DC Of The Lich King

Have you ever wondered what happens at Blizzard HQ when a server goes down?

In my mind, I see all these stacks of server racks, row after row of them, in some sort of spacious, almost cavern-like room.  In an open area before these rows there’s this control area, where computer screens and blinking lights indicate the status of servers and connections and data traffic.

The crew manning the server control is not big, 3-4 people only. Some are lounging in comfy office chairs, checking the screens and adjusting a little of this and a little of that. Some are walking around, listening to the humming fans of the cooling systems and the hard drives gearing up and down, just generally making sure everything is alright.

It’s rather futuristic looking, a few large potted plants the only things breaking the grey-white-black colour scheme of the interior.

It’s quiet, it’s calm, it’s things working as intended.

Then, suddenly, large red lights starts to blink and you can hear the wailing revving up of sirens and klaxons, shattering the peaceful tranquillity of the server control room. The people freeze in their motions, prick up their ears, they rush to the screens and start clicking away on their keyboards. You can feel the tension in the room. Houston, we have a situation.

Stormrage’s down. All players on it are instantly disconnected, thrown out of Azeroth back through their ethernet cables and now sitting blinking at their computers, illuminated by the blue light of the log-in screen. What happened?

The Blizzard crew work diligently, they locate the faulty things, they work swiftly ond coordinatedly to restart, to reset, to fix the broken things and mere minutes later the lost homeless players of Stormrage can log back onto their home server and their alter egos in cyberspace.

I guess this is an illusion only. I guess in reality, the Blizzard crew may be more similar to the IT department of my own day job, which don’t notice servers or systems are down and definitely not working as intended until enough people have called them to complain, and then they take long lunches and watches youtube in between actually fixing the problems? (No, I don’t work at Blizzard.)

Or is there another, more ominous and definitely more sinister explanation?

Is it just coincidence that the entire server crashed as me and my fellow guildies were facing down the Lich King on his throne of ice?

Is it mere coincidence that the Lich King has an obvious fondness for ice and snow and frost, and that the company who brings us all this is called Blizzard? Blizzard, you know, as in snow and frost and ice pelting down?

Is it possibly so that the Lich King works for Blizzard? Or is it perhaps Blizzard who works for the Lich King?

No wonder the server went down – I think the Lich King got scared as we were closing in on him and didn’t dare rely on his ghouls and val’kyrs to protect him, and so he ordered the shutdown of the entire Stormrage server.

But his resistance is futile, he will be thawed and beaten and forced to give up his throne and we will emerge victoriously. Soon. Eventually. Once the damned server is back up!

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