Does the game really need 4-8 hour maintenances every week?

tbe_loki

anitajoneb17_ESO wrote: »

Fine... how many employees are there in your Germany's largest telco ? I guess several thousands if not over ten thousands. ZOS has a few hundred.
How many customers are there in "Germany's largest telco" ? I guess 20 to 30 millions, all paying subscribers to some services.

For the IT Infrastrukture we are talking about less then hundred. And the paying customers, yeah, but we don't get much out of each contract, normal i view cents to €, not so much as you would think.

And, i do the same in a non-profit organisation, with 3 administrators and a cluster with services used by many thousands. The manpower you need depends on the complexity of the system. If the ESO server infrastructure has major design issues, than you need more admins.

Kurkikohtaus wrote: »

SoLooney wrote: »

I dont mind the weekly maintenance, i see it as almost necessary to make sure the servers are upkept and running smoothly,

Why?

What do they do? Do THEY even know?

Of course, you have to install system patches, for security and stability. You must be able to do some cleanup on the databases and maybe take some backup snapshots.

WillhelmBlack

Evidently, yes.

Bouldercleave

NoScopeGG wrote: »

Is this really necessary? Does every other MMO does this? Or is it just ESO? I don't really understand why it takes so much time if it is done weekly. The worst part is that in the EU the maintenance is done the entire morning, while on NA it is done overnight when everyone is sleeping.

I know a rant wont change (insert bad word here because im angry), but come on... 1/4 of the day wasted on maintenance.

There are 168 hours in a week. 4-8 hours of down time isn't that bad in my opinion. That's still 160+ hours of playtime.

Your statement is also incorrect. NA downtime is not while everyone is sleeping. It's not peak time, but I have seen it happen many mornings. I just go do something else until it comes back up.

RIGHTEOUS_REPORT

Yes because the servers are cheap trash.

wenchmore420b14_ESO

tbe_loki wrote: »

stewhead2ub17_ESO wrote: »

Oh the horror. Please just stop with the childish tantrums over maintenance. 4-5 hours on Mondays we can't log in. Somehow, I think we'll all survive this necessary and minor inconvenience.

Minor? Ok. I'll tell u something. I work for one of Germany largest telcos. Together with about 6 other administrators, I am responsible for the backend systems of our complete customer support and billing software. Shop, online invoice service, self service, login systems for all subscriber lines, voip, ....

Guess how long our regular maintaince windows are


Not more than 15 minutes per week. Every 3 month about 2 hours.

And you call 5 hours each week "minor"?

How long have you played ESO? How long have you played MMO's?
At launch we had 2 maintenance days a week for almost the first year! All MMO's do maintenance! Yes some are shorter than ESO, but they are also much "smaller games" and not near the size of ESO.
Your comparison of your job vs. a huge on-line game is redundant.
There are over 61+million individual items in ESO, all needing coding. Do you have 61+ million pieces of coding to track?
There have been over 7 million users to ESO since launch. Do you have that many customers accounts to track and make sure are working properly?
No, I am not a IT guy, but, I do know comparing a on-line shop with a massive MMO is apples and oranges.
My point is that I agree with @stewhead2ub17_ESO . If I seem apathetic, it is because this same thread pops up every week for 3 years now. Maintenance is necessary. Get used to it.
As far as NA times vs EU times, I am a chef and my "Play time" is during the maintenance times, so it is not just EU players missing out. My solution,...... I know that it is coming, it is posted ahead of time every week, and plan to do something else.
Also! You obviously have not been here when they go for weeks without a maintenance! It is horrible! I for one am glad they do it once a week.
My 2 drakes! Huzzah!

ProfesseurFreder

You should be glad that they're doing it.

I have to wonder if the people whining about the game going downhill -- their opinion, not mine -- are the same people who whine when they can't get online to play it for a measly four (early AM) hours out of the week.

Apache_Kid

I would feel a lot differently about the down-time every week if it felt like there was actual progress made towards fixing the bugs that cause me the most issues. Game still freezes in certain areas, activity finder works when it wants to, (it is completely unusable on one of my characters at the moment for some unknown reason) Cyrodiil still causes my game to crash every 45 minutes to an hour, my mount still has speed issues traversing any terrain that is non-flat. These are just a few examples of issues that still persist despite all of this downtime. It's great that they do all this stuff to fix costumes and hair styles from clipping into each other but there needs to be more.

zaria

NoScopeGG wrote: »

XDragonDoomX wrote: »

I'm pretty sure ZoS only do it because they believe it is necessary.
From a customer service point of view it wouldn't make sense to take the servers down - people who cant play are unhappy.
From a commercial point of view it wouldn't make sense to take the servers down - people who aren't playing aren't buying from the crown store

So yes, its probably really necessary.

Most (perhaps all) MMOs I've played take their servers down for 5 minutes then put them back up (even when it's a big update patch), and I don't see why ESO is different than the others.

