@Bellendo said in #21:
> The difference is that Lichess can see it coming, and should be able to do something about it BEFORE the increase in users makes the system crash.
www.chess.com/blog/CHESScom/chess-is-booming-and-our-servers-are-struggling>On December 31, we had seven million active members on
Chess.com in a single day for the first time. On January 20, we had ten million active members. Traffic on
Chess.com has nearly doubled since the beginning of December
So you think that if the traffic here on lichess doubled in less than 2 months that they'd "see it coming" and "do something about it BEFORE the increase in users makes the system crash"? lichess is focused on the playing experience of existing users, they're not trying to increase the number of people who play chess, so they're unlikely to experience the same sort of growth. I can imagine that they might have engineered their system to be scalable, but it's unlikely that they have that much idle computing capacity that they could just turn on - and if they have to buy more computing power, do they have the financial resources to do so? Especially since they're philosophically opposed to asking for donations?
Here's something else to think about: according to
www.chess.com/blog/CHESScom/an-update-regarding-our-server, one of the things they are doing is
>re-writing our Live Server so that we can move from a single server to a distributed service that could scale horizontally across numerous servers.
That means instead of a giant server in the USA which necessarily will have worse performance in the geographic areas the furthest away from them - eg. Europe - they're going to be able to put some of those servers closer to those people. That's going to reduce the network latency and improve the playing experience in a way that wouldn't have been possible with their old architecture. In other words, the natural advantage lichess has over
Chess.com in Europe by being located in Europe is going to become less.
And at the momenr the 3+0 Hourly blitz tournament that started 40 minutes ago here on lichess is at 608 players, and the 3|0 Blitz Arena tournament that started 20 minutes ago has 898 players, or apporximately 50% more participants. Don't kid yourselves about the size & popularity of the 2 platforms:
Chess.com is posting the numbers it does not by lying, but by attracting new people to the game of chess - if you think that's a bad thing, have a think about why you think that's a bad thing.
