Day-to-day engineering notes from Tamriel Unbound: what shipped, what broke, what the numbers say. 2026-10-27T00:00:00Z https://tamrielunbound.dev/ Tamriel Unbound 2026-10-27T00:00:00Z https://tamrielunbound.dev/what-the-game-runs-on/

A plain tour of the machines behind the world, and what replaces them in January.

<p>As of today, the servers that hold the world and the servers that hold your account are both running on infrastructure we own and control. Here's what that actually means.</p> <h2 id="the-pieces" tabindex="-1"><a class="header-anchor" href="https://tamrielunbound.dev/#the-pieces"><span>The pieces</span></a></h2> <table> <thead> <tr> <th>Piece</th> <th>Where it lives</th> <th>What it does</th> </tr> </thead> <tbody> <tr> <td>The game</td> <td>In your browser, served from our site</td> <td>Everything you see and play. Your Daggerfall files stay on your device.</td> </tr> <tr> <td>The world relay</td> <td>Cloudflare, one room at a time</td> <td>Every player in a town or dungeon shares a room; the relay keeps them in step.</td> </tr> <tr> <td>Accounts</td> <td>Cloudflare, with a database and save storage</td> <td>Logins, your identity in the world, cloud saves.</td> </tr> <tr> <td>Voice</td> <td>Not switched on yet</td> <td>Deliberately off for launch.</td> </tr> </tbody> </table> <h2 id="why-this-isn't-the-final-shape" tabindex="-1"><a class="header-anchor" href="https://tamrielunbound.dev/#why-this-isn't-the-final-shape"><span>Why this isn't the final shape</span></a></h2> <p>The real backend is a Go server on our own hardware, with PostgreSQL and a purpose-built simulation kernel. It has a calendar: the first real stack in early November, two players sharing a world by the twentieth, and a load test with six and a half thousand simulated players in mid-January. Until then, the setup above is the bridge. Same game in your browser, a different set of machines on the far end.</p> <h2 id="what-that-means-for-you" tabindex="-1"><a class="header-anchor" href="https://tamrielunbound.dev/#what-that-means-for-you"><span>What that means for you</span></a></h2> <p>Nothing you need to do. Accounts made now carry forward. When the hardware switches over you'll see a short maintenance window and a post here explaining what changed.</p> <p>Next time: opening the Online door for the first players, and what they ran into.</p>