Update 33 PC Launch Postmortem

RisenEclipse

This is awesome! Thank you so much for reaching out to us all and explaining the issue. When a catastrophes happens, and ZOS is silent, we are forced to come up with our own reasons for why things happen, and most of the time those ideas are not flattering at all for ZOS. This was huge of you guys to do, and it makes me relieved that there is still some forms of transparency happening. Mistakes and things blowing up happen. We all get that, and should have a level of understanding towards it. But when there is silence on the hows and whys we literally just shoot in the dark for an answer. Which can cause more upset people then necessary, when we collectively decide on the worst possible theories. You guys are great! I get what happened and am happy you all solved the problem and we can all get back to having fun in ESO again :P

FineFeathered

I, also, appreciate the detailed explanation. Not hearing the word "sorry" here was still far more satisfying than when I do hear the "sorry" from insincere "leaders' who are only sorry because you took it wrong, not for what they did. This felt far more solid.

I appreciate how many people appreciate solid communication. That* is why I am still here, and not playing another game. That other game has (had?) better combat, but the devs did not know the players were alive, and they were literally snarky, at the best of times, to us. I got so angry at login that I couldn't enjoy that game any more.

I know there are still problems, and so long as we have communication like this about them, and they are not forgotten, I will be content. I used to work in banking. Remember the Merger mania of the 1980s and 1990s? Imagine working in the trading section of a big bank that bought another big bank, and they try to merge computer systems. One day, just like this...goes haywire and we had to hire a roomful of CPAs to work for a year to try to figure out where about ..well, about half a billion dollars went. I don't think they'll ever know. It was a nightmare. Compared to what can happen in the real world, and what THAT can cost, this was almost childs play and I wish people would keep that in perspective. Yes, many of us sub, and pay for the game. But we don't pay millions. Or even hundreds of thousands. Imagine that shakup. But with good communication and prompt action, even that bank did not lose huge customers.

I just added that for perspective. Anything can and will happen with computers when you start doing things. They did. It was found and fixed. Now back to our regularly scheduled problems (Please, Zos, dont' forget about them, okay?) At least nobody is having heart attacks over the however-many $million we cannot find. That was fun times.

And no, I will not name any of the institutions. But I'll bet there are stories like this all throughout the financial world from then. You just don't know about it. It's a lot like not really wanting to know how they make your sausage.

It would be great if groupfinder would just work reliably. Always. Forever.

Oh, and I have one of those beta accounts. The base game code I play on is the same code I played on for beta, patched and updated. In case people are curious. I did create new characters from scratch on launch, but I'm still using the same account name. So that's why you don't file them away. Some of us are still using the same accounts. Launch for us was just a patch.

Lysette

Now, this is the kind of communication with the player base, I really like and appreciate. In my mind one gets a lot more understanding for appearing problems and what the process of solving them is like, if it is presented like this. It might be more effort to do that once in a while, but I think that ZOS in a whole gets a lot more respect and appreciation by doing it.

It shows the human side of the problem solving process - and suddenly ZOS is not just a company name, but a group of passionate people, who care for making the game a better experience for everyone - I believe you are doing that on a daily basis, but it is often not communicated well enough to the player base and this creates unnecessary frustration sometimes - so thank you for communicating and addressing these issues.

NanoTechnicianHQ

Good to see that this is being looked at and fixed, I mean I was thinking it might of been Molag Bal getting angry as no ones really paid much attention of late and we know grand schemes are MB's theme.

Tomboski

"first day of April"/"Jester's Festival"... really?
Preemptively announcing your iteration of April Fools'?
[snip]

[edited for bashing]

JimBeastliest

Just one word-Awesome!
(Awesome that you explained)
(Awesome you may have it fixed!)

coletas

"Database Sharding" which is a simple concept: take our giant player database (DB) and separate it into two sections for "current characters" and "older characters" so the entire DB doesn't have to be queried when a player logs in. "

After reading this, i know we will never play pvp again. Wow... I cant believe anyone with any experience would select that key. Matt... First of all, thank you for being honest and transparent this time, but seriously... hire profesionals, take your time, and unitest and profile/benchmark everything before something goes in production.

xclassgaming

The comments on here just prove alot of y'all will never be pleased. smh. GG ZOS, great coummnication as always, keep up the hard work.

wenchmore420b14_ESO

xclassgaming wrote: »

The comments on here just prove alot of y'all will never be pleased. smh. GG ZOS, great coummnication as always, keep up the hard work.