Microsoft servers don't have much downtime outside of the reboot for updates, this takes 5 minutes.

I believe part of the problem is megaserver. With self contained servers you update and then reboot each independently.
if you run an update on megaserver you will need to take all the servers up and down again.
Still it take far longer than expected. kick all users, apply patch, perhaps reboot, perhaps do some hardware maintenance like changing fans. Adding or swapping servers should best be done at this time too. Then start up again.
It appear that they also has an test period, sometimes you get an fail, has happened on EU servers a few times and it can be 10 hour maintenance. Probably database update errors or fails detected during testing.

Wolfchild07

I observed that Elder Scrolls Legends maintenance also takes about 6+ hours...and that's just a card game. I checked the patch notes for it and there were a few slight adjustments to cards, nothing worthy to note. I don't know if it's a coincidence or not but it seems to take about the same amount of time. I'm not a tech guy, so I wouldn't have the slightest clue why it takes so long for both games.

To be clear, it's not a complaint. It's just an observation.

Sylosi

wenchmore420b14_ESO wrote: »

How long have you played ESO? How long have you played MMO's?
At launch we had 2 maintenance days a week for almost the first year! All MMO's do maintenance!

Actually they don't, Guild Wars 2 for example, in 5 years the servers have been down maybe 5 or 6 times, and that was for things like a major hardware update, a fundamental change to their software, the big DDOS attacks a couple of years ago, etc, so there is no weekly maintenance visible to players.

So maybe instead of asking other people "How long have you played MMO's" you should take a look at your own lack of experience.

Nutshotz

See the fact everyone *** about the long maintenance and so forth. Go to any other mmo and play for 2 weeks and see how they operate.

Zos needs to take the servers done either daily for 15min or 1hr or weekly every Monday or Wednesday for 3 hrs.

Every mmo ive played and as well as a lot of other players. Those games have had weekly resets to where the servers run smooth. The servers now are a joke. 3 years we have been dealing with this type of non sense. The servers are garbage.

So I'm down for a daily reset for 1hour maintenance or even a weekly 3-5 hour one.

stewhead2ub17_ESO

@wenchmore420b14_ESO Huzzah! Well said, sir!

OutLaw_Nynx

If you guys really want to see what happens when a company doesn't take care of their servers please login into Red Dead Redemption on either ps3 or Xbox. The game servers have been broken for the past 5 years or so. Rockstar tried to "fix" it by resetting their servers and throw modders into their own modded lobby. Their fix didn't work and the modders got out and broke the game again. So, please shut up about all the whining because you can't play when you want to. ESO already has enough issues as is. Last year I think it was they had a plague of CH users and had to deal with that. They didn't do well as CH is still around as far as I know.


The bodies on the ground in the video aren't supposed to be there. They were glitched in by modders and they spread across the servers causing extremely bad lag and 98% of the time you would crash because you were gaining so much XP and the game couldn't handle it. This game is still being sold as is and Rockstar hasn't done anything to fix it. I'm glad Zenimax attempts to take care of their servers.

https://youtu.be/_wutJLvu7EY

Acrolas

Even a fairly straightforward browser game like Kingdom of Loathing needs around 100 minutes of maintenance downtime per week.

If you want consistent and reliable uptime, there's an entire game library designed around that. Just browse for "single player games".

sevomd69

Yes... why do people constantly think that ZOS does maintenance to annoy people and prevent them from playing?

jcf190b14_ESO

I'd rather have scheduled maintenance than unscheduled maintenance. Build a bridge.

Nullmagic

Considering the game's performance, I think maybe 12-16 hours would be better.

Danikat

Sylosi wrote: »

wenchmore420b14_ESO wrote: »

How long have you played ESO? How long have you played MMO's?
At launch we had 2 maintenance days a week for almost the first year! All MMO's do maintenance!

Actually they don't, Guild Wars 2 for example, in 5 years the servers have been down maybe 5 or 6 times, and that was for things like a major hardware update, a fundamental change to their software, the big DDOS attacks a couple of years ago, etc, so there is no weekly maintenance visible to players.

So maybe instead of asking other people "How long have you played MMO's" you should take a look at your own lack of experience.

Actually Guild Wars 2 does have regular maintenance - it's just not noticeable to players because they don't take all of the servers offline at the same time and the ones that stay online can 'cover' for the ones that are offline, allowing everyone to stay logged in.

(And then players complain that when a new release comes out they have to log off to download it. And I mean literally log out of the game, start the download immediately and log back in as soon as it's finished - or before now they have the streaming client. So the only 'downtime' is the time required for your PC to receive the update. But even that people complain about.)

I think GW2 is a special case though because the company was founded by a guy who previously designed gaming servers (including some system called Battle.net...I'm told it's popular). Apparently both it and it's predecessor was built from the ground up to allow that kind of thing.

