World of Warcraft was a game that took over the lives of many gamers, myself included. Back when it first came out MMO’s were not all that popular and WoW really showed what a great MMO could be. Coder August Lilleaas recently won an eBay auction of an original blade server that helped run one of WoW’s game servers.
World of Warcraft was launched back in 2004. At that time each WoW server was made up of four HP blade servers that sat inside of a proprietary HP blade enclosure. Two of the blade servers were for the games continents (Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor), while the other two blades were for chat, instances and raids.
The exact make and model of the blade server is HP BL25p. At the front of the unit were large SCSI bays, which were empty. The server had a total of 8 RAM slots with ECC memory, which is a type of memory that can find and fix data corruption. The server is powered by a dual-CPU setup, but Lilleaas did not want to risk breaking anything by removing the big heatsinks. He also noticed a lot of large and odd expansion cards in the server.
The server also came with a commemorative plaque on it that lets you know the server that it was (Sunstrider) in this case and it says, “Blizzard Entertainment has carefully preserved and archived our retired server blades, releasing only a limited number for a noble cause. To us, this server blade is more than just hardware: within the circuits and hard drive, a world of magic, adventure, and friendship thrived. From fishing in quiet lakes to defeating Arthas in Icecrown Citadel, this blade was home to thousands of immersive experiences across the world of Azeroth and beyond. We thank you for the safekeeping of this important part of our history”
It is also signed by the Blizzard team. You can see more photos and information over at August Lilleaas’s blog.
