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On the Feasibility of Single-Server MMOs
GameSetWatch takes a look at the issues involved in creating an MMO that does not split its users among many different servers. They suggest that running a single "shard" is the next step in the evolution of MMOs, since it better allows player choices to have a meaningful impact on the game world; supporting different outcomes across multiple shards is a technical nightmare. They estimate, from the hip, that the cost to develop the technology required to support a massive amount of players (i.e. far more than EVE Online) on a single server to be roughly $100 million. Another recommendation is the strong reliance on procedural and user-generated content creation to fill a necessarily enormous game world.
Eat my goatse'd penis!
Most of the 'lag' in Warcraft comes from the user end, as opposed to any server creaking.
And this matters to the user how? All they see is the game sucks.
They estimate, from the hip, that the cost to develop the technology required to support a massive amount of players (i.e. far more than EVE Online) on a single server to be roughly $100 million.
Wow. So no matter what even the rough amount of players is, it always going to cost $100 million? :P
Let's see. With EvE Online's record of 53,850 concurrent players in the same realm, the number of active Internet users (1.23 million), and the amount of humans on the planet (6708 million), this would give a price range between ~$1857 to ~$0,0813 and ~$0.0149 per person. Veeery useful.
Protip: If your business model includes words like "massive" and "far", instead of actual numbers (even with a standard deviation), then failure is pretty much guaranteed.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.