I’d like to give everyone an update on the server hardware refresh, where we are completely replacing hardware in our North American and European datacenters. If you remember, I gave an update
late last year with a timeline for our European datacenter refresh. Now that we are starting the work in earnest, I have a few updates to share.
- We are running 1 or 2 weeks behind schedule because of shipping slowdowns. This is entirely out of our control and I apologize for it. This two week delay puts the refresh right on top of our March launch of Update 37, which for obvious reasons we don’t want to schedule simultaneously. So the new date for PC EU getting new hardware will be in early April, and PlayStation EU should follow very shortly after. In order to begin prepping for this work, we’re scheduling a maintenance on all EU realms that will occur on February 7.
- Just like the PC NA refresh that occurred mid-last year, expect about a 14 hour downtime when the actual cutover happens. We'll keep you posted as to the specific day and times the servers will be unavailable.
- The March/April ESO timeframe is always very busy. We have a lot of events and almost always have a major Update. Because of this, we need to move some events around on the calendar to give the infrastructure team some clear air to do the maintenance without impacting any ongoing events. We are moving Whitestrake’s Mayhem to later in the year to ensure the datacenter hardware refresh is complete before we hold the event. We still intend to have two Whitestrake’s Mayhem events in 2023. Since we will be moving an event that grants Event Tickets out of Q1 (January – March) and we want everyone to be able to get the Q1 morphing collectible, Passion’s Muse personality, we will make the Q1 fragments available through Q2 (April – June.) The amount of Event Tickets you can earn for the year will not change because of this shift. As we have done in previous years, all morphing collectible fragments for the year will also be available during the New Life Festival in December.
That's it for now - we'll keep you updated as events warrant.