Why can't MMO providers learn how to do availability during maintenance?

FlopsyPrince

Marto wrote: »

PigofSteel wrote: »

But Bethesda aka Zenimax aka Microsoft is huge huge huge as well ? So where is problem ?

Bethesda wasn't that big in 2014.

Back in those days, their biggest accomplishments were the technical messes that were Brink and Rage. And their decent but not mainstream successes of Wolfenstein the New Order, Dishonored, and The Evil Within.

True, they are big now, and they could put a lot of money into doing what you want.

But this is also an MMO we're talking about. The most expensive genre to develop.
Asking a publisher to throw an extra 100 million dollars on a game that already costed 300-1000 million to make is ridiculous.

And besides, is it even possible? I'm not deeply familiar with the way ESO is designed, coded, built, and distributed. And ZOS isn't either, considering how many people have left and joined the studio in the past 10 years. It would take immeasurable effort to deconstruct and rebuild all there is.

They'd need to rebuild delivery pipelines, texture streaming, NPC behavior, collision and world, UI systems, particle engines blah blah blah...

It'd be considerably more time, money, and effort than just making a new game.

This is a completely bogus argument and ignores the reality of modern systems. Reliability is a must in most fields, even ones that were developed when long downtime seemed acceptable.

Making excuses for them helps no one. Is anyone really going to tell me that the game has not components? Those are problems that are already been worked on for high availability for a range of industries.

The problem is not that I can't or shouldn't be done, nor when it was built, but that no serious competitive pressure exists for it, so it is not even attempted or worked towards.

I guess it is more than a bit foolish to bring this up when some quests have been bugged (and unfixed) since release. The sewers in the AD area of Imperial City still don't show the proper quest indicators, unlike the other two areas. It will route you through the home area of another alliance instead - something that is not only painful to try but also impossible.

Too many things get ignored and the lack of true competitive pressure is the reason for that.

Elsonso

Marto wrote: »

But this is also an MMO we're talking about. The most expensive genre to develop.
Asking a publisher to throw an extra 100 million dollars on a game that already costed 300-1000 million to make is ridiculous.

If you listen to Firor, I believe he indicated that ESO didn't even fall into that range.

Thavie

ArenaNet patented their patching system that's why no one won't copy it. Warframe has something relatively similar but it's not an MMORPG and it works differently to begin with.
https://www.gdcvault.com/play/1016640/Guild-Wars-2-Programming-the

ThorianB

Marto wrote: »

PigofSteel wrote: »

But Bethesda aka Zenimax aka Microsoft is huge huge huge as well ? So where is problem ?

Bethesda wasn't that big in 2014.

Back in those days, their biggest accomplishments were the technical messes that were Brink and Rage. And their decent but not mainstream successes of Wolfenstein the New Order, Dishonored, and The Evil Within.

True, they are big now, and they could put a lot of money into doing what you want.

But this is also an MMO we're talking about. The most expensive genre to develop.
Asking a publisher to throw an extra 100 million dollars on a game that already costed 300-1000 million to make is ridiculous.

And besides, is it even possible? I'm not deeply familiar with the way ESO is designed, coded, built, and distributed. And ZOS isn't either, considering how many people have left and joined the studio in the past 10 years. It would take immeasurable effort to deconstruct and rebuild all there is.

They'd need to rebuild delivery pipelines, texture streaming, NPC behavior, collision and world, UI systems, particle engines blah blah blah...

It'd be considerably more time, money, and effort than just making a new game.

Yeah its not like they made other Elder Scroll games before this one that was a success or Fallout series or anything. Its also not like they won more than a dozen awards between all their titles or anything. They didnt win Gamasutra's Best Of 2008 - Top Five Developer or 2011 Spike Video Game Awards — Studio of the Year. Their breakout game was obviously ESO.

Their former parent company Zenimax Media was a $2 billion revenue a year company that owned multiple studios. Sure they weren't Microsoft but they weren't a hole in the wall software developer either.

FlopsyPrince

Elsonso wrote: »

Marto wrote: »

But this is also an MMO we're talking about. The most expensive genre to develop.
Asking a publisher to throw an extra 100 million dollars on a game that already costed 300-1000 million to make is ridiculous.

If you listen to Firor, I believe he indicated that ESO didn't even fall into that range.

I would also question the claim that MMOs cost more than other complex systems to develop. It is not a straight comparison of course, but do you think they spend more than Amazon has on their site, for example?

FrancisCrawford

ESO was badly architected from the getgo, and there was a lot of development turnover early on.

It is very hard to recover from that kind of situation and truly understand your code base, and ZoS has not yet achieved this very hard thing.

