Maintenance on ESO Megaservers - 9/14/16 @ 2:00pm EDT [COMPLETE]

Dojohoda

A screenshot (cropped) of mysterious activities at Chalman one night a few weeks ago.

FleetwoodSmack

UltimaJoe777 wrote: »

KingMagaw wrote: »

tat2mano wrote: »

Enodoc wrote: »

CapuchinSeven wrote: »

I love the way people think that bringing servers down over and over and over again is "ZOS doing their job". NOT bringing down servers all the time and keeping services running is doing your job.

Sure, because keeping a malfunctioning service running is a great idea.

Dont twist his words,he is right,
if ZoS would do a decent job or hire decent techs these problems what occur now wouldnt happen (this frequently s they do).

+Agreed. Its obvious to me whoever in charge is incompetent with so much downtime and so little ever being fixed.

What's obvious is how many haters are on these forums.

Honestly, you'd they think they can do a better job with all this hate... ZoS DOES have the Jobs tab at the bottom of the page. There's an idea for people who think they can do a better 'job' than ZoS.

UltimaJoe777

AyeshaBelladonna wrote: »

ashfault wrote: »

Lady_Rosabella wrote: »

DarknessShallFall wrote: »

Oh my gosh you people complain to freaking much, if they didn't do this, the game would be complete junk, what would you rather have? Lots of maintenance to get a problem fixed, or have it where it's not and get kicked, get viruses, and a bunch of other stuff all the time, I seriously doubt anyone here could do better, so quit your griping and complaining, either get on PTS, another game, or just be quiet.

Honestly Darkness, all we are asking for is a warning....you know the countdown saying the server is going down...you have played this game long enough to notice that they usually give you a countdown right? Oh yea I know you have cuz you are in one of my guilds, the one that complains about almost everything, lol.

food for thought: So if they normally give warning but didn't give warning maybe they did not have time for said warning?

no, gina even stated they CHOSE to not wait and put up a warning, in an effort to expedite prevention of progression loss. it was a choice made, not an emergency crash. five minutes warning for 2 hrs maintenance when they likely rollback will be to when servers went back up this morning shouldn't have been an issue. mainly so folks didn't get caught in the middle of actions that could glitch like mail, and guild store sales. ect. things that can be lost in limbo land that zos will have to deal with account by account. many of us wouldn't have started that last boss fight oct either, adding to the frustration of a potential rollback. this may have created additional problems that will need fixing vs a 5minutes that wouldn't have affected anyone more than it already has.

:and on a side note... except for scheduled maintenance warnings they NEVER bother to tell us they suddenly need to take the server down for something. last one took several hours and again was something they had to take the server down for NOT and actual server crashing. this is a reoccurring lack of courtesy:

I can say the same about everyone bitching about the maintenance.

KingLeo

Well, thank you all for making the time go by quickly with your hilarious (and even rude) posts! Community for the win!

AnnieBeGood

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

PC EU is back online! Thanks so much for your patience.

Thank you Gina. (I would not have your job for all the gold in the world)

Ackwalan

Iselin wrote: »

If they don't tell us what caused this I'm going to go with the new stealth loot box code did it.

There was a glitch in the grouping tool that allowed you to leave group early without getting the penalty.










JK

davejschraderb14_ESO

(__)_) =3

BoudiccaStormborn

UltimaJoe777 wrote: »

Yeah and I can vouch for that lol oft times more in fact! However, if money is that tight they have no business subbing in the first place.

Because if you're poor, you totally should never have any fun, amirite? Riiight....

DarknessShallFall

Dojohoda wrote: »

A screenshot (cropped) of mysterious activities at Chalman one night a few weeks ago.

Oh god I hope those aren't my guildmates that sometimes runs PVP, though it's usually trueflame. xD That looks like some of them tho but it's hard to tell.

Immortal_Dark410

AnnieBeGood wrote: »

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

PC EU is back online! Thanks so much for your patience.

Thank you Gina. (I would not have your job for all the gold in the world)

yup got to be tough on Community Admins when there not the Techs behind the issues yet ppl rage at them as if they are. Your work & Patience is Appreciated @ZOS_GinaBruno & @ZOS_JessicaFolsom

UltimaJoe777

Immortal_Dark410 wrote: »

Chaos0720 wrote: »

I find it sad that I after to search through 15 pages of people whining about server maintenance to look for the responses that are actually useful.

