Recent Queue Times & Login Issues

ZOS_GinaBruno

Hi everyone,

We’d like to discuss the issues many of you experienced on the PC NA and EU megaservers over the weekend, including the exceptionally long queue times and Error 103 messages.

While many were in the game and playing, a significant number were essentially "stuck" in queue with far higher queue times than expected. After a few hours of investigation, we identified the problem which boiled down to a backend system being in a bad state and needed to be restarted. However, due to there being so many players in queue when it was restarted, it took a long time to get everyone through the queue and into the game.

We recognize that we totally dropped the ball on communicating any of this to you all, and for this, we apologize. We are already discussing ways to improve internal communications in the future to help mitigate this from recurring.

That being said, with so many new players in the game right now, some brief queue times may be expected. However, if you are continuing to run into any errors since Sunday when trying to log into the game (such as Error 103), please submit a Support ticket so we can help you troubleshoot. In your ticket, be sure to include the following information:

• Which server you are trying to log into
• What region (country) you are logging in from
• Your internet service provider
• Which error message you are getting, if any
• The date and time you began experiencing the issue or error

Again, apologies for not keeping everyone updated and thanks as always for your continued support and understanding.

heinousmoz

Thank you Gina. I may have been one of the people complaining over the weekend but as always all I ever want is some communincation on the issues we're experiencing and an update,

TaSheen

Thanks Gina. Glad it seems NOT to have been a DDOS....

DragonRacer

Would that have affected consoles experiencing some (very short, but unusual for us to see) login queues and “internal errors” with connecting at all? Or chalk that up to just incredible weekend event traffic?

We saw it right before and after The Big Crash on Friday, Saturday intermittently, and was particularly bad on Sunday when PC was going through the absolute dregs on their side, and seems resolved today.

aetherix8

Thank you for this update. As much as it was frustrating to get a 1h long queue resulting in error 108 then another queue but this time 2h long, the really disturbing aspect of yesterday afternoon was the total lack of communications. I've been playing for some time now, and often when I run into login issues, I check the forums. I've witnessed some server crashes etc over the years but there was always also some official acknowledgment like a banner, and it was very reassuring. The total silence from devs made me freak out more than the 3 hours it took to log in.
I'm happy to know both queues and communication are on the dashboard.

MachineGod

The line "discussing ways to improve internal communications" has been repeatedly said over and over again over the years. Keep in mind I'm not holding Gina responsible here its just that internally, at some point, it sounds like something will have to drastically change.

I know I'm just a single player but please ZOS if you read this as feedback It's completely normal in the IT service industry to say "we are still working on this / aware" and provide small updates to the customer even if you don't have the answers right away. Any communication is better than nothing so don't overcomplicate it. Then after the fact of a disruption just post the findings like above. I think ESO has players that value their time on the game and an MMO is a big beast to keep running with all the various systems I know. Players have the capability of understanding so don't treat them like they do not. You might be surprised.

Alinhbo_Tyaka

MachineGod wrote: »

The line "discussing ways to improve internal communications" has been repeatedly said over and over again over the years. Keep in mind I'm not holding Gina responsible here its just that internally, at some point, it sounds like something will have to drastically change.

I know I'm just a single player but please ZOS if you read this as feedback It's completely normal in the IT service industry to say "we are still working on this / aware" and provide small updates to the customer even if you don't have the answers right away. Any communication is better than nothing so don't overcomplicate it. Then after the fact of a disruption just post the findings like above. I think ESO has players that value their time on the game and an MMO is a big beast to keep running with all the various systems I know. Players have the capability of understanding so don't treat them like they do not. You might be surprised.

Or once it was known that a backend system needed to be restarted say it was restarted and that it will take some time for the queues to return to normal. This would let the players know the problem causing the was resolved and was in process of cleaning itself up.

Jaimeh

MachineGod wrote: »

The line "discussing ways to improve internal communications" has been repeatedly said over and over again over the years. Keep in mind I'm not holding Gina responsible here its just that internally, at some point, it sounds like something will have to drastically change.

Yes, they've acknowledged the fact that their communication management is lacking, have promised to improve, and have asked for ways in which they can improve far too many times. ESO is a massive game yet in many ways it seems like its run by a small company with few resources.

Xandreia_

Not to be rude but, there is only so many times you can say "we are working on improving communication" you have been working on it for years and it's still incredibly bad.

Every time something goes wrong we get the same old "we are working on it" or "we will do better" yet communication never improves.

Your customers are always left sitting and waiting for the same copy pasta apology posts.

Lebkuchen

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

[...] We are already discussing ways to improve [...]

Makes me feel a lot better, thank you so much!

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

[...] thanks as always for your continued support and understanding.

No problem, you all deserve it!
I feel great now. I am already looking forward to next weekend when everything will be fine...

