solution?

[Rasler_Heios]

Source...that isn't from over 5 years ago? (Because obviously technology doesn't change in five years...) They use AWS for Dragon Quest X by the way so this isn't some new concept to SE.

It was explained in one of the recent LLPs or interviews in preparation for EW.

[Larirawiel]

Destiny 2 runs on AWS and costs $0/mo.
For Honor runs on AWS and costs $0/mo.
The Division 2 runs on AWS and costs $0/mo.

WoW used AWS to relieve player congestion.... Did you do any research before posting this?

https://venturebeat.com/2018/03/19/a...ame-companies/

"to handle the ebbs and flows of demand on cloud-connected data centers"

It seems that the games do not run at 100% on AWS. Second, those games are not MMOs. And third, the server software must be developed in mind that it will propably run in cloud instances. If not then the server software will run very very VERY slow.

A cloud instance is more comparable to a Raspberry Pi than to a Xeon/Epyc-server. But you can rent thousands of those Raspberry Pi-like instances on demand and spawn them very quickly. And that is a problem. It is very unlikely that one cloud instance can handle more than a dozen players at once. And you do not want that only one dozen players are allowed per zone. Because it would not be an MMO anymore. And no, you cannot take 20 cloud instances and make one big instance of them because cloud instances are strictly separated from each other. You need to synchronize them permanently via network. And permanent synchronization creates a lot of network traffic.

Running on AWS may work for small group loot shooter but not for MMOs.

Cheers

[Tyssyn]

Another game I play moved to Amazon's Cloud servers, and while it's not an MMO, it's absolutely HORRIBLE. Lag is atrocious, things don't want to render quickly at all. I shudder to even imagine how bad FFXIV would be. I've also played New World, performance of the game was ugh.

[LariaKirin]

They said they have considered it and decided against it. Likely for good reasons.

Using AWS as a "temporary solution" is a suggestion born from ignorance - it is not a solution to the temporary problem we have now.

AWS doesn't magically just scale without effort. You need expertise to specifically design for it, otherwise you risk making things worse.

You can't simply copy-pasta your way into AWS. We're talking about complex infrastructure that was not built for cloud in the first place.
They would be looking at a migration process that takes months to years of planning, executing and testing.

Even if we entertain the fantasy that they could "just AWS 4head" in 2 days - migrating to a completely different environment for a temporary problem is a completely stupid business decision.

TLDR: AWS is not magic, stop pretending it is.

[VisperCon]

They said they have considered it and decided against it. Likely for good reasons.

Using AWS as a "temporary solution" is a suggestion born from ignorance - it is not a solution to the temporary problem we have now.

AWS doesn't magically just scale without effort. You need expertise to specifically design for it, otherwise you risk making things worse.

You can't simply copy-pasta your way into AWS. We're talking about complex infrastructure that was not built for cloud in the first place.
They would be looking at a migration process that takes months to years of planning, executing and testing.

Even if we entertain the fantasy that they could "just AWS 4head" in 2 days - migrating to a completely different environment for a temporary problem is a completely stupid business decision.

TLDR: AWS is not magic, stop pretending it is.

Isn't failing to do anything for the last nine months to improve servers to prepare for this launch when they have the data to show their MoM growth and historical data to show the increase in returning players for an expansion even worse? It's not like the idea is "do it in 2 days" but they had MONTHS to prepare for this launch and have utterly failed in that regard.

[RyuDragnier]

Isn't failing to do anything for the last nine months to improve servers to prepare for this launch when they have the data to show their MoM growth and historical data to show the increase in returning players for an expansion even worse? It's not like the idea is "do it in 2 days" but they had MONTHS to prepare for this launch and have utterly failed in that regard.

1. They need a specific chip type to increase the amount of servers.
2. Said chip type is currently hard to find and we have a global shortage of, and have had, for over a year now.
3. All the WoW players came to FFXIV 6 months ago, increasing the active playerbase to a size NOBODY could have predicted.
4. Due to all of the above, they did everything within their power to take care of things while trying to avoid things getting worse.

[VisperCon]

1. They need a specific chip type to increase the amount of servers.
2. Said chip type is currently hard to find and we have a global shortage of, and have had, for over a year now.
3. All the WoW players came to FFXIV 6 months ago, increasing the active playerbase to a size NOBODY could have predicted.
4. Due to all of the above, they did everything within their power to take care of things while trying to avoid things getting worse.

These all sound like issues of a systemic failure that were years in the making compounded by either an unwillingness to invest or strategize. They had record profits in April of 2021, that was 8 months ago and the population continued to grow MoM. That's just basic trending and forecasting. Companies need to be able to pivot to deal with these types of things but SE's complacent approach to their servers have showed quite the failure. If they "did everything within their power to take care of things"...what exactly did they do?

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

These all sound like issues of a systemic failure that were years in the making compounded by either an unwillingness to invest or strategize. They had record profits in April of 2021, that was 8 months ago and the population continued to grow MoM. That's just basic trending and forecasting. Companies need to be able to pivot to deal with these types of things but SE's complacent approach to their servers have showed quite the failure. If they "did everything within their power to take care of things"...what exactly did they do?

8 months ago was in peak "there are no chips" season. They would have had to forecast this years ago, which means forecasting WoW falling to pieces and almost everyone and their mother jumping ship overnight. No one forecasts growth like that when its outside norms. Also COVID happened, which caused more people to have time at home, increasing counts of logged in players, and at that point, it was too late to fix things.

[Catwho]

These all sound like issues of a systemic failure that were years in the making compounded by either an unwillingness to invest or strategize. They had record profits in April of 2021, that was 8 months ago and the population continued to grow MoM. That's just basic trending and forecasting. Companies need to be able to pivot to deal with these types of things but SE's complacent approach to their servers have showed quite the failure. If they "did everything within their power to take care of things"...what exactly did they do?

They ordered the OCE data center servers last spring (before they announced it during Fan Fest) and were warned they could not be delivered until 2022 which is why it is scheduled for patch 6.1.

[Divinemights]

These all sound like issues of a systemic failure that were years in the making compounded by either an unwillingness to invest or strategize. They had record profits in April of 2021, that was 8 months ago and the population continued to grow MoM. That's just basic trending and forecasting. Companies need to be able to pivot to deal with these types of things but SE's complacent approach to their servers have showed quite the failure. If they "did everything within their power to take care of things"...what exactly did they do?

First, no one is expecting Covid 19
Second, no one is expecting US government would be "not smart" enough to actually launch economy war on China during Covid 19.
A lot of restrictions have been put on TMSC and that Korean semiconductors manufactures where they need to do background check first
What do you expect these manufactures do?
Do the background check or just sell to the companies they recgonize?
This further add burden to the semiconductor shortage.
So get over with it and deal with it