10 hours maintenance, again

TwiceBornStar · December 2023

Scarefish wrote: »

People are on and on about what time would be appropriate. Less time is the only time that would be appropriate. Fortnite is usually ready to go in 15 minutes, and that game is huge. You could do the patching at any time of day if it's only going to take 15 minutes.

Are you a Software Developer? Have you worked on either ESO or Fortnite? You can't really compare apples to pears, and if you can fix the things ZOS is currently looking into within a timeframe of 15 minutes you'd literally be the AI-God nobody knows about. Seriously, you should lodge your job application now and they'd hire you instantly.

Sure, nobody likes maintenance, and I'm not going to cheer about the fact that it takes 10 hours or longer, because I probably hate maintenance more than you do, but if you really believe ZOS' software developers and technicians are doing this for no good reason you're being a bit funny.

Huge doesn't necessarily equal complex!

wowi70 · December 2023

TheGrace wrote: »

I would love to have an explanation of why they do it during daytime for eu, i mean, im paying eso+ but its gonna be already 2 days that i can’t play for me with the last week maintenance, i dont get why they are not able to run it during nightime

Thats why I unsubscribed from ESO+. At least I keep my money and it is possible to play without ESO+. Nightime is btw a very bad idea. They dont want to get in conflict with their customers in NA.

wowi70 · December 2023

Kisakee wrote: »

TheGrace wrote: »

Is this even possible, 10 hours maintenance only 1 week after this 14h extanded thing last week.
Why this game is the only one to take so long to apply a patch, and is not able to do this the night for eu server?
This start to be really boring

So which time exactly do you think would be "best"? I'm pretty sure you'll get a lot of backlash from people being affected during that time regardless of what time frame you choose.

TheGrace wrote: »

I would love to have an explanation of why they do it during daytime for eu, i mean, im paying eso+ but its gonna be already 2 days that i can’t play for me with the last week maintenance, i dont get why they are not able to run it during nightime

So that leaves you with how much playtime for the rest of the month? For like 33 cents per day? Your subscription means nothing in the grand scheme of things and they could deactivate your account at any given time. You have no power over anything here and as long as they do maintenance to improve the servers i'm glad about it because this means they care.

OK then they can change so every group will be a affected. But it is clearly to see they dont want to deal with it in a fair way.

wowi70 · December 2023

SeaGtGruff wrote: »

The previous extended downtime was for hardware updates, not for software updates.

This week's extended downtime is for software updates, or whatever exactly it is they're doing for the Cyrodiil test.

For Cyrodiil?! LOL if it is at least for something that is important to majority ROFL

wowi70 · December 2023

woe wrote: »

They can't appease every single person in the world and no matter what time they decide to do something it will cover someone's time zone.

Then change so everyone will get a maintenance at their preferred playing time. But it is always at the same time. That is everthing but fair!

Bethgael · December 2023

Prime evening playing time in Australia, as the reset happens. Every time. Stop whining.

Aislinna · December 2023

wowi70 wrote: »

Kisakee wrote: »

TheGrace wrote: »

Is this even possible, 10 hours maintenance only 1 week after this 14h extanded thing last week.
Why this game is the only one to take so long to apply a patch, and is not able to do this the night for eu server?
This start to be really boring

So which time exactly do you think would be "best"? I'm pretty sure you'll get a lot of backlash from people being affected during that time regardless of what time frame you choose.

TheGrace wrote: »

I would love to have an explanation of why they do it during daytime for eu, i mean, im paying eso+ but its gonna be already 2 days that i can’t play for me with the last week maintenance, i dont get why they are not able to run it during nightime

So that leaves you with how much playtime for the rest of the month? For like 33 cents per day? Your subscription means nothing in the grand scheme of things and they could deactivate your account at any given time. You have no power over anything here and as long as they do maintenance to improve the servers i'm glad about it because this means they care.

OK then they can change so every group will be a affected. But it is clearly to see they dont want to deal with it in a fair way.

wowi70 wrote: »

woe wrote: »

They can't appease every single person in the world and no matter what time they decide to do something it will cover someone's time zone.

Then change so everyone will get a maintenance at their preferred playing time. But it is always at the same time. That is everthing but fair!

You are right, there is no fairness from your perspective and doubtfully ever will be. ZOS evaluates what work needs to be done and the appropriately skilled employees say "we need 10 hours", so they get 10 hours. ZOS then schedules those 10 hours based on the employee's timezone and availability, trying to impact the least number of players as possible, but players will be impacted and employees will be accommodated.

wowi70 · December 2023

Bethgael wrote: »

Prime evening playing time in Australia, as the reset happens. Every time. Stop whining.

Yeah then why not changing it so that NA Market has server downtime from 9am to 7pm?

Jaraal · December 2023

pklemming wrote: »

I am curious as to why a patch that has gone through QA, takes 10 hours to apply.

Do you have any proof that the patches go through QA? It seems like a lot of them introduce new bugs.

Lolinda · December 2023

After some coping i am actually glad, i finally am forced to get some life and do something nice for myself other than eso

Hotdog_23 · December 2023

If it was only 10 hours. I expect more and am pretty sure I will not be disappointed.