Having said that the system they use is referred to a 'megaservers' which does make me wonder why ESO can't do the same thing as it seems like the same idea - lots of interconnected servers running map instances as needed instead of each server running it's own separate copy - but I assume there's more to it than that.

Betsararie

NoScopeGG wrote: »

Is this really necessary? Does every other MMO does this? Or is it just ESO? I don't really understand why it takes so much time if it is done weekly. The worst part is that in the EU the maintenance is done the entire morning, while on NA it is done overnight when everyone is sleeping.

I know a rant wont change (insert bad word here because im angry), but come on... 1/4 of the day wasted on maintenance.

Lmao.

It isn't done overnight for people on the West Coast of the U.S.

It's done at the tail end of prime time.

Decon98b16_ESO

How soon we forget how long it takes to defrag an 486 or Pentium server

Moltyr

Have you played ESO over the past 4 years? Of course it still needs as much maintenance as it can get.

Anysra

If maintenance is not done in a either a small or large network, then application software may not run as it should. In some cases, when maintenance is not up-to-date, a network may experience full or partial system failure. Even if maintenance has been completed, if it wasn’t accomplished properly, then the network will still run into issues.

MMOs are relatively low stakes, and tolerant of downtime (particularly with region specific downtime windows). Google gets heavy traffic 24/7, but a MMO like ESO will fluctuate massively throughout the week. The impact of brining down servers during those valleys of usage is disproportionately lower than it is in other businesses with more regular activity periods.

By implementing regularly scheduled maintenance windows they also gain predictability. I would hazard a guess that, if they wanted to, 90+% of what happens in regular maintenance could be moved concurrently. They might still have some downtime windows occasionally for big things (replacing core network infrastructure, upgrading major patches, etc).

However there are some trade offs. They would still need occasional maintenance windows (when do you schedule them? Would people be more upset by occasional random maintenance windows than a predictable, consistent one?) Would the systems be much more complex? Would it be much more costly to add new features, innovate and maintain?

Also think about the nature of the servers in an MMO vs other online games like Starcraft 2. In Starcraft 2 the games are pretty much happening between two players. The servers have to coordinate the games, but there's a lot more fault tolerance and less need for global synchronization. Starcraft seems much more like a tradiontal website architecture than WOW, which is a more unified system. In WOW everyone needs to be in instant lockstep.

Basically the short answer is that there are dozens of reasons that a maintenance window can be used for, and the reasons for not doing one with an MMO specifically are pretty slim. The whole MMO software system can be much simpler and more predictable if they schedule and use a regular maintenance window, giving you a better game cheaper.

AoDD33pfri3d

DisgracefulMind wrote: »

Wah wah. Maintenance. Wah. Every Monday these threads come out.

OR they say you didn't give us a notice it should be a week notice. Lol

Bobby_V_Rockit

4pm till nearly midnight every tuesday. Fun timea

randomkeyhits

Both current and previous job there is no set down time. We just try to be as close to zero as possible.

In the previous role the only planned down time in the last three years was when running the Disaster Recovery test and switching everything between sites and that was usually about thirty seconds to a minute.

The unplanned was when BT accidentally terminated our primary lines. It was sufficiently messy that we had to manually fail over to the DR site and that took seven minutes. We started getting complaints at one second past five minutes.

Infrastructure was and is designed for availability and it took careful planning for it to all work properly.

Said it before, ZoS are a game development company and their focus is on writing games not resilient services. Also resilience costs, both in hardware and people and these days companies don't seem to like that.

As for when things happen.... I run a mud and it has five minutes outage every 29 hours. I use a prime number so it guarantees that the restarts are spread across all time zones.

djdc1234

NoScopeGG wrote: »

Is this really necessary? Does every other MMO does this? Or is it just ESO? I don't really understand why it takes so much time if it is done weekly. The worst part is that in the EU the maintenance is done the entire morning, while on NA it is done overnight when everyone is sleeping.

I know a rant wont change (insert bad word here because im angry), but come on... 1/4 of the day wasted on maintenance.

They just do it bc they know you personally don't like it.

Bobby_V_Rockit

Omg, come on already! Its been 5 hours lol. Plus every *** tuesday is inplayable for anyone not in the EU!!! Please start sharing around the downtime between time zones!

Ie. every Tuesday from
4:00pm till Midnight we cant play in Australia PS4

Swifigames

I've stated in the past that I appreciate the maintenance.
I'd much rather play a game with regular maintenance as opposed to a title that slacks off with it.
Now, that said...I really do wish the offline times were significantly shorter in duration.

Bobby_V_Rockit

It should specify on the box "playable Wednesday to Monday!" Lol

Cebasak

Feanor wrote: »

@stewhead2ub17_ESO

Yeah I was sure you'd follow up with the "it's just a game" argument. These discussions are not innovative because they have been around forever. It's predictable.

To finish the circulus in demonstrando you'll just need to bring the "but-it's-only-€-0.016-per-ESO-plus-hour" and we're done.

Maybe consider the fact that its been around forever because its true?