I know right you need a Rage Filter on forums or something lol! Should be next thing on ZOS list

Nah, they like seeing rage posts lol makes them laugh.

pogopwns_ESO

this is that very necessary stam sorc nerf isn't it? lmao

vyndral13preub18_ESO

UltimaJoe777 wrote: »

AyeshaBelladonna wrote: »

ashfault wrote: »

Lady_Rosabella wrote: »

DarknessShallFall wrote: »

Oh my gosh you people complain to freaking much, if they didn't do this, the game would be complete junk, what would you rather have? Lots of maintenance to get a problem fixed, or have it where it's not and get kicked, get viruses, and a bunch of other stuff all the time, I seriously doubt anyone here could do better, so quit your griping and complaining, either get on PTS, another game, or just be quiet.

Honestly Darkness, all we are asking for is a warning....you know the countdown saying the server is going down...you have played this game long enough to notice that they usually give you a countdown right? Oh yea I know you have cuz you are in one of my guilds, the one that complains about almost everything, lol.

food for thought: So if they normally give warning but didn't give warning maybe they did not have time for said warning?

no, gina even stated they CHOSE to not wait and put up a warning, in an effort to expedite prevention of progression loss. it was a choice made, not an emergency crash. five minutes warning for 2 hrs maintenance when they likely rollback will be to when servers went back up this morning shouldn't have been an issue. mainly so folks didn't get caught in the middle of actions that could glitch like mail, and guild store sales. ect. things that can be lost in limbo land that zos will have to deal with account by account. many of us wouldn't have started that last boss fight oct either, adding to the frustration of a potential rollback. this may have created additional problems that will need fixing vs a 5minutes that wouldn't have affected anyone more than it already has.

:and on a side note... except for scheduled maintenance warnings they NEVER bother to tell us they suddenly need to take the server down for something. last one took several hours and again was something they had to take the server down for NOT and actual server crashing. this is a reoccurring lack of courtesy:

I can say the same about everyone bitching about the maintenance.

So you agree it is a lack of courtesy?

DARKNESSCHAINED

So, I need more popcorn. Currently accepting contributions.

Enodoc

antihero727 wrote: »

Why are they preventing rollbacks when we should rollback to pre 1.6

I'd imagine most people would rather not lose 18 months of progress

Unlikely_Ghostbuster

UltimaJoe777 wrote: »

KingMagaw wrote: »

tat2mano wrote: »

Enodoc wrote: »

CapuchinSeven wrote: »

I love the way people think that bringing servers down over and over and over again is "ZOS doing their job". NOT bringing down servers all the time and keeping services running is doing your job.

Sure, because keeping a malfunctioning service running is a great idea.

Dont twist his words,he is right,
if ZoS would do a decent job or hire decent techs these problems what occur now wouldnt happen (this frequently s they do).

+Agreed. Its obvious to me whoever in charge is incompetent with so much downtime and so little ever being fixed.

What's obvious is how many haters are on these forums. You only remain on said forums because Zenimax finds you amusing and they are extremely lenient on banning problem-causers.

Love ZOS all you want, they're not going to love you back, buddy.

You're not going to get a cookie for mounting fallacious arguments in defense of this unscheduled, unannounced, unexplained down-time that booted everyone from the game without an in-game warning.

tat2mano

UltimaJoe777 wrote: »

tat2mano wrote: »

Enodoc wrote: »

CapuchinSeven wrote: »

I love the way people think that bringing servers down over and over and over again is "ZOS doing their job". NOT bringing down servers all the time and keeping services running is doing your job.

Sure, because keeping a malfunctioning service running is a great idea.

Dont twist his words,he is right,
if ZoS would do a decent job or hire decent techs these problems what occur now wouldnt happen (this frequently s they do).

He twisted nothing. You people are overreacting. I honestly have not heard of there being a rollback issue for a good while now.

We are talking about ( unscheduled) downtimes,
and the reason why they occur doesnt interest me,and i dont even want to know,i am not and never wil be an IT,
i just wants my game ,where we pay for,to work so we are able to play it when we want,
not when its suitable for ZoS.

SwaminoNowlino

UltimaJoe777 wrote: »

dotlife wrote: »

I gotta say that I personally dont belive they are going to really truely fix it. This will remain unstable and the upcomming 'fix' will just plove the way for yet another soon to come fix. It seems like its spinning out of control. I am glad I dont have any money invested.

You honestly think they cannot fix a rollback issue? I can't even properly respond to that because it's beyond illogical. They run this game for a living, of course they can fix the issue. After all, not being able to would mean the game's literal demise.

Like they fixed gap closers, cheat engine, and movement speed bugs right?

