What's with servers, anyway?

[pergolesi]

My realm is full most evenings and I have to wait in a cue, sometimes 300 or more. They're not offering any free transfers for my server either. I suppose I have to either wait or pay. But what is it about servers? Where do they reside? Are they all at a central Blizzard headquarters in Silicon Valley or somewhere or are they dispersed around the country in little storefronts? Are they all initiated and controlled by Blizzard directly or are they franchises like MacDonalds? How hard is it to get a new server up and running? How full does a realm have to be before they start giving free transfers? Or start up a new server?

I suppose I just have to wait but I'm curious.

[Gorny]

As far as I know, WoW servers are hosted by At&t. They are also spread out around the country.

[prion]

the queue will prolly subside after the lunar festival ends

[surodat]

http://www.wowwiki.com/US_realm_list_by_datacenter

[elsegundo]

perg... a wait of 300 people takes my realm about 10 minutes. it could be different depending on how many people go off.

servers are stuck together in clusters. blizzard calls the physical servers datacenters. in the realm world, its called battlegroups. for instance, i think whilrwind battlegroup is Seattle Datacenter. check the wiki to double check. haha.

but yea, each server consist, actually, of several server computers. the archetecture isnt all uncommon, but the exact setup is not known to the public. what im guessing, and what others have guessed as well, is that there are server computers for each continent (hence the loading screen). there is also a server for locations of players, mobs, chests, etc. another server for instances. all these servers together (or cluster) is then called Blood Furnace, or Silvermoon, or Onyxia, or Akama, or whatever. These clusters then form bigger clusters to form the datacenter, or battlegroup. and these clusters of clusters together form the US Realms. or EU realms, or China realms, etc.