Make an overflow server for each data center.

[Adajer]

Would it be possible to make an extra "overflow" server for each data center? I know the ability to get new servers right now is hard. I mean maybe in the future, for big expansion pack launches especially.

Take Aether Data Center for example. It has 8 servers. What I have in mind is adding a 9th server that no one can make their home server. It is exclusively available when it is turned on by SE. Treated just the same as visiting a server, you can go quest, level, party finder, etc. It just isn't your home and your character will have to report back to home server(could have a live queue countdown to slowly allow, or go back home next log in.)Then lets say after 1~3 months, server load begins to trend lower and normalize and you don't need the overflow server anymore. Disable it and turn the power off. Assuming you own them and can do so.

How feasible is this?

[Risvertasashi]

Well they already took some of their dev servers and used them to help out the login servers.

Making them into worlds... might be possible. SE already has the infrastructure in place for world visit and that "pick the least congested server to login to", so that would seem like the probably-biggest technical hurdles done.

But taking more servers from dev impacts, well, development and future patches. And not taking them from dev... means they have the same problem as now. Server hardware is on extreme backorder and won't be coming any time soon.

I kinda wonder if maybe they could have low population worlds hosted on AWS or Azure or one of those servers, temporarily, and eventually migrate them to hardware when it becomes available. I know they don't offer the performance of high end real hardware, but at this point it seems kind of any port in a storm...