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I agree with you that adding a bunch of servers looks like the simpler (cheaper, in terms of Net Present Value) option. But I worry that however they've set it

I agree with you that adding a bunch of servers looks like the simpler (cheaper, in terms of Net Present Value) option. But I worry that however they've set it up is just not horizontally scalable. They say that a large bunch of the simulation runs on their servers. And that each city is connected (via the graph) to every other city. What if they haven't built in clean partitioning? If cities really do interact with every other city, and they've haven't already seriously planned how to horizontally scale, they're hosed. If it were just a matter of adding more hosts, wouldn't they have done that by now? Surely you over-provision for launch and then scale down once the first sales are over and people's interest dies down.

serf 14y ago
Everything you said is completely sane. With that said : EA's SimCity 5 (the newest release) stores towns and character profiles on a per server basis, meaning 'US West 1' and 'US West 2' are different. You must even re complete the forced tutorial if changing servers. It's unclear what parts of are being offloaded to the servers. Possibly only the 'global economy' stuff, along with other 'social' features. A client can be disconnected for 20-30 minutes and maintain a stable game until the client forces the eventual disconnection "Because a connection to Origin cannot be maintained". Strange for the gameplay to not noticeably change when disconnected from the machines that are supposedly running simulation for you..