While flying to SC23 (the 2023 International Conference on High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage and Analysis) in Denver, Patrick Kennedy of Serve at home I 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, even now boasting over a million daily logins. Each player's character is tied to a specific realm, requiring servers to continually track the status of all players and NPCs.
In 2005, Blizzard implemented AMD Opteron 275 processors in HP ProLiant BL25p blades, offering significant performance improvements. These servers, essential for saving the state of each player, faced constant writing to the databases.
a wedding gift
After 6 or 7 years, the total cost of ownership (TCO) payback for replacing more than 10,000 blades was approximately 13 months. However, removing old leaves was a key issue. Recycling companies often take over decommissioned infrastructure and sell servers to generate income. Blizzard's HP blade servers were so obsolete that, instead of recycling the machines by paying to acquire them, Blizzard was faced with potentially paying up to a million dollars for their disposal.
In an attempt to avoid these costs, the company decided to sell the hardware to WoW fans. Kennedy says: “Rather than selling the servers directly, the blades were removed from global data centers. Then, a company produced the signs with the name of the instance and a message. “They were then auctioned off at a charity auction for St. Jude.”
This charity auction provided Blizzard with a tax benefit and covered the cost of the project to remove the old blades.
It is a fascinating story and well worth reading. While it's impossible to know where all the swords ended up, we do know what happened to one.
In a comment under Serve at home In this story, reader Tod Weitzel says: “In 2011, I had just received the save-the-date card (and the invitation to be the best man) at the wedding of two best friends, who had met in World of Warcraft. Then I found out about the auction. After many agonizing eBay updates, I won one of two listings for our home server, Cenarion Circle. It cost me more than I would have liked, but less than the limits of my good will towards the newly married couple. When the blade arrived in the mail, I was delighted to see the plexiglass cover with the WoW logo that replaced the steel cover. It was attached via embedded magnets, so I took it out. I then spent the next six months sending it around the country in a chain to each member of our guild, who signed it in silver ink. I have a photo of the happy couple seeing him for the first time at their wedding and of all the guild members present surrounding him.”
