Re: Good dedicated servers/vps?
Yes, but there's a ton of other things. Residential internet is not meant for this kind of stuff. Just doing the math is not sufficient.
First, assuming you're using BGT, you're using UDP packets. UDP packets are not your friend. TCP gets special status for most ISPs as far as I know. I'd not be surprised if your effective speeds for UDP are tiny: the internet is allowed to just throw out UDP packets whenever and just because. The BGT networking object is fine if and only if your game can benefit from unreliable delivery, but most games actually don't and you lose all the advantages of TCP.
Second, a proper VPS is going to have better reachability and round-trip times to basically everyone. You don't have enough people to split the game into multiple servers, so being right on the backbone of the internet is essential. Most VPSs are.
Third, choosing Windows means that you will need s
ighted help. Via Linux and with someone like Linode, I can go so far as to access the emergency console and do everything without sighted help. Linode is expensive as Linux hosts, but the point is that the options are out there. When Windows breaks, you will need someone sighted. Even the initial setup of Windows is complicated, as NVDA won't install without audio. You'll have to learn how to walk sighted people through complicated procedures. Perhaps you already have someone technically inclined who can do this stuff for you. But Linux is set up as soon as you buy the VPS.
fourth, you have to use dynamic DNS. Perhaps it's possible to have dynamic DNS always work these days, but I somehow doubt it. So good luck telling if it's your game or not that's breaking.
Finally, if you're not learning to deploy from day one, that can be a stumbling point. Also, your game will perform much, much
differently on a VPS. Local testing is fine when it's only you, but you should not be trying to run MMO-style games from your home for testing. You'll end up with all sorts of oddities, and quite possibly you'll be fixing bugs that don't even exist.
Online games are very hard. If you choose to use Windows for your hosting needs, you make it even harder. if you choose BGT, then you might as well go get your teeth pulled without anesthetic because you will be fighting it until the end of time (No good security. No good serialization. No database integration. No string templating, so no easy game status web pages. No localization/translation abilities).
And my last point: good luck deploying to Windows via version control. You are using version control, right? If you aren't, then just wait until the pain of how did I break this and I can't get back or ask my tools what I did starts.
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