PC EU Hardware Update – August 2022

Sarannah

Thanks for the update! The timeline doesn't bother me much, as I am hardly ever PvPing and the game otherwise runs great.

Questions: Does the new hardware also open up ways for us to get more storage space, inventory/bank/bigger housing furniture limit/etc? Or does the new hardware have zero impact in relation to those things?
Recently you released a new pet(donkey) that grants 5 more inventory slots accountwide, did that amount of slots have any impact on the servers at all? .. Or is the impact so minimal that expanding the storage limits would be possible, even without new hardware? This impact should be measurable now, would be cool to have an update on storage.
Did Accountwide achievements do anything in regards to storage space?

Thanks!

Elsonso

Sarannah wrote: »

Questions: Does the new hardware also open up ways for us to get more storage space, inventory/bank/bigger housing furniture limit/etc? Or does the new hardware have zero impact in relation to those things?

If I had to guess... no.

Inventory/Bank is about database size and indexes, both of which are already huge, given the server population, and not getting any smaller. However, they should perform better at their current limits

Housing limits are defined by marketing, the limit is halved for people without ESO Plus, and client capabilities, how well the PC, Console, and Stadia can show a cluttered area.

MorganaBlue

Too little, too late.

Katheriah

Jazraena wrote: »

Rowjoh wrote: »

This is a huge kick in the teeth for PC EU PvP, but thank you for updating us at least - much appreciated.

Your player base need a helluva lot more communication like this on a much more consistent basis, something that has been requested by your customers and promised by yourselves many times over the years, yet still doesn't happen nearly as often as it should.

Tragically, I have a modicum of understanding why they wouldn't want to, given the reactions in here. Still, you're right - they should.

Nah, this is too easy.

Most complainers love the game, that's why they're still here. We just want to see things fixed. Remember the Year of Performance? Has there been any communication about the code rewrite? ZOS has been giving us *** communication for years and they even admitted it. Our not so nice reactions are due to this fact.

You can't treat your paying customers like a bunch of kids and then act surprised when you get sour responses. Don't get me wrong; I wouldn't want to be in charge of commucation here at this moment. But if I was in charge of communication for this game years ago, I would have avoided this mess.

Jazraena

Katheriah wrote: »

Jazraena wrote: »

Rowjoh wrote: »

This is a huge kick in the teeth for PC EU PvP, but thank you for updating us at least - much appreciated.

Your player base need a helluva lot more communication like this on a much more consistent basis, something that has been requested by your customers and promised by yourselves many times over the years, yet still doesn't happen nearly as often as it should.

Tragically, I have a modicum of understanding why they wouldn't want to, given the reactions in here. Still, you're right - they should.

Nah, this is too easy.

Most complainers love the game, that's why they're still here. We just want to see things fixed. Remember the Year of Performance? Has there been any communication about the code rewrite? ZOS has been giving us *** communication for years and they even admitted it. Our not so nice reactions are due to this fact.

You can't treat your paying customers like a bunch of kids and then act surprised when you get sour responses. Don't get me wrong; I wouldn't want to be in charge of commucation here at this moment. But if I was in charge of communication for this game years ago, I would have avoided this mess.

Sorry, but no. People will complain. It's a plague not limited to gaming, though it's extremely visible there. You could literally have a meteor strike their data centre and people would complain why they didn't set up a replacement on the other side of the continent.

That being said - while I understand the frustration stemming from it, ZOS should still communicate more. Customer relations is an often thankless job, but it still needs to be done irrespective of some vocal reactions.

francesinhalover

ginoboehm wrote: »

With the lack of communication this year, the unwanted updates and changes, the completely unacceptable performance of this game in cyrodil, the lack of features in pvp, the disregard of the endgame community and the years of "it is not the server guys" it feels like they just want to get rid of the mmo crowd and exchange them for new players who play the game mostly for the casual story solo experience

you say that like it is a bad thing

Full story eso, no mmorpg stuff, what a dream.

the fact i wouldn't need to cry and pull my hair off for trifecta achievements for cosmetics full of lagg and fps drops. would be a godtier

SechsPistole

Madness, [snip] Well, then I won't be playing the game until March 2023. thanks for nothing

[edited for bashing]

blktauna

Jazraena wrote: »

Sorry, but no. People will complain. It's a plague not limited to gaming, though it's extremely visible there. You could literally have a meteor strike their data centre and people would complain why they didn't set up a replacement on the other side of the continent.

Not to be rude but disaster planning is necessary, hyperbolic as the example is.
I don't understand why they waited so long to address many of the things they are addressing but as it's not up to me, I'm glad at least there's a bit of communication.

