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

[lisaa]

You just can't move a game server from dedicated hardware onto AWS

Think about when you play the game, every single action you and every other player and every monster needs to be calculated and the result sent back within 20 ms, 24/7, without even a single delay. Unlike Google or Amazon which can occassionally take a second or two longer to load a page and no one will notice, in a game if you lag even a little bit and even if its only once in an entire fight, it's really obvious. Even livestream sites like twitch don't need this kind of performance, because their video is buffered, it knows what to send seconds before it needs to. FFXIV needs to react to your actions almost instantly, even though the calculations are simple, the consistent responsiveness makes it pretty specialized.

And services like AWS and Azure just aren't designed for it because online games are smaller than the thousands of small and large tech companies that do use AWS, companies who care more about ease of development and scalability rather than microsecond performance. And AWS gets designed for those companies instead.

[VisperCon]

You just can't move a game server from dedicated hardware onto AWS

Think about when you play the game, every single action you and every other player and every monster needs to be calculated and the result sent back within 20 ms, 24/7, without even a single delay. Unlike Google or Amazon which can occassionally take a second or two longer to load a page and no one will notice, in a game if you lag even a little bit and even if its only once in an entire fight, it's really obvious. Even livestream sites like twitch don't need this kind of performance, because their video is buffered, it knows what to send seconds before it needs to. FFXIV needs to react to your actions almost instantly, even though the calculations are simple, the consistent responsiveness makes it pretty specialized.

And services like AWS and Azure just aren't designed for it because online games are smaller than the thousands of small and large tech companies that do use AWS, companies who care more about ease of development and scalability rather than microsecond performance. And AWS gets designed for those companies instead.

What? Xbox Live runs on Azure....

In a statement attributed to Azure Chief Technology Officer Mark Russinovich, Microsoft says:

"Most of Microsoft 365 services, including Teams, SharePoint Online and Office online, as well as Xbox Live services run primarily on Azure infrastructure today. Mailbox storage for Exchange Online and Outlook.com is also in the process of moving to standard Azure infrastructure."

Destiny 2 uses AWS
WoW friggin used AWS.

So much BS in your post.

[Phaty]

Destiny 2 uses AWS
WoW friggin used AWS.

So much BS in your post.

Well that explains the terrible lag spikes in both those games

[EverQuest]

Well you can GW2 basically did just that.

The thing is sqaure wants server control. I'm sure they looked into a aws solution, and said no. Is it I theory possible sure, but they said no so that's pretty much end discussion.

The big issue isn't the queue it's the source code causing various errors. Waiting in line was to be expected aws or not. Even if they could snap magical aws fingers you'd still be likely in a sizeable queue.

[Merkhen]

Well you can GW2 basically did just that.

The thing is sqaure wants server control. I'm sure they looked into a aws solution, and said no. Is it I theory possible sure, but they said no so that's pretty much end discussion.

The big issue isn't the queue it's the source code causing various errors. Waiting in line was to be expected aws or not. Even if they could snap magical aws fingers you'd still be likely in a sizeable queue.

that's what they have been saying for the past few months, and what Yoshida addressed today, they are solving all the errors(explained what's happening and what they doing about each one)but queues won't be gone for months.

everyone knows we going to have tons of players, they projected twice the population from ShB launch (and even with that they knew there was going to be massive queues), but it TRIPLED.