DinoZavr

Thank you for the input, Gina

when forum is overloaded with "let me play!" whines, but Zenimax remains silent (tm) - this is truly frustrating.

Could you, please, do players a favour, and add some insight and clarification on Crowns <-> Gold exchange
it seems Support people went rather rough. I have re-read TOS about "virtual goods" and failed to see where
is the violation when a fellow-player gifts me a Crown Store item (like Vvardwark mount) and i, in response,
sincerely gift them some gold. Though, players get banned for that and we SEVERELY need your wise clarification.
Please. Pretty please, @ZOS_GinaBruno

relevant discussion:
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/639098/sending-gold-for-crowns-is-now-a-tos-violation-according-to-customer-support

Thank you for your awesomness, Gina
and Kevin became a genuine Forum demi-god due to amount of communication work he carries
Be like Kevin !

tincanman

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

....
We recognize that we totally dropped the ball on communicating any of this to you all, and for this, we apologize. We are already discussing ways to improve internal communications in the future to help mitigate this from recurring. ....

Seen this so many times before and nothing changes.

The forum was in meltdown over the weekend because this is the only place we can 'effectively' give/receive feedback. And we were ignored. Again.

No more future faking, please. It's beyond disrespectful to us, your loyal and 'patient' customers and, if you're honest, yourselves, too.

Monkeywithtacos

As others have stated, some communication during the issue would have gone a long way to preventing much of the anger and frustration people were experiencing, and sadly this is only one of many times this type of "radio silence" has happened.

That said, we appreciate the acknowledgement, though we hope it will come much more quickly in the future. Thank you.

Lumenn

I'm going to have to tip my hat to the moderators here. Many of us have run afoul of policy from time to time but it's GOT to be hard watching the whole front page of the forums blow up for DAYS on an issue, frantically sending emails and possibly phone calls(I'm assuming) and not even be able to tell us they've relayed the situation upstairs.

They could have shut EVERYTHING down but kept moderation to a few posts here and there. I think they themselves handled it well.

Ragnarok0130

I genuinely appreciate the update Gina, but I've honestly lost count at how many times ZoS has apologized for poor to no communication, have sworn to do better, and then returned to business as usual with no communication since 2014. It feels like the Community is being gaslighted about the communication issue at this point. Can you get the dev team address improving communication with a POAM in a future live stream to show some commitment behind the improvement?

I don't envy your forum staff's position during times like this, just know that all of the angst and frustration on the forums is direct at the situation and lack of communication instead of personnel.

mattaeus01b16_ESO

Thanks for the info!

ghost_bg_ESO

DragonRacer wrote: »

Would that have affected consoles experiencing some (very short, but unusual for us to see) login queues and “internal errors” with connecting at all? Or chalk that up to just incredible weekend event traffic?

We saw it right before and after The Big Crash on Friday, Saturday intermittently, and was particularly bad on Sunday when PC was going through the absolute dregs on their side, and seems resolved today.

my xbox was dead for couple of hours at saturday and steam and not steam was fine
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/7925150#Comment_7925150

and later it started with pc...

danno8

DragonRacer wrote: »

Would that have affected consoles experiencing some (very short, but unusual for us to see) login queues and “internal errors” with connecting at all? Or chalk that up to just incredible weekend event traffic?

We saw it right before and after The Big Crash on Friday, Saturday intermittently, and was particularly bad on Sunday when PC was going through the absolute dregs on their side, and seems resolved today.

I don't know this, but it is possible that all platforms connect through the same login server for authentication on ZoS side.

After all the process for creating a new ESO account is the same on all platforms, it's just that your account on consoles is then linked to your console user ID.

The authentication server would then simply connect you to the appropriate mega-sever after.

Lord_Graas

We identified the problem which boiled down to a backend system being in a bad state and needed to be restarted.Due to there being so many players in queue when it was restarted, it took a long time to get everyone through the queue and into the game.

I don't believe. Sorry but it looks like an excuse for fools.

Elsonso

Jaimeh wrote: »

MachineGod wrote: »

The line "discussing ways to improve internal communications" has been repeatedly said over and over again over the years. Keep in mind I'm not holding Gina responsible here its just that internally, at some point, it sounds like something will have to drastically change.

Yes, they've acknowledged the fact that their communication management is lacking, have promised to improve, and have asked for ways in which they can improve far too many times. ESO is a massive game yet in many ways it seems like its run by a small company with few resources.

They do seem to talk about it more effectively than they take action on it.

Yes, Kevin has helped greatly. Need to order a pallet of Kevins, please.

JoeCapricorn

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

We recognize that we totally dropped the ball on communicating any of this to you all, and for this, we apologize. We are already discussing ways to improve internal communications in the future to help mitigate this from recurring.