Jazraena

blktauna wrote: »

Jazraena wrote: »

Sorry, but no. People will complain. It's a plague not limited to gaming, though it's extremely visible there. You could literally have a meteor strike their data centre and people would complain why they didn't set up a replacement on the other side of the continent.

Not to be rude but disaster planning is necessary, hyperbolic as the example is.
I don't understand why they waited so long to address many of the things they are addressing but as it's not up to me, I'm glad at least there's a bit of communication.

Cease with this 'they should have replaced earlier and waited until the last possible moment' narrative. That's a baseless claim and can only ever be a baseless claim, because to say otherwise would require insider knowledge that you, I or anyone else here doesn't have.

We have absolutely no reason to assume that they scheduled replacements, well, on schedule.

Then life happened. Like it did with many, many, many other companies and organizations. And no, companies don't tend to have a spare data centre around for 'disaster planning', but thank you for proving my hyperbolic meteor example.

blktauna

In my work servers are scheduled for replacement every 5 years. These is well over that timeframe. The cloud makes for excellent disaster rollover and that's what my previous company did. It's only on when you need it to be as long as you maintain reasonable data backups and offsite redundancy you're good. Hopefully Microslave makes decent Azure access available to ZOS. They would then be able to scale more quickly and more cost effectively.

So as the saying goes, their bad planning doesn't constitute an emergency on my part... except it is doing and people are pointing it out.

I just hope this shook some folks up and they decide this game is worth paying attention to and allocating recources to, both employee and time.

Varana

Jazraena wrote: »

Rowjoh wrote: »

This is a huge kick in the teeth for PC EU PvP, but thank you for updating us at least - much appreciated.

Your player base need a helluva lot more communication like this on a much more consistent basis, something that has been requested by your customers and promised by yourselves many times over the years, yet still doesn't happen nearly as often as it should.

Tragically, I have a modicum of understanding why they wouldn't want to, given the reactions in here. Still, you're right - they should.

It would've been nice, though, if they had explained the situation a few times themselves, instead of offloading it to users like you. (You've done a good job with it, though. ) Sure, someone will always complain, but judging from the heaps of goodwill that someone like Kevin gets whenever he posts basic stuff like "we've seen it and look into it", I'd think that it would've gone a long way into improving the relationship again if Firor had posted a followup addressing some of the questions, or something like that.
But well, communication is not really their strength.

Jazraena

blktauna wrote: »

In my work servers are scheduled for replacement every 5 years. These is well over that timeframe. The cloud makes for excellent disaster rollover and that's what my previous company did. It's only on when you need it to be as long as you maintain reasonable data backups and offsite redundancy you're good. Hopefully Microslave makes decent Azure access available to ZOS. They would then be able to scale more quickly and more cost effectively.

So as the saying goes, their bad planning doesn't constitute an emergency on my part... except it is doing and people are pointing it out.

I just hope this shook some folks up and they decide this game is worth paying attention to and allocating recources to, both employee and time.

Your and their environment may not be comparable. In fact, it most likely isn't, and either way, we don't know sufficient details about either hardware setup or maintenance and replacement plans to judge.

Varana wrote: »

Jazraena wrote: »

Rowjoh wrote: »

This is a huge kick in the teeth for PC EU PvP, but thank you for updating us at least - much appreciated.

Your player base need a helluva lot more communication like this on a much more consistent basis, something that has been requested by your customers and promised by yourselves many times over the years, yet still doesn't happen nearly as often as it should.

Tragically, I have a modicum of understanding why they wouldn't want to, given the reactions in here. Still, you're right - they should.

It would've been nice, though, if they had explained the situation a few times themselves, instead of offloading it to users like you. (You've done a good job with it, though. ) Sure, someone will always complain, but judging from the heaps of goodwill that someone like Kevin gets whenever he posts basic stuff like "we've seen it and look into it", I'd think that it would've gone a long way into improving the relationship again if Firor had posted a followup addressing some of the questions, or something like that.
But well, communication is not really their strength.

Absolutely. Sympathy I may have for just about anyone having to deal with customers (I am very glad I don't need to take lip when dealing with mine, these days) but irrespective of that, more communication like this, or a few comments Kevin dropped recently would be very much needed and appreciated.

That still-missing Q&A would be a great start. Yes, the current mood will likely draw plenty of less-than-friendly reactions, but the alternative is worse, not better.

Hurbster

I mean it's not as if the EU servers have been unreliable and liable to break down at a moments notice for years or anything.

