Why All the Maintenance?

Nikkor

Thrasher91604 wrote: »

Don't get me wrong. I'm glad there's support as I assume it's necessary. But why? None of my other online resources are taken down with such high regularity? Was the backend designed (or implemented) terribly crufty? Are all MMOs like this?

The Megaservers that we play this game on aren't just a cool name. They are pretty cutting edge tech and so yeah....they do maintenance because you know its good to have the game running smoothly.

Danny231

Nikkor wrote: »

Thrasher91604 wrote: »

Don't get me wrong. I'm glad there's support as I assume it's necessary. But why? None of my other online resources are taken down with such high regularity? Was the backend designed (or implemented) terribly crufty? Are all MMOs like this?

The Megaservers that we play this game on aren't just a cool name. They are pretty cutting edge tech and so yeah....they do maintenance because you know its good to have the game running smoothly.

Yes! Well said. This is the main reson, they do this each week otherwise. You will have a pure LAGGY game. But at lest they keep the code and severs updated each week. just in case something bad happens! Witch non of us want to see happen to this game...

TalonShina

@Thrasher91604 they gave you reasonses. It has nothing to do with poor design. MMOs take a lot of upkeep hence why they do maintenance every week. This game when it comes to that is no different then any MMO and someone always complains about too much of it but if I am paying for a game or even if I am playing a F2P MMO I never mind it, because I know it is general upkeep and it will only benefit the game in the long run. You can choose to focus on the single player game you reference or actually read the explanations given to you and to say that all MMOs have a poor design is wrong unless you understand how coding works and have actually coded for a game and managed it on servers like ESOs please don't try to insert thoughts like "well it's a poor design"

JD2013

Why are people complaining about maintenance?

You do realise that an MMO only keeps running with regular maintenance, right? Right??

This is not a single player game. The servers require upkeep. The game and its persistent world requires upkeep. Do lots of people around here really have no idea how an MMO works?

Honestly, of all the things to complain about.

kevlarto_ESO

I have played mmo's for a very long time, this is pretty average for mmo's in the first couple of years of life, older games like SWG used to go down ever night at 4am pacific time in the early days, EQ when ever they had a hot fix did not matter what time of day, servers went down for the patch, it is part of the mmo experience I wish they would reboot the servers here on the weeks they do not have maintenance, the server goes wonkie after it has been up to long.

No one here in the forums knows why or if there is an issue with the game engine or hardware we can only pull from our past experience, I doubt a dev or a systems engineer will chime in with a detailed post on the issues with the game hardware or software used.

Belidos

Thrasher91604 wrote: »

Just saying if it were properly designed and not buggy, this shouldn't happen.

That could turn out to be one of the single most wrong things you have ever said or will say.

The game is run on a huge farm of servers, dozens if not scores of machines all interlinked, when they do the weekly maintenance it's not just to work on the software they also shut them down, let them cool down, blow the dust out of them and repair or replace any parts that have worn out or are wearing out. Remember these are machines that get very hot and dusty running continuously 24/7, they need to be maintained, it's not just this game, or even just game servers, all servers in almost every industry need a little down time for maintenance. I'm 100% sure if your machine were running 24/7 in constant use you would have to shut it down and restart it at the least because it would start slowing down, it's exactly the same for servers.

Thrasher91604 wrote: »

[snip]

It has very little to do with software, it's mostly to do with hardware, it's nothing to do with shoddy coding and everything to do with general ware and tear on computers that are running 24/7. All servers need it from time to time, the more they're used the more they need it. The worlds level of technology isn't at a point where we can run a computer 24/7 without any maintenance without it playing up yet.

[edited to remove quote]

LameoveR

EVE Online megaserver goes offline every day for 10-30minutes.

Belidos

Thrasher91604 wrote: »

[snip]

icontested wrote: »

I can't understand maintenance either. I view maintenance like having surgery. I don't want to be put to sleep and even a doctor to help. I'll just grab a kitchen knife and cut myself open and do some other things and that's it. Maintenance.. What a joke

Maintenance is nothing like surgery, a better analogy would be it's like getting up and taking a shower and grooming yourself in the mornings, or checking your tires, oil and indicators before driving to work in the mornings.

[edited to remove quote]

PinoZino

• If they don't fix the game, people complain.
• If they do fix the game, people complain.

You can't have both.

However, it would be better if they carried out this at night when most players are sleeping.*

You will always hurt people, but the idea is to minimalize the impact.

*: It's possible they have no other choice. Could be technical, practical or just by the law.

LameoveR

PinoZino wrote: »

However, it would be better if they carried out this at night when most players are sleeping.*

Did you hear about time zones?

PinoZino

Thrasher91604 wrote: »

[snip]

Can we see your comparative study about the reliability in MMO's?
Would be an interesting read.

IMHO, it doesn't contain a lot serious bugs. In fact, I'm even surprised they don't have more.
The source code is rather enormous and include very complex pieces. The game isn't developed by 1 guy, but a pretty big team.

It's inevitable it contains bugs.

