What is the cost of a F2P server?

[Makoto_the_Phoenix]

I don't think there's going to be a definitive "running 1 F2P server costs exactly £*** with £*** net profit" from Jagex. What's been posted here is about as much as is known.

 

This is an impasse, and in truth, it doesn't tell us squat about a single server, or its particular bandwidth limits. Consider also that much of the work done in rendering the game is done client-side anyway, so the footprint of the actual server "image" could [in theory] be small enough to run more than one server, or more than one type (freeplay or member).

 

 

 

43% of the average active players are FTP.

 

 

 

32293972 - 9729180 - 14497311 = 8,067,081 pounds for all server\bandwidth\hosting\etc. costs not mentioned above, with 43% directed to FTP for a total of 3,468,844 pounds plus wages for FTP maintenance and updates. So FTP loses around 1.3m pounds per year plus salary costs, and that doesn't include the number of members who click on the front page instead of in game ads.

 

 

 

You know, the cost for buying bandwidth in the US is different than buying it in Australia, or the Netherlands.

 

 

 

Your math is almost correct Compfreak, but consider we still don't know BW rental nor hardware rental. Since we can assume, and take 43% of $8,067,081, that'd give us $3,468,844.83. Divide this by the number of F2P servers available (a strong estimate would be 85), and you get about $40,809.94 per server. That seems just a little high, with the average rental cost per physical server deal being $3,400.82. That being said, it's still perfectly reasonable to assume that one physical server could host any number of virtual "worlds".

 

 

 

It'd be stupid simple to figure out how much each individual server (specifically F2P) cost to run, if we had an average of equipment rental and bandwidth rental. I'm just not convinced with the servers costing upwards of $3400 yet. It's realistic, but I'm not thoroughly convinced yet.

[JoeDaStudd]

The actual cost of the server rental would be about £50 per month totaling at £600 per year.

 

This is taking into account the total number of servers (they would get discount due to the numbers) and the cost of a dedicated well equip server.

 

The real cost comes from maintenance and startup costs. This is the cost of setting up the server in the first place and ensuring that they are up do date.

 

 

 

Lets say the server is already setup and 1% of the full year requires maintenance.

 

Say 4 full days requiring one person paid £20 per hour, £1920 lets add a total call out fee of say £2000.

 

So its £600 + £1920 + £2000 totaling at £4520 per free to play server.

 

 

 

Lets round that to £5000 per server.

 

 

 

85*£5000=£425,000

 

 

 

Lets say with F2P content, F2P support and a few other F2P things it comes to £1,000,000.

 

 

 

With a 2.2 million from adverts there still making 1.2m from F2P.

 

 

 

In effect each F2P server gives jagex £14,117 profit.

 

 

 

This give you a rough idea of the how much a F2P server generates.

[Jard_Y_Dooku]

 

 

 

There you are. 2.2m pounds from advertising in 2008.

 

 

 

um doesnt europe use euros not pounds? i could be wrong

Britain hasn't converted to the Euro, despite being part of the EU.

 

 

 

What is it with the Americans and Metric and the British and Euros? Just accept it and make everyones' lives easier and everything more consistent. No one on this planet seems to be able to do something everyone else does, with the exception of eating, drinking, and using the toilet.

 

 

 

---

 

 

 

On topic, there's really no way to tell the cost because we don't know their server specs or what company they do business with. You can be sure they're top of the line, though.

[compfreak847]

It'd be stupid simple to figure out how much each individual server (specifically F2P) cost to run, if we had an average of equipment rental and bandwidth rental. I'm just not convinced with the servers costing upwards of $3400 yet. It's realistic, but I'm not thoroughly convinced yet.

 

Your forgetting that this isn't simply a server cost, it's bandwidth and replacement cots for very, very high end machines. To simultaneously run up to 2,000 clients is going to require very high end servers, located and maintained in every country, replaced every 2-3 years with redundant backups available.

 

 

 

That's not even scratching the surface of bandwidth - when 10,000,000 players download a 50mb+ update\game file as well as streaming 3d models and content, it's a MASSIVE amount of bandwidth required while lag is being avoided at all costs for those actively playing. $3,400 a year doesn't sound that unreasonable.

[JoeDaStudd]

Your forgetting that this isn't simply a server cost, it's bandwidth and replacement cots for very, very high end machines. To simultaneously run up to 2,000 clients is going to require very high end servers, located and maintained in every country, replaced every 2-3 years with redundant backups available.

