AFK players-based resource allocation for MMOG clouds

1. AFK players-based resource allocation for MMOG clouds 指導教授：王國禎 博士 學生：陳治豪 國立交通大學網路工程研究所 行動計算與寬頻網路實驗室

2. Outlines • Introduction • Related works • AFK players • Proposed AFK players-based resource allocation • Measure results • Evolution results • Conclusion • References

3. Introduction • Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOGs) are attracting millions of players from all over the world and become an important part of personal entertainments • To support more online players, many game providers take advantage of cloud computing to develop cloud gaming • How to allocate cloud resources (i.e. virtual machines) efficiently so as to meet player requirements and to efficiently utilize cloud resources is a key issue for cloud computing gaming service providers

4. Introduction • MMOG is a multiplayer video game which many players participate in at the same time on the Internet • MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role Player Games) • MMOFPS (Massively Multiplayer Online First Person Shooter) • MMORTS (Massively Multiplayer Online Real Time Strategy) and so on • Depending on the type of the MMOGs, the execution requirements are different [1]

5. Introduction • However, MMORPGs are the most popular game among the various types of MMOGs • MMORPGs share up 95% in the MMOG market [2] • In 2014, the expected value of the MMORPG business reaches $8 billion [3] • World of Warcraft (WoW) is currently the world's most-subscribed MMORPG with 10.2 million subscribers as of February 2012 [4] [5]

6. Related works • Lee and Chen [6] present the WoW history dataset. They used the /who slash command provided by WoW and the add-on for WoW client to collect the data in Taiwan • The history datasetincludes the players’ game play times and a number of attributes, such as their race, current level, and in-game locations between Jan. 2006 and Jan. 2009 • They also investigate the players’ behavior, including the play time, session count, and session play time

7. Related works • Suznjevic, Stupar and Matijasevic[7] also use the add-on for WoW to monitor players’ behaviors from May 5, 2009 to June 21, 2009. They classify 104 players into five behavior categories: Questing, Dungeons, Raiding, Trading and Player versus Player combat. • Afterwards, Suznjevic, Dobrijevic and Matijasevic[8] extend their add-on and define the new behavior category for voice and text communication. They find out a lot of players use the voice communication with other players within their play times

8. Related works • However, the previous researches were all considering the active players. In our studies, we found out that many researchers ignore a type of players, AFK players, in MMOGs

9. AFK players • AFK (Away from keyboard) is commonly used in online games to denote that a player is temporarily away from the computer, or is not actually paying attention to the game [9] • Some games now have functions that make it easy to show other players that you are AFK, and may even place your character in an AFK state automatically after a certain amount of inactivity [9]

10. AFK players • Players are marked AFK automatically after 5 minutes without any interaction and player’s avatars could sit on the ground

11. AFK players • Because the AFK players are not at their computer and not playing at that time, they require low QoS. If game servers continue to handle AFK players’ image and deliver image to them, it will wastes computing resources

12. Proposed AFK players-based resource allocation • We propose an efficiently resource allocation scheme for MMOGs considering AFK players in game clouds • We leverage the characteristic of AFK players, which require low QoS, to decrease the provision of resources to them and to support more players

13. Measure results • Who List is a component of the default WoW User Interface [10] • We can use it or /who slash command ask WoW servers to search online players • We also can search online players by name, guild, region, class, race or level

14. Measure results • Firstly, we create a new add-on for our WoW client • Then, we write the program by using the programming language lua • We use the API and /who slash command provided by WoW to collect data [11] • UnitIsAFK is the most important of used API. If the player is AFK, it returns 1 • We output the collect data into the chat window • Finally, we use LoggingChat to log chat to a file named WoWChatLog.txt

15. Measure results • We create a character in WoW realm in Taiwan • We use our collection method to collect data

16. Measure results • Log to the file

17. Measure results • The number of total players and AFK players in a zone, which is named Orgrimmar, in the WoW

18. Measure results • The numbers of AFK players for different durations of AFK

19. Evolution results • Evolution parameters

20. Evolution results • A three-layer neural network predictor

21. Evolution results • Predict the number of total players

22. Evolution results • Predict the number of AFK players

23. Evolution results • Evolution the number of extra players supported

24. Evolution results • Evolution the number of VMsused

25. Conclusion • We leverage the characteristic of AFK players, which require low QoS, to decrease the provision of resources to them and to support more players • The proposed AFK players-based resource allocation can support extra 15.39% players at the peak of total players • we can reduce the number of used VMs and reduce the waste of cloud resources

26. References [1] Barri, I., Gine, F. and Roig, C. “A Scalable Hybrid P2P System for MMOFPS,” in Proceeding of 18th Euromicro International Conference on Parallel, Distributed and Network-Based Processing (PDP),Feb. 2010. [2] Y. Lee, K. Chen, Y. Cheng and C. Lei, “World of Warcraft Avatar History Dataset,” in Proceedings of the second annual ACM conference on Multimedia systems, Feb. 2011. [3] “MMORPG Market to Reach $8 Billion Worldwide by 2014,” [Online.] Avaliable: http://www.industrygamers.com/news/mmorpg-market-to-reach-8-billion-worldwide-this-year/. [4] “World of Warcraft,” [Online.] Avaliable: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_of_Warcraft#cite_note-subs-13. [5] “World of Warcraft subscriber numbers dip 100,000 to 10.2 million,” [Online.] Avaliable: http://wow.joystiq.com/2012/02/09/world-of-warcraft-subscriber-numbers/.

27. References [6] Lee, Y., Chen, K., Cheng, Y. and Lei, C., “World of Warcraft Avatar History Dataset,” in Proceedings of the second annual ACM conference on Multimedia systems, Feb. 2011. [7] Suznjevic, M., Stupar, I. and Matijasevic, M., "MMORPG player behavior model based on player action categories," in Proceeding of 10th Annual Workshop onNetwork and Systems Support for Games (NetGames), ,Oct. 2011. [8] Suznjevic, M., Dobrijevic, O. and Matijasevic, M., "Hack, Slash, and Chat: A study of players' behavior and communication in MMORPGs," in Proceeding of 8th Annual Workshop on Network and Systems Support for Games (NetGames), Nov. 2009. [9]“AFK - away from keyboard,” [Online.] Avaliable: http://internetgames.about.com/od/glossary/g/afk.htm. [10] “Who,” [Online.] Avaliable: http://www.wowwiki.com/Who_List.

28. References [11] “World of Warcraft API,” [Online.] Avaliable: http://www.wowwiki.com/World_of_Warcraft_API. [12] Yeng-Ting Lee and Kuan-Ta Chen, "Is Server Consolidation Beneficial to MMORPG? A Case Study of World of Warcraft," 2010 IEEE 3rd International Conference onCloud Computing (CLOUD), pp.435-442, July 2010. [13] “How quickly will systems be running,” [Online.] Avaliable: http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/faqs/#How_quickly_will_systems_be_running.