MarioMario

KMarble wrote: »

logan_ESO wrote: »

Six, eight months, one year waiting list is normal.

Sorry if I'm misunderstanding what you're saying, but are waiting lists not honored in that industry? Or are industries buying hardware having to wait more time on top of what they've already waited?

I'm not going to argue the supply and demand chain, as it isn't my area of expertise, but we were informed about the servers update more than two years ago (April 2019 according to the search I just did).

I would think ZOS was already on a waiting list before announcing it to the players.

The demand for electronics doubled between 2019 and 2022.

Doubled.

To increase output capacity in a bakery, you buy an oven, hire a cook and you are fine.
To increase output capacity in our industry, you need 2 years just to build the infrastructure.

Our customers are aware of this.

Jazraena

Hurbster wrote: »

I mean it's not as if the EU servers have been unreliable and liable to break down at a moments notice for years or anything.

Hyperbole and what issues they do have are, by their own words, not solved by hardware.

blktauna

Tell that to the folks on PCNA in Cyrodil after the NA server was updated.

Tendrielle

Heyas @ZOS_MattFiror (or @ZOS_Kevin ) thanks for the update. Although the news are not really good, you could maybe cheer some PVP crowd up when the recoding could be done earlier. Any news on that, if I may ask?

Jazraena

blktauna wrote: »

Tell that to the folks on PCNA in Cyrodil after the NA server was updated.

I have, in this very thread.

Among other things, I have pointed out the frequent NA complaints about Cyrodiil performance that are still present. Temporary or partial improvements is not the same as a solution.

Let's be clear here - ZOS has done extensive analysis of their problems. We have caught part of that testing on live. Instead of moving hardware replacements forward by a year or two, they instead opted for a far larger, additional investment of rewriting the entire server side code to address this.

They are the one with the actual data, and they are spending more money and effort than you propose, and the sole reason they haven't also replaced the servers by now are global supply issues affecting the entire world, not just them, something they have zero influence over.

Who are you and what data do you have to claim that this was the wrong path to take or that they could have done better without magical prescience?

blktauna

Really, who am I? Nice. I will qualify for you by saying I have been in IT for over 25 years and been responsible for server update and maintenance for businesses of many different sizes.

Many people besides me have been bringing up delayed server maintenance for a few years now. Basic maintenance and addressing technical debt are not things that appear to happen here. No prescience would be needed if routine work had been done.

While I hope they are taking the time and effort to do as you confidently suggest, there's been little empirical evidence over the years to engender that sort of trust. I really hope it is happening because I love this game and want to continue playing for the forseeable future. I've lived through more game shutdowns than I care to think about and do not want this to be among them.

Better late than never for the updates but this global slowdown just highlights how overdue these updates are.

Elsonso

Jazraena wrote: »

blktauna wrote: »

In my work servers are scheduled for replacement every 5 years. These is well over that timeframe. The cloud makes for excellent disaster rollover and that's what my previous company did. It's only on when you need it to be as long as you maintain reasonable data backups and offsite redundancy you're good. Hopefully Microslave makes decent Azure access available to ZOS. They would then be able to scale more quickly and more cost effectively.

So as the saying goes, their bad planning doesn't constitute an emergency on my part... except it is doing and people are pointing it out.

I just hope this shook some folks up and they decide this game is worth paying attention to and allocating recources to, both employee and time.

Your and their environment may not be comparable. In fact, it most likely isn't, and either way, we don't know sufficient details about either hardware setup or maintenance and replacement plans to judge.

Actually, while the decisions were not ours to make for ZOS, I do feel there are some suggestions that could have avoided the current situation... without knowing what the current situation actually is. This is not rocket science. It's just IT.

I will say that I think a lot of people will fail to understand the magnitude of what ZOS is doing here. In the picture from 2014, the PC EU megaserver had 14 full height equipment racks for CPU, storage, power supplies, and network switches that was on about 30 feet of floor space.

Jazraena wrote: »

Hurbster wrote: »

I mean it's not as if the EU servers have been unreliable and liable to break down at a moments notice for years or anything.

Hyperbole and what issues they do have are, by their own words, not solved by hardware.

One thing to keep in mind is that with the new PC NA hardware, they should have a ton of spare parts for the PC EU server until the replacement happens.

Jazraena

blktauna wrote: »

Really, who am I? Nice. I will qualify for you by saying I have been in IT for over 25 years and been responsible for server update and maintenance for businesses of many different sizes.

Many people besides me have been bringing up delayed server maintenance for a few years now. Basic maintenance and addressing technical debt are not things that appear to happen here. No prescience would be needed if routine work had been done.