 

 

 

That's not even scratching the surface of bandwidth - when 10,000,000 players download a 50mb+ update\game file as well as streaming 3d models and content, it's a MASSIVE amount of bandwidth required while lag is being avoided at all costs for those actively playing. $3,400 a year doesn't sound that unreasonable.

 

Jagex won't have there own servers they will just rent or lease them from a data center.

 

 

 

http://www.webfusion.co.uk/dedicatedservers/

 

http://www.fasthosts.co.uk/dedicatedservers/

 

 

 

Note that unlimited traffic on all dedicated servers. Normally with a dedicated server your only restricted by the server itself, the traffic doesn't come into play too much.

 

 

 

You cache the images/models, animation sequences and so on when the game is loading. Most of the time all the data that is sent is merely a few bytes. The server then returns all the new variables and Java displays them. Your not actively pulling textures, models or other large files all the time. The loading time between sections is mostly client based. At most your receiving the tile map of that location.

 

 

 

Each server acts on its own, but is synced up with the master server at a given time. This is why during the crash code instance servers where going down on there own and not altogether.

 

 

 

As for how powerful the server would have to be moderately, but nothing amazing. Remember that most of the time its just reading/writing/querying the database(s) behind the game and then returning the values.

 

 

 

About 80% of the work (if not more) is done on the client; all the rendering, calculations, etc.

 

 

 

The 10 million players downloading 50mb at a time is bs.

 

One or a few master servers send the update to the other servers, these then send them out to the client. Your talking 2000 downloading 50mb at the one time at most.

[compfreak847]

Your forgetting that this isn't simply a server cost, it's bandwidth and replacement cots for very, very high end machines. To simultaneously run up to 2,000 clients is going to require very high end servers, located and maintained in every country, replaced every 2-3 years with redundant backups available.

 

 

 

That's not even scratching the surface of bandwidth - when 10,000,000 players download a 50mb+ update\game file as well as streaming 3d models and content, it's a MASSIVE amount of bandwidth required while lag is being avoided at all costs for those actively playing. $3,400 a year doesn't sound that unreasonable.

 

Jagex won't have there own servers they will just rent or lease them from a data center.

 

 

 

http://www.webfusion.co.uk/dedicatedservers/

 

http://www.fasthosts.co.uk/dedicatedservers/

 

 

 

Note that unlimited traffic on all dedicated servers. Normally with a dedicated server your only restricted by the server itself, the traffic doesn't come into play too much.

 

 

 

You cache the images/models, animation sequences and so on when the game is loading. Most of the time all the data that is sent is merely a few bytes. The server then returns all the new variables and Java displays them. Your not actively pulling textures, models or other large files all the time. The loading time between sections is mostly client based. At most your receiving the tile map of that location.

 

 

 

Each server acts on its own, but is synced up with the master server at a given time. This is why during the crash code instance servers where going down on there own and not altogether.

 

 

 

As for how powerful the server would have to be moderately, but nothing amazing. Remember that most of the time its just reading/writing/querying the database(s) behind the game and then returning the values.

 

 

 

About 80% of the work (if not more) is done on the client; all the rendering, calculations, etc.

 

 

 

The 10 million players downloading 50mb at a time is bs.

 

One or a few master servers send the update to the other servers, these then send them out to the client. Your talking 2000 downloading 50mb at the one time at most.

 

The high end servers you linked to were £3000 a year, and that's for major countries - your likely going to spend more in other areas.

[JoeDaStudd]

The high end servers you linked to were £3000 a year, and that's for major countries - your likely going to spend more in other areas.

 

True but I'm sure they get discounts since they always have 4 or more in one locations.

[compfreak847]

The high end servers you linked to were £3000 a year, and that's for major countries - your likely going to spend more in other areas.

 

True but I'm sure they get discounts since they always have 4 or more in one locations.

 

Probably, but this isn't a website server - this is a game server, undoubtedly requiring top end power to manage 2,000 clients simultaneously. All drop\hit generation as well as running\movement AI for NPCs and players is handled by the server; it's far more then "run this ASP page".

[Jard_Y_Dooku]

The high end servers you linked to were £3000 a year, and that's for major countries - your likely going to spend more in other areas.

 

True but I'm sure they get discounts since they always have 4 or more in one locations.

 

Probably, but this isn't a website server - this is a game server, undoubtedly requiring top end power to manage 2,000 clients simultaneously. All drop\hit generation as well as running\movement AI for NPCs and players is handled by the server; it's far more then "run this ASP page".