I agree. It was great communication. But "as always"?
Not hardly. Just look at all the "give us better communication " threads over the last 2-3 years. It has been very little communication "as always".

But, as to a lot of us "never being pleased", I applauded Matt on communicating to us (finally) about data issues.
What we are not "pleased" with is there is still no communication about AwA.
ZoS has ignored 3,000 response and feedback and 95+ pages of "please talk with us".
We are just asking Matt and Rich to just communicate with us about the horrible release of AwA the way they did about data storage.
Is that too much to ask?

Minno

I wonder if that faulty port is the reason cyro has had terrible lag for years lol.

ceiron

And in continuing the clear communication theres been none at all today during console launch.

Extended maintenance with no explanation. I was going to add no prior warning but thats just a ludicrous expectation now.

Just to rub it in i predict xbox being sorted first and playstation a long time after.

I was getting a bit excited today for the first time in a long time.

Turns out it was for the social aspect of playing with nice people. Also turns out i can just go elsewhere for the same thing without the poor customer sevice etc

Sachsen71

@ZOS_MattFiror The game is broken again on PC/NA as of 20:40 ET 3/31.

TitanEidolon

Post mortem was a little premature, the problems still have a pulse

Cuddlypuff

TitanEidolon wrote: »

Post mortem was a little premature, the problems still have a pulse

Can't wait for the Post-Postmortem reveal

ArchangelIsraphel

Cuddlypuff wrote: »

TitanEidolon wrote: »

Post mortem was a little premature, the problems still have a pulse

Can't wait for the Post-Postmortem reveal

Someone call the coroner, they've murdered the server again.

AndASM

xclassgaming wrote: »

The comments on here just prove alot of y'all will never be pleased. smh. GG ZOS, great coummnication as always, keep up the hard work.

This comment didn't age very well.

Have you considered it could be an enjoyable game, there could be great staff over there, and it could still be a poorly run mess? The game has had major performance issues both client-side and server-side for years. This postmortem even implies a lack of normal hardware redundancy on the servers and partitioning on the database.

We may love the game. It's great that they are working on performance again, for another year. But... They are still playing catchup on multi-year obvious issues for a product they regularly charge high fees for.


On the bright side, this time (2022-03-31) they actually updated the service alerts. Instead of the situation last time, where the servers were largely unplayable during peak hours for a week and it was listed as "Available". I would still argue that counts as very bad communication, and was but a week ago.

Oh, and don't forget how hard they make it to join these forums. I've been helping members of my guilds navigate that mess. You don't make your customer forums that hard to join and have "great communication", in my opinion.

Photosniper89

Honestly, can we get this kind of communication from here on out. Tell us what your doing internally to solve the PVP issues, ect. be as transparent as possible. There is so much anger, most of it justified to be honest, regarding the unacceptable performance for this game over the years.

This kind of communication was welcomes by everyone (just look at how appreciative everyone was for the post).

Keep this kind of transparency up, more frequent (not only when things go bad)... maybe do a monthly recap/series or something (look at what 343i does).

Abigail

While I was politely dubious about the omissions in Matt Furor's message, having experienced yet more server limitations, I can truly say he needs to extract his encephalon housing group from his posterior ejection mechanism and fix the problem. I don't want some further [snip] excuse, fix it.

[edited for profanity bypass]

WhiteCoatSyndrome

Yup, was slow all afternoon and then I got booted while switching zones.

Chiaroscuro

AndASM wrote: »

Oh, and don't forget how hard they make it to join these forums. I've been helping members of my guilds navigate that mess. You don't make your customer forums that hard to join and have "great communication", in my opinion.

This isn't a joke. I spent *years* fighting with zos to get an account sorted out properly.

I love this game, but this place is run terribly.

Like, I want to see it improve. We all do. ZOS, go do a checkup, I swear you have more hardware wheezing.

deleted221106-002999

I think it took ~18months to acknowledge issues on pc-eu a few years ago so definitely improved communication.

Probably not the wisest thing to tie 'compensation' to log-in rewards, although I certainly admire the optimism.

Of course, for 'some' customers apparently staring at log-in queue timers generating random numbers that optimism may, perhaps, look a lot like hubris.

Sylvermynx

AndASM wrote: »

Oh, and don't forget how hard they make it to join these forums. I've been helping members of my guilds navigate that mess. You don't make your customer forums that hard to join and have "great communication", in my opinion.

Huh? It took me about 5 minutes in June 2018 to figure out how to get invited to the forum.