While I hope they are taking the time and effort to do as you confidently suggest, there's been little empirical evidence over the years to engender that sort of trust. I really hope it is happening because I love this game and want to continue playing for the forseeable future. I've lived through more game shutdowns than I care to think about and do not want this to be among them.

Better late than never for the updates but this global slowdown just highlights how overdue these updates are.

Mate, there has been zero empirical evidence to point the other way. Your IT background is not relevant when you literally have no evidence to back up those accusations to actually use that skillset. On the other hand, we do know they opted for the harder way than just moving replacements forward - or do you presume they would have gone for the rewrite if replacements ahead of schedule would have solved the issue?

ZOS does plenty wrong without us inventing extra wrongs. Stick to those we actually have facts for.

blktauna

Elsonso wrote: »

One thing to keep in mind is that with the new PC NA hardware, they should have a ton of spare parts for the PC EU server until the replacement happens.

LOL awesome spin. :-D

WiseSky

This is amazing news for EU quite happy yo hear

martinhpb16_ESO

Some people talk about work experience on these forums.

I'm going to have a little stab at this too, I'm a project manager.

Often in a project life cycle things change or do not go as anticipated.

Project teams will often react with blame or cyclical discussion about what should have been done.

This type of discussion, although useful for lessons learned for the next project, do not move the current project forward.

I often use the maxim "We are where we are, so the important thing is what do we do now?"

In this instance we do not know the details, we are where we are. The important thing is what is ZOS going to do now to keep the adjusted timeline on track and importantly, what are they going to do to manage the fallout for their stakeholders? - that's us, the customers.

Informing stakeholders is the first step. Keeping them on board and happy takes a bit more work.

So ZOS whatcha got planned to keep us on board for the next seven months?

Elsonso

martinhpb16_ESO wrote: »

The important thing is what is ZOS going to do now to keep the adjusted timeline on track and importantly, what are they going to do to manage the fallout for their stakeholders?

So, if I had to take an educated guess... they will upgrade the remaining 5 megaservers over the next two to three years. Once done with that, there will be no more hardware upgrades for the remaining life of the game.

Hämähäkki

JoHegl wrote: »

Hey Matt, thank you for communicating with us and giving us an update!

Hurbster

Jazraena wrote: »

Hurbster wrote: »

I mean it's not as if the EU servers have been unreliable and liable to break down at a moments notice for years or anything.

Hyperbole and what issues they do have are, by their own words, not solved by hardware.

It's not hyperbole, the pc-eu servers have been terrible for years, way worse than the NA servers. And if ZoS ever bothered to communicate with us properly we would realize that they are a massive company and certainly do not need people championing them all the time, putting other people's opinions and points down in a condescending manner.

Jazraena

Hurbster wrote: »

Jazraena wrote: »

Hurbster wrote: »

I mean it's not as if the EU servers have been unreliable and liable to break down at a moments notice for years or anything.

Hyperbole and what issues they do have are, by their own words, not solved by hardware.

It's not hyperbole, the pc-eu servers have been terrible for years, way worse than the NA servers. And if ZoS ever bothered to communicate with us properly we would realize that they are a massive company and certainly do not need people championing them all the time, putting other people's opinions and points down in a condescending manner.

Then you are playing on a different EU Server than I am.

I am not condescending, I am calling you out for mentioned hyperbole. And championing? I have levelled plentiful critique towards ZOS in particular in the last few weeks. But constant hyperbole and exaggeration do not help actually serious complaints to be taken at face value, and are directly responsible for the kind of dev frustration that ultimately lead to comments like Lamberts 'knee-jerk reactions', misplaced as it was.

Katheriah

The forum always had more topics about PC-EU being down/rolling back/not letting some people login, while it's also the most populated server. Please don't speak like you decide which complaints are serious.

Jazraena

Katheriah wrote: »

The forum always had more topics about PC-EU being down/rolling back/not letting some people login, while it's also the most populated server. Please don't speak like you decide which complaints are serious.

I never disputed EU hadn't had it's share of issues. Did it have more than NA? Debatable. Perhaps more so a few years back; but the fast few years my personal impression is that it has shifted. Certainly maintenance has been much more forgiving towards EU than NA lately. And rollback? Seriously? Are we pretending any ESO server ever had frequent rollbacks?

But 'had it's share of issues' is a far cry from hyperbolic statements like 'EU is terrible', 'EU breaks down at a moment's notice' and similar, which are the ones I dispute, because unless these are miraculously not happening to me, they are no way as common as they are made out to be here.