 

 

 

Jagex doesn't use ASP anyways, it's probably JSP; perhaps Perl and/or PHP.

 

 

 

I love how people think the server sends 3d models and other content large in size constantly, it's so entertaining to read their posts.

 

 

 

Besides, Jagex fails at web design anyways. :P http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.runescape.com%2Ftitle.ws&charset=(detect+automatically)&doctype=Inline&group=0&user-agent=W3C_Validator%2F1.654

 

 

 

Why even bother to put a DOCTYPE if you're not going to validate against it?! They should be using XHTML 1.1 anyways. *goes off grumbling how 95% of the web developers in the world should be banned from computers until they learn better*

[Makoto_the_Phoenix]

The high end servers you linked to were £3000 a year, and that's for major countries - your likely going to spend more in other areas.

 

True but I'm sure they get discounts since they always have 4 or more in one locations.

 

Probably, but this isn't a website server - this is a game server, undoubtedly requiring top end power to manage 2,000 clients simultaneously. All drop\hit generation as well as running\movement AI for NPCs and players is handled by the server; it's far more then "run this ASP page".

 

It's not a web server, but I'm willing to bet that the footprint for a single server is pretty small. Jagex is clever with their compression techniques, and I'm sure that they've managed to figure out how to get 2,000 people running simultaneously on a single server client. All that would matter at that point is the amount of connections allowed to each server, which is somewhere near 2,400.

[compfreak847]

Jagex doesn't use ASP anyways, it's probably JSP; perhaps Perl and/or PHP.

 

Quite obviously, I was referring to other, non-java servers :P

 

 

 

 

I love how people think the server sends 3d models and other content large in size constantly, it's so entertaining to read their posts.

 

I haven't seen anyone post that on here yet :?

 

 

 

 

It's not a web server, but I'm willing to bet that the footprint for a single server is pretty small. Jagex is clever with their compression techniques, and I'm sure that they've managed to figure out how to get 2,000 people running simultaneously on a single server client. All that would matter at that point is the amount of connections allowed to each server, which is somewhere near 2,400.

 

It's still going to take a high end server, as mentioned earlier.

[Skeptical]

Seems like without any actual numbers from Jagex, we can't really know.

[JoeDaStudd]

A dedicated server like the ones I was linking come with a few web things, but and its a big but, you can do what ever you like with them. A dedicated or leased server is pretty much yours to do as you wish.

 

Anyway I posted those as an example of pricing and bandwidth limits.

 

 

 

The big numbers your talking of aren't that big.

 

 

 

Random drops could be simply a drop list then a random generated number. Movement/Chat simply table of x,y and text getting read and being written to. The server based stuff is very basic at the most random number generation, database read, calculation, database write and return the value to the client.

 

 

 

The art of making a good server reliant program/application is to offset as much work as possible. In this case Java goes a hell of a lot on the client.

 

 

 

Of course like cooldog08 and a few other have said Jagex would have to tell us.

 

 

 

Worth asking them at the next Q&A it they can give a rough idea on how it all works.

[Stragomagus]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_server

 

 

 

200-700$ per server.

 

 

 

http://www.layeredtech.com//dedicated-hosting/dedicated-servers/multi-processor-multi-core/

 

 

 

Those are the type of servers that most online games run on. Most of them will run upward of $20,000-$50,000(the more specialized ones will run into the hundreds of thousands) just due to the massive amount of data they have to handle.

 

 

 

http://onlineads.diggersrealm.com/google_adsense/how_much_can_i_make_from_adsense_from_a_political_website.html

 

 

 

This site details how much you can possibly make from an online advertisement. This should help in calculating

 

how much can be made from the many advertisements Jagex puts on their many pages.

 

 

 

Server Cost:

 

 

 

[hide=]Starting amount:

 

 

 

$229.99 - $799.99

 

 

 

Possible ending amount:

 

 

 

$300 - $1200[/hide]

 

 

 

Server Yearly Cost:

 

 

 

[hide=]Starting amount:

 

 

 

$2759.88 - $9599.88

 

 

 

Possible ending amount:

 

 

 

$3600 - $14,400.00[/hide]

 

 

 

Commercial Business Bandwith Cost:

 

 

 

[hide=]$70.00 - $150.00(This is landline cost and not satellite, which is a whole other can of worms)[/hide]

 

 

 

Commercial Bandwitdh Yearly cost:

 

 

 

[hide=]$840.00 - $1800.00[/hide]

 

 

 