It's NOT rocket science.

coletas

Sylvermynx wrote: »

AndASM wrote: »

Oh, and don't forget how hard they make it to join these forums. I've been helping members of my guilds navigate that mess. You don't make your customer forums that hard to join and have "great communication", in my opinion.

Huh? Ir took me about 5 minutes in June 2018 to figure out how to get invited to the forum.

It's NOT rocket science.

I cannot remember how many houra took me but yeah, is not rocket science

AndASM

Sylvermynx wrote: »

AndASM wrote: »

Oh, and don't forget how hard they make it to join these forums. I've been helping members of my guilds navigate that mess. You don't make your customer forums that hard to join and have "great communication", in my opinion.

Huh? It took me about 5 minutes in June 2018 to figure out how to get invited to the forum.

It's NOT rocket science.

The register button doesn't work. Many people don't get the email. You have to go into support and submit a ticket under a non-intuitive category. It's not rocket science sure, but that doesn't make it good. Maybe it's changed since 2018?

If I'm helping others do it, that means I know how it works. If enough people are having to ask around to find it that I've helped several, then it's likely fairly counter intuitive or has been intentionally hidden. So what's the point of your message with the emphasis of the not like that? I'm trying to find a positive tone to read it in.

KMarble

AndASM wrote: »

Sylvermynx wrote: »

AndASM wrote: »

Oh, and don't forget how hard they make it to join these forums. I've been helping members of my guilds navigate that mess. You don't make your customer forums that hard to join and have "great communication", in my opinion.

Huh? It took me about 5 minutes in June 2018 to figure out how to get invited to the forum.

It's NOT rocket science.

The register button doesn't work. Many people don't get the email. You have to go into support and submit a ticket under a non-intuitive category. It's not rocket science sure, but that doesn't make it good. Maybe it's changed since 2018?

If I'm helping others do it, that means I know how it works. If enough people are having to ask around to find it that I've helped several, then it's likely fairly counter intuitive or has been intentionally hidden. So what's the point of your message with the emphasis of the not like that? I'm trying to find a positive tone to read it in.

I bought the game in Feb 2018. Never got an invitation through email and it wasn't until towards the end of 2018 that I managed to join the forum.

You're absolutely right, it's a very obtuse and convoluted process.

ArchangelIsraphel

KMarble wrote: »

AndASM wrote: »

Sylvermynx wrote: »

AndASM wrote: »

Oh, and don't forget how hard they make it to join these forums. I've been helping members of my guilds navigate that mess. You don't make your customer forums that hard to join and have "great communication", in my opinion.

Huh? It took me about 5 minutes in June 2018 to figure out how to get invited to the forum.

It's NOT rocket science.

The register button doesn't work. Many people don't get the email. You have to go into support and submit a ticket under a non-intuitive category. It's not rocket science sure, but that doesn't make it good. Maybe it's changed since 2018?

If I'm helping others do it, that means I know how it works. If enough people are having to ask around to find it that I've helped several, then it's likely fairly counter intuitive or has been intentionally hidden. So what's the point of your message with the emphasis of the not like that? I'm trying to find a positive tone to read it in.

I bought the game in Feb 2018. Never got an invitation through email and it wasn't until towards the end of 2018 that I managed to join the forum.

You're absolutely right, it's a very obtuse and convoluted process.

I had a very similar experience. I bought the game sometime around late July early August, and never received an invitation to the forums via email. As I recall, I had to go through customer support, and as a result, did not have a forum account at all until sometime in September. It's quite a convoluted process to go through for what should be a very simple registration.

TechMaybeHic

Will there be a 2nd post mortem?

Abigail

TechMaybeHic wrote: »

Will there be a 2nd post mortem?

Think it would be an exhumation rather than a 2nd postmortem.

TechMaybeHic

I know there was a port issue but...seeing as PC NA is still in rough shape; you can't be serious. Really a bad idea for an April fool's joke @ZOS_GinaBruno

We’re excited to let everyone know we’re approaching the final stage of completing database sharding and are planning to shard the PC EU megaserver next Tuesday, April 5 so you can reap the performance benefits of sharding as soon as possible.

FeedbackOnly

TechMaybeHic wrote: »

I know there was a port issue but...seeing as PC NA is still in rough shape; you can't be serious. Really a bad idea for an April fool's joke @ZOS_GinaBruno

We’re excited to let everyone know we’re approaching the final stage of completing database sharding and are planning to shard the PC EU megaserver next Tuesday, April 5 so you can reap the performance benefits of sharding as soon as possible.

Let's be honest group finder didn't break because of a port issue.

Also what happened this time. A week later the fixes break everything again?