GG

/End Discussion

dotlife

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkCqSHwhKVg[/youtube]

DARKNESSCHAINED

And I'm out of popcorn. Anyone else? Just me? Okay... Currently accepting contributions.

UltimaJoe777

rhapsodious wrote: »

UltimaJoe777 wrote: »

CapuchinSeven wrote: »

Enodoc wrote: »

CapuchinSeven wrote: »

I love the way people think that bringing servers down over and over and over again is "ZOS doing their job". NOT bringing down servers all the time and keeping services running is doing your job.

Sure, because keeping a malfunctioning service running is a great idea.

You know what? Other games, GW2 and Warframe seem to manage it. You know what else? Companies with far less resources running far more critical services manage to do it.

IF this was once or twice you wouldn't (and in fact haven't) of heard a peep from me, but this is now becoming a constant feature.

Needing to bring down services over and over again because of problem after problem with no warning AND no real information to the customer about why this keeps happening is not doing your job.

Wrong. It IS doing their job because doing their job means fixing problems. Seriously at least try to use common sense with your hate-filled arguments. Also stop comparing other companies to this because different games use different hardware and content. Their games are probably WAY easier to maintain than ESO is. I wouldn't know though as I don't work on any games so I have no right to judge, nor do you. Do their jobs, THEN you can judge.

I understand that there are humans behind the scenes who do actually want to make this work, and I feel for them, but this is a flawed line of thinking. You don't have to be a chef to be able to say that the food was poorly made. You can be frustrated with the quality of service compared to other companies.

That being said, I was going to play on my break between classes, but looks like I'm getting a head start on homework, instead.

Opinions are opinions for sure, and everyone is entitled to them. However, it is unfair to jump to conclusions like these people are just because you get frustrated with something that doesn't even happen as often as people are letting on. Now if you can get the approximate specs and all the other juicy tidbits of other games' hardware and Zenimax's THEN you can compare

TUHD86

UltimaJoe777 wrote: »

ElBiggus wrote: »

Enodoc wrote: »

CapuchinSeven wrote: »

I love the way people think that bringing servers down over and over and over again is "ZOS doing their job". NOT bringing down servers all the time and keeping services running is doing your job.

Sure, because keeping a malfunctioning service running is a great idea.

Enodoc wrote: »

CapuchinSeven wrote: »

I love the way people think that bringing servers down over and over and over again is "ZOS doing their job". NOT bringing down servers all the time and keeping services running is doing your job.

Sure, because keeping a malfunctioning service running is a great idea.

But if they were doing their job it would not be malfunctioning.

Imagine I ran a train company, and three or four times a week I took all my trains off the track (sometimes during peak commuter time), throw any passengers out wherever the trains happen to be, mumble that I don't know how long it'll take, and then do a rubbish repair job so that they'll all just break down in another day or so and I'll have to do it again. Would you say I was doing my job? No. My job is to run trains, and if you were a passenger you'd be entitled to complain.

For some reason there's a percentage of gamers who will vehemently defend business practices that in any other field would put you out of business really quickly: failing to deliver on promises, selling products that don't work properly, providing terrible customer service, and a whole host of other failings are apparently something we have to put up with, and I don't see why. If you're not annoyed then great, good for you, but don't you dare tell me I'm not allowed to be annoyed and that this kind of service is not only acceptable, but is in some way how it's supposed to be.

You people saying they aren't doing their job because of malfunctions seriously need to get a clue. EVERYTHING IN LIFE BREAKS DOWN AT SOME POINT! Doing your job means fixing it. Not doing your job means leaving it broken. If your car breaks down and you take it to a repair shop and they fix it they did their job. If they didn't fix it then it either died completely or they didn't do their job. How would you feel if they told you if you did YOUR job it would not have broken down in the first place?

Okay, apparently you don't have one *** clue do you? Prime aspect of IT management is PREVENTION. That's why you have *** redundancies, backups, reserves etc for every important aspect if you're running an 24/7 online business, ESPECIALLY if it's an high-use, hardware-intensive focused business.

No, not every bug, crash etc can be prevented. Code is too complex and too unstable for that, especially at the level a program like TESO runs. But what also is prevention is 'backup control' so your customers do not get kicked out for every minor or major issue, and at optimal, never even notice you encountered a problem serverside.

Now guess where Zenimax incredibly fails. Either that, or their code is that *** that they can't handle all the errors they have serverside, in which case I question the skill of the programmers and QA.

I've seen plenty of server applications userside, as well as some insights in how other resource-intensive internet-based businesses work. TESO is by far one of the worst offenders out there when it comes to user experiences related to server-side malfunctions.