[edited to remove quote]

Belidos

Belidos wrote: »

Thrasher91604 wrote: »

[snip]

icontested wrote: »

I can't understand maintenance either. I view maintenance like having surgery. I don't want to be put to sleep and even a doctor to help. I'll just grab a kitchen knife and cut myself open and do some other things and that's it. Maintenance.. What a joke

Maintenance is nothing like surgery, a better analogy would be it's like getting up and taking a shower and grooming yourself in the mornings.

PinoZino wrote: »

• If they don't fix the game, people complain.
• If they do fix the game, people complain.

You can't have both.

However, it would be better if they carried out this at night when most players are sleeping.*

You will always hurt people, but the idea is to minimalize the impact.

*: It's possible they have no other choice. Could be technical, practical or just by the law.

They go down at an very early time for that timezone, for example in the EU they go down at 3am UK time, generally at that tie most people are asleep in the bulk of the EU, the problem is the further you get from the UK the earlier or later it is, for those on one edge of the EU that time is 5am for them, early but not always too early to game, and for those on the other edge of the EU it's midnight and many people stay up to and beyond midnight, so you just can't please everybody, someone is going to get their game time interrupted.

[edited to remove quote]

lath

Thrasher91604 wrote: »

Don't get me wrong. I'm glad there's support as I assume it's necessary. But why? None of my other online resources are taken down with such high regularity? Was the backend designed (or implemented) terribly crufty? Are all MMOs like this?

Applications like game servers are fairly complex beasts, relying on many additional pieces of software both from the application area (additional libraries, side apps, etc.) and system area (system libraries, hardware management/kernel), etc. Software itself is relatively complex these days. If you also take into account the hardware such servers this soft runs on, and that means hard disks, CPU's and RAM, all that connected via a vast network, you will see the complexity of upkeep increase exponentially. There are many potential points where something can go wrong. A bit of voltage peak here, a moved cable there, stuff like that. Then, there are updates - not to the server application on its own, but to libraries this application depends on - e.g. a security update in a framework they used, or a patch to a kernel module for the OS. These things add up.

In order to maintain reliability of the software and hardware, as well as to give devs and administrators time for fine tuning, they have introduced maintenance, like in all games of this type. Simple as that.

If you think this is poor design, consider this: no software used to solve an actual problem or provide a real service has ever been created that is completely bug-free. It's all made by humans and humans make mistakes.

Rosveen

PinoZino wrote: »

However, it would be better if they carried out this at night when most players are sleeping.*

They do, at least on EU. I'm only peripherally aware of the existance of maintenance schedule because it hasn't been an inconvenience for me in months. I'm almost always asleep when it happens.

Tomato

You want things fixed and then complain when they fix them.

PinoZino

Rosveen wrote: »

PinoZino wrote: »

However, it would be better if they carried out this at night when most players are sleeping.*

They do, at least on EU. I'm only peripherally aware of the existance of maintenance schedule because it hasn't been an inconvenience for me in months. I'm almost always asleep when it happens.

I'm living in the time zone UTC+1. I don't know about the maintenance schedule but it happened a few times with more major updates that I couldn't play in the daytime.

It's not a big deal. Finally you got some time to take a shower or eat some food. lol

Belidos

PinoZino wrote: »

Rosveen wrote: »

PinoZino wrote: »

However, it would be better if they carried out this at night when most players are sleeping.*

They do, at least on EU. I'm only peripherally aware of the existance of maintenance schedule because it hasn't been an inconvenience for me in months. I'm almost always asleep when it happens.

I'm living in the time zone UTC+1. I don't know about the maintenance schedule but it happened a few times with more major updates that I couldn't play in the daytime.

It's not a big deal. Finally you got some time to take a shower or eat some food. lol

Major updates and maintenance are two different monsters, scheduled maintenance needs a bare minimum number of staff on hand because it's fairly straight forward, but for a major update you need a large team of people present in case it goes wrong, therefore they need to do it in a time where a majority of the workforce is in the office, so it's not really viable to do it at times convenient for the players.

Rosveen

Belidos wrote: »

PinoZino wrote: »

Rosveen wrote: »

PinoZino wrote: »

However, it would be better if they carried out this at night when most players are sleeping.*

They do, at least on EU. I'm only peripherally aware of the existance of maintenance schedule because it hasn't been an inconvenience for me in months. I'm almost always asleep when it happens.

I'm living in the time zone UTC+1. I don't know about the maintenance schedule but it happened a few times with more major updates that I couldn't play in the daytime.

It's not a big deal. Finally you got some time to take a shower or eat some food. lol

Major updates and maintenance are two different monsters, scheduled maintenance needs a bare minimum number of staff on hand because it's fairly straight forward, but for a major update you need a large team of people present in case it goes wrong, therefore they need to do it in a time where a majority of the workforce is in the office, so it's not really viable to do it at times convenient for the players.

This. Besides, major updates take some time to download even after ZOS is done with them, so I don't expect the game to be up and running as soon as I wake up.

PinoZino

Belidos wrote: »

Major updates and maintenance are two different monsters, scheduled maintenance needs a bare minimum number of staff on hand because it's fairly straight forward, but for a major update you need a large team of people present in case it goes wrong, therefore they need to do it in a time where a majority of the workforce is in the office, so it's not really viable to do it at times convenient for the players.

