Alison Wheeler

Are the EVE-Online servers moving to Iceland?

Yesterday I noted an interesting article on the BBC website about a firm setting up a 'green' server farm operation in Iceland to make use of the carbon-zero geothermal electricity alongside the lower ambient temperature to reduce the usually substantial overhead of cooling computer servers.

The article went on to note that Iceland is about to substantially increase its presence on the internet backbones with the Farice , Cantat-3, and new Danice high-capacity fibre links now on stream, and that the company concerned — Verne Global — hoped to gain a substantial number of customers by the cost reductions available to clients who move their servers there. They also made great play of how stable the underlying bedrock is in that area, close by Keflavik airport†. Indeed, their website has lots of interesting information on it.

Then I noticed a name I recognised; Vilhjálmur Thorsteinsson is Chairman of the Board of Verne Holdings. He is also Chairman of the Board of CCP Games, who created and operate EVE-Online. Given that the EVE universe is a "single shard" — every player world-wide uses the same physical group of servers and plays in the same 'space' — then, unlike other online games which have servers located in different continents, all of the EVE-Online servers are in one physical locations. Just outside London, UK, in Slough.

The Verne website makes great play of their centre being only 18ms from London (as the internet flies) and 36 milliseconds from New York. So, given the CCP Chairman is now creating this 'cooler' server centre one can't help but wonder whether the CCP servers will now be moving to Iceland to save money, as well as the planet.

† Keflavik — a former US Air Force base — also happens to be one of the rare airfields which is long enough and wide enough for the Space shuttle to land at in an emergency.