@ZOS_GinaBruno : thanks for the update. Better notifications would be nice though. Also, those 5 minutes upon the hour - 2 hours probably affected doesn't really make a difference though does it, if communicated correctly...

Chaos0720

SwaminoNowlino wrote: »

UltimaJoe777 wrote: »

dotlife wrote: »

I gotta say that I personally dont belive they are going to really truely fix it. This will remain unstable and the upcomming 'fix' will just plove the way for yet another soon to come fix. It seems like its spinning out of control. I am glad I dont have any money invested.

You honestly think they cannot fix a rollback issue? I can't even properly respond to that because it's beyond illogical. They run this game for a living, of course they can fix the issue. After all, not being able to would mean the game's literal demise.

Like they fixed gap closers, cheat engine, and movement speed bugs right?

GG

/End Discussion

Makes sense. Blame the developers because people have nothing better to do than to break the game.

Rapthorne

Hope all goes well, disappointing to happen right on the day I want to come back and faff about in Glenumbra, but what can you do.

Immortal_Dark410

Unlikely_Ghostbuster wrote: »

You're not going to get a cookie for mounting fallacious arguments in defense of this unscheduled, unannounced, unexplained down-time that booted everyone from the game without an in-game warning.

Question is....are you the one handing said "Cookies" out? , because there sure are peoplea in this thread that would probably wanna eat something lol

Shad0wfire99

UltimaJoe777 wrote: »

rhapsodious wrote: »

UltimaJoe777 wrote: »

CapuchinSeven wrote: »

Enodoc wrote: »

CapuchinSeven wrote: »

I love the way people think that bringing servers down over and over and over again is "ZOS doing their job". NOT bringing down servers all the time and keeping services running is doing your job.

Sure, because keeping a malfunctioning service running is a great idea.

You know what? Other games, GW2 and Warframe seem to manage it. You know what else? Companies with far less resources running far more critical services manage to do it.

IF this was once or twice you wouldn't (and in fact haven't) of heard a peep from me, but this is now becoming a constant feature.

Needing to bring down services over and over again because of problem after problem with no warning AND no real information to the customer about why this keeps happening is not doing your job.

Wrong. It IS doing their job because doing their job means fixing problems. Seriously at least try to use common sense with your hate-filled arguments. Also stop comparing other companies to this because different games use different hardware and content. Their games are probably WAY easier to maintain than ESO is. I wouldn't know though as I don't work on any games so I have no right to judge, nor do you. Do their jobs, THEN you can judge.

I understand that there are humans behind the scenes who do actually want to make this work, and I feel for them, but this is a flawed line of thinking. You don't have to be a chef to be able to say that the food was poorly made. You can be frustrated with the quality of service compared to other companies.

That being said, I was going to play on my break between classes, but looks like I'm getting a head start on homework, instead.

Opinions are opinions for sure, and everyone is entitled to them. However, it is unfair to jump to conclusions like these people are just because you get frustrated with something that doesn't even happen as often as people are letting on. Now if you can get the approximate specs and all the other juicy tidbits of other games' hardware and Zenimax's THEN you can compare

And when you get those same specs and tidbits, your blind loyalty will be a little less blind, and you'll have slightly more credibility.

Jailbirdy

I am really confused, why would they test the servers, they have never tested anything before?

BoudiccaStormborn

freespirit wrote: »

UltimaJoe777 wrote: »

tat2mano wrote: »

UltimaJoe777 wrote: »

Parafrost wrote: »

UltimaJoe777 wrote: »

Palidon wrote: »

ZOS I will make this simple and to the point. You need to get your act together. These down times are getting old especially for those of us who are paid subscribers and are missing out on game time with no reimbursement.

I am a paid subscriber, and I expect no reimbursement for them doing their jobs. It's not like ESO+ costs $50 a month you know...

What game costs 50 dollars a month wtf?!?

Exactly lol if you can't afford a mere $15 a month or feel this would be better spent elsewhere then simply don't sub. Besides, not ALL of sub benefits are going unused while offline (research times).

For some people that 15$ is worth 3-4 days of food.

Yeah and I can vouch for that lol oft times more in fact! However, if money is that tight they have no business subbing in the first place.

I think that it is each individual's right to decide whether they sub or not......

If money is tight and believe me I know that one really well, then I think the decision depends on who will be impacted by the allocation of money to the subscription.

It is not anyone's right to tell that person how to manage their finances.

^ This.

If I had a dollar for every time someone on the internet posted about how poor people shouldn't have fun, well then, I'd sub to multiple MMOs.