Difficulties predicting the effects of changes are just consequences of that, and those difficulties make maintenance a regrettably exciting time.

Thechuckage

ThorianB wrote: »

Marto wrote: »

PigofSteel wrote: »

But Bethesda aka Zenimax aka Microsoft is huge huge huge as well ? So where is problem ?

Bethesda wasn't that big in 2014.

Back in those days, their biggest accomplishments were the technical messes that were Brink and Rage. And their decent but not mainstream successes of Wolfenstein the New Order, Dishonored, and The Evil Within.

True, they are big now, and they could put a lot of money into doing what you want.

But this is also an MMO we're talking about. The most expensive genre to develop.
Asking a publisher to throw an extra 100 million dollars on a game that already costed 300-1000 million to make is ridiculous.

And besides, is it even possible? I'm not deeply familiar with the way ESO is designed, coded, built, and distributed. And ZOS isn't either, considering how many people have left and joined the studio in the past 10 years. It would take immeasurable effort to deconstruct and rebuild all there is.

They'd need to rebuild delivery pipelines, texture streaming, NPC behavior, collision and world, UI systems, particle engines blah blah blah...

It'd be considerably more time, money, and effort than just making a new game.

Yeah its not like they made other Elder Scroll games before this one that was a success or Fallout series or anything. Its also not like they won more than a dozen awards between all their titles or anything. They didnt win Gamasutra's Best Of 2008 - Top Five Developer or 2011 Spike Video Game Awards — Studio of the Year. Their breakout game was obviously ESO /snt win Gamasutra's Best Of 2008 - Top Five Developer or 2011 Spike Video Game Awards — Studio of the Year. Nah ESO was their first major game./s

Their former parent company Zenimax Media was a $2 billion revenue a year company that owned multiple studios. Sure they weren't Microsoft but they weren't a hole in the wall software developer either.

It seems like a sizable portion of the posters think that ESO is a passion project developed by an indie team and given the appropriate slack. Honestly I get better bug response from the indie devs. Then again, they cannot rest on laurels.

Elsonso

Thechuckage wrote: »

It seems like a sizable portion of the posters think that ESO is a passion project developed by an indie team and given the appropriate slack. Honestly I get better bug response from the indie devs. Then again, they cannot rest on laurels.

They may have devs that are passionate about the project, which wil change as soon as they move to another project. ZOS and ESO are clearly well considered business decisions by the parent company, with a constrained budget that matches the initial uncertainty and ability to gather funds for development.

ThorianB

Thechuckage wrote: »

ThorianB wrote: »

Marto wrote: »

PigofSteel wrote: »

But Bethesda aka Zenimax aka Microsoft is huge huge huge as well ? So where is problem ?

Bethesda wasn't that big in 2014.

Back in those days, their biggest accomplishments were the technical messes that were Brink and Rage. And their decent but not mainstream successes of Wolfenstein the New Order, Dishonored, and The Evil Within.

True, they are big now, and they could put a lot of money into doing what you want.

But this is also an MMO we're talking about. The most expensive genre to develop.
Asking a publisher to throw an extra 100 million dollars on a game that already costed 300-1000 million to make is ridiculous.

And besides, is it even possible? I'm not deeply familiar with the way ESO is designed, coded, built, and distributed. And ZOS isn't either, considering how many people have left and joined the studio in the past 10 years. It would take immeasurable effort to deconstruct and rebuild all there is.

They'd need to rebuild delivery pipelines, texture streaming, NPC behavior, collision and world, UI systems, particle engines blah blah blah...

It'd be considerably more time, money, and effort than just making a new game.

Yeah its not like they made other Elder Scroll games before this one that was a success or Fallout series or anything. Its also not like they won more than a dozen awards between all their titles or anything. They didnt win Gamasutra's Best Of 2008 - Top Five Developer or 2011 Spike Video Game Awards — Studio of the Year. Their breakout game was obviously ESO /snt win Gamasutra's Best Of 2008 - Top Five Developer or 2011 Spike Video Game Awards — Studio of the Year. Nah ESO was their first major game./s

Their former parent company Zenimax Media was a $2 billion revenue a year company that owned multiple studios. Sure they weren't Microsoft but they weren't a hole in the wall software developer either.

It seems like a sizable portion of the posters think that ESO is a passion project developed by an indie team and given the appropriate slack. Honestly I get better bug response from the indie devs. Then again, they cannot rest on laurels.

The bug fixing is horrible and all it does is create more bugs and instability. ZOS chooses new content over fixing existing content. For example, how long have we had the neverending combat bug? Ive been experience that at least since Elsweyr that i can remember.