Ask Grummz the cost of running an inhouse data center. Bandwidth may be expensive, but the power and cooling costs would make any normal person cry.
As for the amount of servers, I am assuming they arnt tin, but some kind of VM setup, capable of spinning up new servers for shards as required, whatever, this is NOT somehting that you can run on a high end computer.
My own PC has 16 CPUs, 64 GB of RAM and a few TB of SSD disks, specifically to allow me to recreate costomer networks. I doubt this would be enough to create most online games that involve any form for decent AI.
I am assuming the AI is handled by its own subsystem, have to get the G man to let us know, but that on its own is heavy duty crap. If Firefall was dead, the lights on the clusters would have been the first thing to be turned off
As for the amount of servers, I am assuming they arnt tin, but some kind of VM setup, capable of spinning up new servers for shards as required, whatever, this is NOT somehting that you can run on a high end computer.
My own PC has 16 CPUs, 64 GB of RAM and a few TB of SSD disks, specifically to allow me to recreate costomer networks. I doubt this would be enough to create most online games that involve any form for decent AI.
I am assuming the AI is handled by its own subsystem, have to get the G man to let us know, but that on its own is heavy duty crap. If Firefall was dead, the lights on the clusters would have been the first thing to be turned off