Toybot

CapuchinSeven wrote: »

autumnsongbird wrote: »

I worked in software and system testing in two large companies (one national and one multinational) and we implemented countless projects, updates, patches, etc. Every project we did utilized the network team in some capacity, some of them more prominently than others. And it was a rare occurrence to have the amount of issues ZOS has on such a regular basis. If we had half the problems ZOS has with any of our online systems that dealt with the customer base we would have lost countless customers and lost untold millions (likely in double to triple digit millions) in losing those accounts. Therefore this level of incompetency would have never been tolerated. But because this is a gaming company that has zero concern about losing customers because of their prepaid monthly subscription, this sort of thing happens far more frequently than it ever should.

I don't care how people justify or excuse it. Because their customer base is largely kids and young adults, they get away with murder. The companies I worked for would have fired people for such incompetency or would have bit the bullet and upgraded systems as needed if they were failing that consistently. We're just one big paying beta group to them. Prepaid in many cases with the multimonth subs. In pretty much every other business model the kind of downtime we have seen would cause a huge loss in consumer faith, in consumer loyalty and in business revenue. It would possibly even leave the company in dire straight.

Think I'm exaggerating? What if went to amazon, netflix, or whatever other business you might frequent were offline as much as we are down with 'maintenance' here? Well on those two the stocks would likely begin to take serious hits and you'd begin to see a slow and steady mass exodus of consumers. Here? Because the demographic is teens and young adult oriented? They get away with murder.

TOTALLY agree, I've said it before and you've said it here it's shocking what computer game companies get away with, in comparison to other networking teams.

I work on a large software development project for a cloud-based product and there is NO WAY our customers would tolerate the frequency nor duration of these maintenance windows.

Those that defend and support this practice as being acceptable are only contributing to the demise of this game because this is an exploit opportunity for a competitor to come along and offer a better service.

By speaking up against this and demanding better, we are defending this game and our community.

This is unacceptable!!!

UltimaJoe777

Stardark wrote: »

UltimaJoe777 wrote: »

Kirameku wrote: »

UltimaJoe777 wrote: »

Those "useless employees" make playing this game possible in the first place. Those same "useless employees" are who will have the game back up and further rollbacks not happen. Hate to break it to ya, but replacing those people will not do any good. In fact, it could very well make things worse!

You people really need to chill and think with a level head. Your anger issues are so fargone not even Jack Nicholson could help you.

Sorry but the only thing I can see now is how the game not working for 4 days in 1.5 weeks. What does this mean? Ppl don't do their jobs. They can't do their job proper and make servers work in prime time. Thats why I wrote that message.

As I said before, *** happens, and this is NO FAULT of Zenimax. They do what they can to get the game back up and running so we can play it, same as any company. As has been said in an ESO Live, you cannot fix 1 thing without something else breaking. At times like these, urgent fixes could very well proc this circumstance and they must hustle to fix THAT too. Apparently, some major *** has been going down and they are dealing with it constantly. And yet, rather than thank them for trying to keep their game playable, people *** at them over maintenance times...

Let me ask you all this: Would you rather they take the time to fix things as they happen, or let them be and NEVER fix them thus rendering the game truly dead? Think it through as you teeter back and forth in your arm chairs or sofas waiting for this maintenance to conclude... I mean I get that everyone wants to play the game but the overreactions are real.

Good IT people in well ran companies don't spend much time fixing problems. They spot them happening and head them off. If you have ever encountered a well ran IT platform you wouldn't even know it because you never think about things that don't break.

Proactive > Reactive

Also I work for a pretty terribly ran IT company and we still have 7 resiliencies on our key platform in 4 data centres. It would take a disaster of epic proportions for the system to go down and we don't need to take the whole system down EVER.

From my perspective I don't object to them taking the servers down, I would rather not play for a month then have a stable service, but if they can't do that then just tell me in vague terms what the cause of the problems are and help me understand their troubles. Don't keep me in the dark.

And once downtime gets beyond a certain threshold of x hours during peak times then some kind of 'sorry' gift in game works wonders. I don't need one, I am not entitled to one, but one would make me feel more appreciated as a customer.

There is nothing you can give players in this game that can properly compensate a damn thing as things in this game are easy enough to get to begin with, unless you just want all the best endgame gear handed to you on a silver platter in which case the answer is obviously HELL NO. As for the whole IT thing, again it depends on the actual hardware and how it is used. If Zenimax spent time LOOKING for NEW issues rather than working on old ones then nothing truly would ever get fixed.