Using the cloud to build a MMORPG by Arjun Gupte of ACK Media

1. MMO REQUIREMENTS
• Low latency: We needed to synchronize tens of
thousands of clients simultaneously without dropping
any data.
• Processing:We needed to process hundreds of
thousands of threads simultaneously without any error.
• Scaling: Ability to scale seamlessly without shutting
down the Server,one server per 1000 clients.
• Persistance:State of player,game and connection must
be maintained at all times.
• Redundancy:Redundancy system for the Server and DB
structure for world state restoration

2. Traditional MMO Architecture
SERVER 1
DATABASE
CLIENT
SERVER 2
CLIENT
GAME SERVER
SERVER CLUSTER
SERVER 3
CLIENT
SERVER 4
CLIENT

3. Traditional MMO Architecture
SERVER 1
DATABASE
CLIENT
SERVER 2
CLIENT
GAME SERVER
SERVER CLUSTER
SERVER 3
CLIENT
SERVER 4
CLIENT

4. MMO CLOUD ARCHITECTURE
CLIENT
AMAZON
S3
CLIENT
EC2
INSTANCE
CLIENT
CLIENT

5. Advantages
FAST!
The processor speed stays the same no matter how much load is added onto that particular
instance, for eg. Wether its 100 clients or 1000 clients on a particular thread, the cloud will keep
processing it at a flat 1.5 Ghz
EASY!
Amazon offers you a Ubuntu or a Fedora distro which you can upload your code onto and that’s it!Linux
is a fantastic open-source platform to deploy any web based app on and theres a wealth of
knowledge on the internet to get anybody up and running.
REDUNDANCY!
We use Amazon’s S3 service to snapshot our server side extensions and Database.
In case the server goes down,we can “roll back” to the last known server state.
Also helps that there are no bandwidth charges between EC2 and S3 ,making it a fantastic backup
option.
PLATFORM!
Since the whole backend runs off the cloud, we can offer the entire front end and backend as one
platform for other customers to build their virtual worlds on and it gives them a seamless and
measureable way to scale to their requirements.Software as Service platform, fantastic!