While flying to SC23 (the 2023 International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage, and Analysis) in Denver, Patrick Kennedy from Serve The Home 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 - and even now boasts over a million daily logins. Each player's character is tied to a specific realm, requiring servers that track the state of all players and NPCs continuously.