Jagex Server Yearly Cost:

 

 

 

[hide=]Amount of FTP server: 74

 

Amount of PTP servers: 81

 

Amount of mixed servers: 0

 

Total amount of servers: 155

 

 

 

Starting Amount:

 

 

 

FTP: 266,391.12 - 843,591.12

 

PTP: 291,590.28 - 923,390.28

 

Mixed: 0.00

 

Total: 557,981.40 - 1,766,981.4

 

 

 

Possible Ending Amount:

 

 

 

FTP: 328,551.12 - 1,198,800.00

 

PTP: 359,640.00 - 1,312,200.00

 

Mixed: 0.00

 

Total: 688,191.12 - 2,511,000.00[/hide]

[me]

Jagex's 2008 turnover from advertising was £2,208,355 which is 7% of their total turnover. Turnover is the amount of money which comes IN, so does not include costs of business such as customer support, development, premises or servers. Back in 2007 Andrew said: "With the free version, we basically break even, but of course this version is very important to us as it brings in new players and introduces more people to the game" (source).

[sees_all1]

Jagex's 2008 turnover from advertising was £2,208,355 which is 7% of their total turnover. Turnover is the amount of money which comes IN, so does not include costs of business such as customer support, development, premises or servers. Back in 2007 Andrew said: "With the free version, we basically break even, but of course this version is very important to us as it brings in new players and introduces more people to the game" (source).

 

 

 

This right here could be all that I need....

 

 

 

I'd also like to point out that any new content for F2P is also going to be P2P, such as a holiday event.

 

It also seems that most servers have another paired server with them - take a look at the locations, and you'll see that "United States 1" makes up about 20 or so servers... same with "UK 1" - about 16 servers.

 

In fact, its rare to see less than 2 servers not at the same location.

 

 

 

 

Probably, but this isn't a website server - this is a game server, undoubtedly requiring top end power to manage 2,000 clients simultaneously. All drop\hit generation as well as running\movement AI for NPCs and players is handled by the server; it's far more then "run this ASP page".

 

Figure within any given area a player might be in, there are less than 50 NPC's.

 

For an entire P2P world... any rough estimate of how many NPC's there are? My guess is between 5-10k.

 

As far as generating random numbers specifically for players, in any given moment a RuneScape server might be sending 5 random numbers to the player.

 

So in any given game loop a Runescape server needs to generate up to 10k random numbers, and update the locations of up to 12000 things.

 

In some thread, Andrew himself said each game loop takes about 60 milliseconds (give or take). That's plenty of time to do all those things, as far as computing goes (and that's the absolute worst case scenario).

 

 

 

Also, figure the only thing Jagex is sending to any given player at any given time is the position of 200 other players, and the positions of up to 50 npcs.

[louiellen]

The high end servers you linked to were £3000 a year, and that's for major countries - your likely going to spend more in other areas.

 

True but I'm sure they get discounts since they always have 4 or more in one locations.

 

Probably, but this isn't a website server - this is a game server, undoubtedly requiring top end power to manage 2,000 clients simultaneously. All drop\hit generation as well as running\movement AI for NPCs and players is handled by the server; it's far more then "run this ASP page".

 

 

 

Jagex doesn't use ASP anyways, it's probably JSP; perhaps Perl and/or PHP.

 

 

 

I love how people think the server sends 3d models and other content large in size constantly, it's so entertaining to read their posts.

 

 

 

Besides, Jagex fails at web design anyways. :P http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.runescape.com%2Ftitle.ws&charset=(detect+automatically)&doctype=Inline&group=0&user-agent=W3C_Validator%2F1.654

 

 

 

Why even bother to put a DOCTYPE if you're not going to validate against it?! They should be using XHTML 1.1 anyways. *goes off grumbling how 95% of the web developers in the world should be banned from computers until they learn better*

 

 

 

 

 

Only one reason alone: for the sake of: "Internet Explorer compatibility". 70% of Internet users are on IE, the last thing for a website to do is to strictly conform with WC3 standards and make their website look terrible for 70% of the planet:P.

 

 

 

If you ask me: Marketshare = standard. The one that dictates the market, dictates the "de facto" standard.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As for the F2p cost, it's almost negligible for Jagex. Why? Because F2p servers are Jagex's "investment" -- a way to introduce new players to Runescape --- praying that they get addicted enough to subscribe for members.

 

 

 

If your conducting a business, you'll do everything for your "investment". Protect your "investment", protects and secures your financial future.;)