The Elder Scrolls Online

Maintenance for the week of January 5:
• PC/Mac: No maintenance – January 5
• NA megaservers for maintenance – January 7, 4:00AM EST (9:00 UTC) - 10:00AM EST (15:00 UTC)
• EU megaservers for maintenance – January 7, 4:00AM EST (9:00 UTC) - 10:00AM EST (15:00 UTC)

12 hour maintenance window on EU and only 3 on NA?

Leave a Reply
FlopsyPrince
FlopsyPrince
✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭✭
Is something special going on?

I see it is in the announcement, but a 12 hour maintenance window is really long!

Too bad MMOs are designed better. I have worked in large website development with minimal to no outages in spite of major changes. That does require a good architecture. Such a setup would have many other benefits to an MMO like ESO, but it would also take effort and too many players are trained now to expect downtime.
Edited by FlopsyPrince on 21 February 2024 07:27
PC
PS4/PS5
  • davidtk
    davidtk
    ✭✭✭✭✭
    From my topic about it (https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/8049977):

    https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/de/discussion/652769/ausserplanmaessige-wartung-aller-megaserver-21-02-2024-um-6-00-uhr#latest

    https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/652825/maintenance-scheduled-for-february-21-2024#latest
    Edited by davidtk on 21 February 2024 07:31
    Really sorry for my english
  • Akynathos
    Akynathos
    ✭✭✭
    FlopsyPrince wrote: »
    Is something special going on?
    I have worked in large website development with minimal to no outages in spite of major changes. That does require a good architecture. Such a setup would have many other benefits to an MMO like ESO, but it would also take effort and too many players are trained now to expect downtime.

    I too have worked in "large website development", if we want to call it that. Still am. And I do not really think it is comparable.
    When we need to take resources behind a website offline for maintenance, which rarely happens anyway, we can just push the containers that run the backend to some other hardware. I don't think they have double the server infrastructure they need for Live just "standing around".
    And I really do not mean to wisecrack here, maybe I am just overlooking something as I am not a specialized backend engineer. I am curious, how would you organize / implement them being able to disconnect and/or power down the entire infrastructure behind a mega-server cluster to do the maintenance without downtime?
    The obvious answer would be to only take down parts of the cluster and keep running with reduced capacity, but that assumes that the cluster consists of at least semi-homogenous units that could function autonomously and provide all the functionality needed, just for a smaller number of players. Which might not be the case. Also, didn't they try that once? I can't remember.
  • Sarannah
    Sarannah
    ✭✭✭✭✭
    ✭✭✭✭
    The PC EU is ESO's biggest populated server if I am not mistaken(believe ZOS once stated this somewhere). So the EU probably takes longer to do everything: Takes longer to backup the database as it is much bigger than NA, takes longer than NA to add more hardware for the upcoming PvP event, etc.

    ZOS has to take the servers down completely(like any MMO does), because in order to backup/make changes to the database(and server/server hardware) everyone has to be offline. Otherwise they run the risk of the server not storing the data in the database correctly, which could cause players to lose progress. And would be much harder to fix/negative for the game and its players than just going offline for a few hours.
  • fizl101
    fizl101
    ✭✭✭✭✭
    ✭✭
    There is a pinned post about it

    https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en-gb/discussion/652825/maintenance-scheduled-for-february-21-2024#latest
    Soupy twist
  • Thysbe
    Thysbe
    ✭✭✭✭✭
    at least its before Midyear starts and not during the event :-)

    am Mittwoch, den 21. Februar, werden wir an allen Megaservern Wartungsarbeiten durchführen. Im europäischen Datencenter findet zudem eine Aufrüstung des Backend-Netzwerks statt.

    the post form the german community manager - roughly translated it means they additionally upgrade the Backend Network for PC EU.
  • Thysbe
    Thysbe
    ✭✭✭✭✭
    Sarannah wrote: »
    ZOS has to take the servers down completely(like any MMO does).

    GuildWars deploys whole new add ons without a downtime - you just have to switch to another Map instance which is on the current patch. Coming from ESO that was truy impressive.

  • Daoin
    Daoin
    ✭✭✭✭
    12 hours lol...though it was 2 hours so i decided to take a plod through the forums...time to find something else to do !
  • HexBlackCat
    HexBlackCat
    Soul Shriven
    Server is down again (that is way too often) and I dug out this thread, I work with databases so a different field of work but as you guys I interact with IT infrastructure professionally and it is not the down time occurrence that is so bad but the length of it. 12 hours is unimaginable in any environment I'm sorry to say that but if you need that much time and cut the customer off for the entire length of it you're doing it wrong. To me it suggests there is something wrong with how they organize work at all just as the actual time it is down for example, hours are right, time zone isn't. On the dev level they can't even recognize that and get some logs to see when server is least occupied... Of course I dont have logs, but I log on myself at very different times and I see mornings are not what you would call empty server.

    But... I play this game so long and we're in 2024 now and there are many smart ways to do things and they simply don't do it. Zeni simply has its Zeni way of doing things and looking on their revenue probably not falling down best advice here is - get used to it or change the game, Im still here but yeah this maintenance mismanagement pisses me off not a bit less now then at day 1....
  • Sakiri
    Sakiri
    ✭✭✭✭✭
    ✭✭
    Why on earth did yall necro an old maintenance thread?
  • FlopsyPrince
    FlopsyPrince
    ✭✭✭✭✭
    ✭✭✭
    HexBlackCat wrote: »
    Server is down again (that is way too often) and I dug out this thread, I work with databases so a different field of work but as you guys I interact with IT infrastructure professionally and it is not the down time occurrence that is so bad but the length of it. 12 hours is unimaginable in any environment I'm sorry to say that but if you need that much time and cut the customer off for the entire length of it you're doing it wrong. To me it suggests there is something wrong with how they organize work at all just as the actual time it is down for example, hours are right, time zone isn't. On the dev level they can't even recognize that and get some logs to see when server is least occupied... Of course I dont have logs, but I log on myself at very different times and I see mornings are not what you would call empty server.

    But... I play this game so long and we're in 2024 now and there are many smart ways to do things and they simply don't do it. Zeni simply has its Zeni way of doing things and looking on their revenue probably not falling down best advice here is - get used to it or change the game, Im still here but yeah this maintenance mismanagement pisses me off not a bit less now then at day 1....

    It is hard to refactor existing systems, to a point.

    But the big reason MMOs get away with long outage windows at times is that the industry doesn't reward or even push for minimizing those.

    I suspect rearchitecting them for short windows could be a big challenge.
    PC
    PS4/PS5
Sign In or Register to comment.