Blizzard auctioning off old servers for charity
by Mathew McCurley 
Oct 13th 2011 at 2:00PM
The auctions will last from Oct. 17 through Nov. 14, with each realm's original server blade going on sale. What's a server blade, you ask? Each server, with its own processing power and all that jazz, lives in a rack with other servers at the big server enclosure. Each auctioned server will have a little plaque attached with the server's name, its dates of operation, and signatures from the team. This is really, really cool. If I had the cash to pony up for Frostwolf, my original server, I would. That thing broke so many times in the early days that I'd want to pop it open and see all the horrible, nightmarish things lurking inside.
Check out the auction information page for which servers will be auctioned off on which days.
Filed under: Blizzard, News items
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
Noyou Oct 13th 2011 2:07PM
Only If I could play on it with friends/people I like.
Bellajtok Oct 13th 2011 2:14PM
Solution: Like the friends/people you play with.
D4 Oct 13th 2011 2:35PM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_5IVuN1N6-Y&feature=related ?
Jetstream Oct 13th 2011 4:30PM
@D4
I'll see your classic music and counter with Todd in the Shadows.
http://thatguywiththeglasses.com/videolinks/teamt/tis/tpsr/32760-top-ten-songs-about-mediocre-romances
Hollow Leviathan Oct 13th 2011 2:06PM
PS Obviously the hard drives have been wiped like a bajillion times. No server code for you.
dev_null0 Oct 13th 2011 2:11PM
my guess is that they have no hard drives period.
Daedalus Oct 13th 2011 2:10PM
If the hard drives are there at all. For that matter, the servers might never have used dedicated hard drives; it wouldn't surprise me to hear they used a SAN or something...
shawn Oct 13th 2011 2:27PM
If these are actual blade carriages, then you would need a blade enclosure to even turn it on regardless of whether they left drive in it.
My guess, these are diskless blades which connected to a fibre channel san; pretty standard for large scale datacenters.
dragnmastr85 Oct 15th 2011 11:39AM
Most server blades communicate with an MSA (massive storage array) for hard disk access. The server blade is probably very bare-bones. MSAs are usually 3 rails in height (on a server rack) and located beneath the blades they serve.
Bellajtok Oct 13th 2011 2:07PM
This is just plain awesome. I would totally pay for that.
ayanamilily Oct 13th 2011 2:11PM
I assume they're still functional, this would be totally awesome for using it as a minecraft server for my friends :D
Narayana Oct 13th 2011 2:19PM
Not functional. They're entirely decorative.
kingoomieiii Oct 13th 2011 2:26PM
Well, they almost certainly have pieces missing, but I doubt if most of them are actually BROKEN. They were replaced with new hardware and wiped.
Though I'm sure blizzard isn't making any guarantee of functionality.
Xsinthis Oct 13th 2011 2:36PM
The FAQ says they're non functional :(
Dreyja Oct 13th 2011 2:44PM
So really you are paying for a kind of ugly souvenier paper-weight?
I guess I don't really get the appeal of these but I'm someone who has just about every Blizzard plushie staring at me from my desk at work so... To Each Their Own. :)
Drakkenfyre Oct 13th 2011 3:05PM
Dreyja, you would physically own what the world was run on. All the processing, all the NPC's, everything your character ever did (excluding instances and BG's, since those are different servers), every time you connected to the server, you would own what it ran on.
As far as "collectibles" go, you can't really get any higher than what the game was actually tun on.
Dreyja Oct 13th 2011 4:37PM
But... but... They don’t run. o-O Do we even know that any of that data is on there?
I just don’t get the appeal, everything that matters about the item is unavailable or non-existent. But then, I own a miniature version of The Green Dragon from Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon which is equally useless.
I guess if I am going to buy something with no purpose I want it to LOOK good, maybe. Though, now that I think of it, I am sure there are people out there who get a kick out of the aesthetic of this kind of hardware. I shrug. :)
I hope for the sake of the charity that many people buy them. :D I will save up for my murloc hoodie. XD
Drakkenfyre Oct 13th 2011 4:54PM
There's no data on them. There aren't any hard drives on these.
These are what processed the worlds. But these are still what handled the entire world. Without these, you wouldn't be playing a game.
It depends on what you find appealing. I like the look of it with the cover off, and a plastic cover placed over it, with the logo on it. Showing off the components.
If you need to, think of it historically, imagine having a prop from a famous movie. imagine the DeLorean from Back to the Future, or K.I.T.T from Knight Rider. You wouldn't drive them every day (or even at all) but they are still historical, and a valuable item related to that franchise.
Philster043 Oct 13th 2011 5:31PM
Signatures by the whole team that ran the server is a nice plus, though.
Daedalus Oct 13th 2011 2:12PM
For all their alleged money-grubbing ways, (I'm looking at you, RMT kitty...) it's stuff like this that really keeps me thinking of Blizzard as one of the good guys...