I know. I wrote it before:

*: It's possible they have no other choice. Could be technical, practical or just by the law.

However, some other big companies (games and regular software) are able to manage it at night.

But it doesn't mean anything. I know that in some states and countries working at night is strictly regulated in such way you can’t do almost anything at night.

Alucardo

Rosveen wrote: »

They do, at least on EU. I'm only peripherally aware of the existance of maintenance schedule because it hasn't been an inconvenience for me in months. I'm almost always asleep when it happens.

This isn't true unfortunately. My daily routine is waking up at 3-3:30am every morning. Having maintenance at 3:00 BST all the time is a pain in the butt, but a necessary evil I guess.

PinoZino

LameoveR wrote: »

PinoZino wrote: »

However, it would be better if they carried out this at night when most players are sleeping.*

Did you hear about time zones?

I'm a man with a normal intelligence and an adequate educational background, so yes I have. Hey, is 1 + 1 = 2?

But I assume the bulk of the European players are located in UTC, UTC+1, UTC+2 and UTC+3.

If this is true then you could update at night. You'll still make players unhappy, but less.

Belidos

Alucardo wrote: »

Rosveen wrote: »

They do, at least on EU. I'm only peripherally aware of the existance of maintenance schedule because it hasn't been an inconvenience for me in months. I'm almost always asleep when it happens.

This isn't true unfortunately. My daily routine is waking up at 3-3:30am every morning. Having maintenance at 3:00 BST all the time is a pain in the butt, but a necessary evil I guess.

Problem is you're the exception rather than the rule, 3am is usually a dead time for servers in and around the UK and central Europe, they can only cater for the majority unfortunately.

Alucardo

Belidos wrote: »

Problem is you're the exception rather than the rule, 3am is usually a dead time for servers in and around the UK and central Europe, they can only cater for the majority unfortunately.

Yeah I understand that. It does suck a lot because there's not much to do before work at 3am, so I like to hop on ESO for a bit. Getting up at 3 is bad enough, seeing the server is down for maintenance is like kicking a man when he's down

Tomato

Welcome to the Xbox community

Malmai

Thrasher91604 wrote: »

Don't get me wrong. I'm glad there's support as I assume it's necessary. But why? None of my other online resources are taken down with such high regularity? Was the backend designed (or implemented) terribly crufty? Are all MMOs like this?

Nifty2g wrote: »

let them fix the game and not grief over server down time

We are waiting for fix since April 2014.

medieval_TOG

The maintenance is in the middle of our prime time playing, but hey, if it fixes some issues then let it happen.

[snip] And as far as the code goes and what goes into running a modern day MMO, you really have no idea of the level of tech that goes into it and the amount of time and effort it takes to get a change implemented, let alone tested/qa'd across multiple platforms and manage to keep 98% of your player base happy.

If you consider yourself an expert to the point of complaining about this being buggy "code", you are more than welcome to go off and write your own, publish it and run and maintain it. [snip]

Oh and welcome to MMO's, where maintenance times are second only to nerfs in the amount of forum content generated.

[edited for baiting]

Shadesofkin

I feel as if a meme of movie Bane saying he did not see gameplay til he was already a man should go here.

Paulhewhewria

OP,you have to ask?LOL haha .OH well not like anything will be fixed anyway.

Twilix01

Thrasher91604 wrote: »

TalonShina wrote: »

@Thrasher91604 they gave you reasonses. It has nothing to do with poor design. MMOs take a lot of upkeep hence why they do maintenance every week. This game when it comes to that is no different then any MMO and someone always complains about too much of it but if I am paying for a game or even if I am playing a F2P MMO I never mind it, because I know it is general upkeep and it will only benefit the game in the long run. You can choose to focus on the single player game you reference or actually read the explanations given to you and to say that all MMOs have a poor design is wrong unless you understand how coding works and have actually coded for a game and managed it on servers like ESOs please don't try to insert thoughts like "well it's a poor design"

[snip]

You know how industrial machines need maintenance every one in a while to keep from breaking down? Same thing with the game's servers. You can't have a machine running 24/7 for long before it starts to get a bit of wear and tear, even the computer you're using (assuming you're using it instead of a smart phone or console to browse the web) needs to shut down and restart to refresh and update as necessary.

[edited to remove quote]

Korah_Eaglecry

The 'maintenance' is just them bringing down the servers and rebooting them. This normally happens every week when they implement fixes. But since they cant introduce fixes every week. They simply reboot.

Nothing is perfect. Reboots allows the game to reset so that odd things doesnt start occurring regularly. Every major game that has servers up all the time has this issue. Even computers if left on day in and out will begin to have strange issues arise. As for fixing bugs. There is probably millions ontop of millions of code making this game work. You cant possibly fix every bug, and the bugs you do fix run the risk of creating other bugs. You never know when newly introduced code will suddenly cause issues with older code. Its the nature of the beast. Id love to see you point at an MMO that does not have a long list of bugs.