Lamoth: A message dissemination middleware for MMOGs in the cloud

Abstract

Provisionning network resources for Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOGs) poses interesting challenges due to the fact that the load can greatly vary depending on the time or other in-game factors. In this paper, we propose Lamoth, a cloud middleware for MMOGs that provides an interface for in-game message dissemination. Lamoth handles the exchange of game messages between nodes by making use of an arbitrary number of off-the-shelve pub/sub servers deployed in the cloud depending on the game scenario. In order to evaluate our platform, we implement Lamoth on top of Mammoth, McGill's research-oriented MMOG, and conduct extensive experiments by triggering situations which would cause networks bottlenecks. Our evaluations show that Lamoth can allow a MMOG to scale to high numbers of players and can properly handle extremely-demanding in-game situations if enough resources are provided.