I think the main issue with this incident is that in the past when something of such magnitude was occurring, there would be a red-banded banner saying that you were aware of it - potentially with a thread containing further updates or information.

Perhaps give forum mods the ability to alert you guys of community stress, if they haven't got that ability already. By the time I posted the Dragon Ball meme there were three full pages of threads mostly about the queue times.

I've seen a few users say that an extension of the Zenithar event might be in order, as the issues compounded between Friday and Sunday may have caused some to miss out on one or two days of the event.

spartaxoxo

DragonRacer wrote: »

Would that have affected consoles experiencing some (very short, but unusual for us to see) login queues and “internal errors” with connecting at all? Or chalk that up to just incredible weekend event traffic?

We saw it right before and after The Big Crash on Friday, Saturday intermittently, and was particularly bad on Sunday when PC was going through the absolute dregs on their side, and seems resolved today.

This. I didn't experience very long queues but I did have to queue up each time I logged in on PS5.

I would also experience lag spikes and the game outright crashed at some point this weekend.

wilykcat

it was only a hardware problem and they fixed it. They admitted the mistake. It's ok. Now let's play eso and have a good time 😀.

AnduinTryggva

Thanks from me too.

Not your fault but if you discuss the communication part of this I would like to pass the following personal feedback:
I understand that while your technicians and experts try to identify and resolve the issue ZOS cannot give details.
I understand that mods like you cannot put up a flag or banner without clear consent from the management.
But maybe next time ZOS team can elaborate a process paper that authorizes you in case of incident declaration at least to acknowledge by a red banner that ZOS is aware of the problem or any other text that appears appropriate to ZOS. I think something - even a very general declaration - could have prevented much concern and would not have led the fire to get too high.

disintegr8

On PS4 I only got very short (10 seconds or less) queues but being placed in a queue was something new for me. The "This may be an unusually long load time" after that was definitely not new.

FayJolyn

Hi Gina,

Thanks for apologizing for the lack of communication from the team. I was really annoyed over the weekend, but I appreciate it regardless that you guys came out with this post. I just really wanted to add that freezing up and not communicating is really not the best approach when you have a mob of virtual pitchforks flooding in everywhere. Players get sour and start venting here and elsewhere, and I imagine the support staff got a buttload of extra work on their hands to even though their hands where probs also tied or they also had no info. I think for both sides it was a frustrating weekend to say the least.
But I'm glad the login issues are resolved for now.

Ratzkifal

What exactly is "improving communication" to ZOS? Because you've been trying to improve communication for about as long as you've been trying to fix performance. It hasn't exactly gotten any better. Not on our end anyway. You axed the class rep system without really giving us a replacement, the forum feels like we are just shouting into the void.

Kisakee

Not gonna lie i don't believe a single word of that explanation.

A massive DDOS attack is still way more believable but i'm not an expert. If anything is going wrong just tell us, we're not idiots and can understand if things are going downhill for whatever reason. Just acknowledging that something bad is going on would probably have stopped so much of this discontent and i just don't want to accept that you're going with "Even bad publicitity is good publicity".

Also if you keep going with those empty "We're bad at communication and will do better" promises you will anger even more people. Again we're not dumb but keeping radio silence for multiple days and coming up with such a lame excuse is not going to cut it. You may have lost more trust with this move than over the whole incident itself.

I'm not going to stop playing or killing my subscription or any other nonsense fake claims but my faith in you on handling future occurences has (again) been severely damaged. Losing loyal customers / players over time with such a bad behaviour isn't good for any company, you can do better.

KappaKid83

There is not a single person who has played this game for any period of time that expects anything other than zero communication from the Dev team and community managers. Then you get a long post about how they need to be better and inevitably nothing ever changes but forum apologists say "OMG THANK YOU SO MUCH, YOU'RE THE BEST GINA!"

Here is a better idea for all of you. Report the company to the BBB, get refunds for product that you have bought but haven't even come close to being delivered on to it's potential, uninstall and then play a different game.

wilykcat

I'm still gonna play eso.

DemonicGoat

Kisakee wrote: »

I'm not going to stop playing or killing my subscription or any other nonsense fake claims but my faith in you on handling future occurences has (again) been severely damaged. Losing loyal customers / players over time with such a bad behaviour isn't good for any company, you can do better.

I think if they could do better they would. Its time to accept that this team cannot or will not. They trot out the same standard corporate doublespeak again and again with no indication that anything will change and a complete lack of transparency into any process that might facilitate that.... This isnt a young inexperienced dev team, that they havent learned these very basic lessons is troubling and telling.

Eventually all these broken promises and poor service will catch up to them,.. Maybe not for ESO (as its become a test bed for new hires and practically sunset)but for whatever product the devs/studio foists upon us next surely.