14 DAY TRIAL // The global Microsoft Azure cloud server structure allows Titanfall players to keep experiencing the game even if their local machines are offline, as Respawn has emphasized just how reliable the whole network is.
Titanfall is currently being launched all around the world and millions of potential players are connecting to the game's online mode, which is powered not by dedicated servers, but by the Microsoft Azure cloud network.
Respawn emphasized time and time again that this new method allows the game to run much faster on all sorts of platforms, as the Azure infrastructure also handles things like AI processing besides hosting the actual matches.
The studio's Jon Shiring shed a bit of light on the whole system for Engadget, highlighting the advantages of using Microsoft's cloud.
"There are other games like Battlefield that have dedicated servers, but they haven't gone in the same direction that we have with them," he said. "That has obviously let us build a different game than we would have if we'd have gone in with the constraints of it having to be player-hosted. We have all of this AI and things flying around in the world."
What's more, seeing as how the Azure system is a global one, Respawn has built in fail safes in case one local server goes down. In this situation, players are moved to the nearest facility where they can play the game, even if they might encounter higher latency.
During the beta stage, this system was employed several times, moving European players to US servers, according to Shiring.
"The way it ends up working is that peak time in Europe is going to be much ahead of the US," said Shiring. "[During beta] we moved some Europeans over to East Coast US data centers, which is not ideal, but it at least let them play."
While the solution described above isn't exactly all that great, Respawn believes it's better for players to be able to experience the game than to get an error message.
"We don't look forward to doing that at all, but if we have a bunch of people sitting unable to play the game, then we're going to make sure that the experience is good enough – maybe not ideal – to get them playing."
Titanfall has already been plagued by a few problems in recent days, including one that left PC owners unable to play it for a few hours yesterday, March 12.