Stay safe

Maitsukas · December 2023

I prefer having maintenances, that ensure a stable gameplay experience, than no maintenances at all.

moo_2021 · December 2023

Can't they arrange different dates for EU and US servers? Now I'm stuck, wondering whether to buy Cyberpunk 2077

Chilly-McFreeze · December 2023

moo_2021 wrote: »

Can't they arrange different dates for EU and US servers? Now I'm stuck, wondering whether to buy Cyberpunk 2077

IIrc it used to be different times for EU and NA servers in the past.

Scarefish · December 2023

TwiceBornStar wrote: »

Scarefish wrote: »

People are on and on about what time would be appropriate. Less time is the only time that would be appropriate. Fortnite is usually ready to go in 15 minutes, and that game is huge. You could do the patching at any time of day if it's only going to take 15 minutes.

Are you a Software Developer? Have you worked on either ESO or Fortnite? You can't really compare apples to pears, and if you can fix the things ZOS is currently looking into within a timeframe of 15 minutes you'd literally be the AI-God nobody knows about. Seriously, you should lodge your job application now and they'd hire you instantly.

Sure, nobody likes maintenance, and I'm not going to cheer about the fact that it takes 10 hours or longer, because I probably hate maintenance more than you do, but if you really believe ZOS' software developers and technicians are doing this for no good reason you're being a bit funny.

Huge doesn't necessarily equal complex!

A large amount of time and effort put into a project also doesn't equate to quality. Of course they do these updates for reasons, but these reasons are usually simply to add more things in rather than fix the things which they put there. I recall M'aiq the Liar even saying such in one of the games; something about not understanding why someone would want to repair an old thing and that he prefers to move on to the next new thing instead.

barney2525 · December 2023

OtarTheMad wrote: »

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/648108/cyrodiil-population-cap-testing/p1

Pretty sure this is why.

I'm missing the logic between this link - which is a test where players Need to be IN game and playing, and the length of time a maintenance takes, when players are Not playing the game. Especially since they can run their multiple tests without being offline and can adjust their evaluations without stopping the server.

imrilaoi · December 2023

Vrienda wrote: »

I've never played an MMO with this much downtime, It's absurd.

Is this your first major MMO?
I've played (starting year until I no longer played): Asheron's Call (1999 - 2003), EverQuest 1 (1999 - 2005), Asheron's Call2 (2002 - 2003), EverQuest 2 (2004 - 2016), World of Warcraft (2004 - ?), FFXIV (2010 - 2012, 2019-2020) Elder Scrolls Online (2014/2015 - ?), plus GW2 and a handful of others for a few months - I usually end up playing two MMO's during the same time periods.

All of them have had this much downtime at different periods in their history. WoW also has weekly downtime, plus frequent 6h+ downtimes for other things. And Akatosh forbid they have an actual content patch, because those frequently have the game down for 10+ hours - like they did about a month ago. The servers were down for ~11 hours for patch 10.2

For me (CST), that was the entire day - ~7 AM until ~6 PM.

FFXIV? I think most people who play FFXIV know to never, ever take days off for patches. Patch days downtime typically lasts 22 - 24 hours - and thats whats *scheduled*. Its longer if anything goes wrong.

Scarefish wrote: »

People are on and on about what time would be appropriate. Less time is the only time that would be appropriate. Fortnite is usually ready to go in 15 minutes, and that game is huge. You could do the patching at any time of day if it's only going to take 15 minutes.

ESO's downtime isn't anything absurd or excessive. We usually don't see multiple extended maintenance like this, as you can see in the Maintenance Announcement forum, but these are just par for the course for any MMO with actual content - like, really, who compares Fortnite to an RPG? That game isn't "huge", it just has a large playerbase and an absurd amount of cosmetics.
Its what, a third of the size of ESO on disk? IIRC it was less than 50GB when my oldest kid asked if he could play it. ESO is 126GB with thousands upon thousands of lines of dialogue, an older code base, and a lot more to the game than a PvP mode, a PvZombies mode and a "Decorate Me" island.

ZharaX · December 2023

I hope they do address some of the latency issues, not LAG-wise, but the minute space between 'actions'

I have had issues after implementation of multithreading...
a. Skills activating ms after press
b. Sounds being ms late
c. Enemys exploding ms after death
d. Unable to interupt enemys
e. Late mount spawn/runnings

And the list could go on

So hopefully a Skooma Fix for these "Not unplayable", but annoyable bügs

daim · December 2023

Cool. National holiday, again. ESO is down, again. I almost feel like I'm encouraged to not play.

licenturion · December 2023

I had a major LOL moment when I opened the launcher during my lunch break

The PVP dudes constantly complaining they never do anything for them but the past weeks every update and days of downtime is targeted at those players; better hardware, better networking, more players in Cyro, playtests etc. So I am happy for them they have something to look forward to.

Luckily I play a bunch of other stuff as well so downtime isn't the end of the world for me though.

ZharaX · December 2023

licenturion wrote: »

I had a major LOL moment when I opened the launcher during my lunch break

The PVP dudes constantly complaining they never do anything for them but the past weeks every update and days of downtime is targeted at those players; better hardware, better networking, more players in Cyro, playtests etc.

Luckily I play a bunch of other stuff as well so downtime isn't the end of the world for me though.

Though we still need "The Fix"

Sylosi · December 2023

imrilaoi wrote: »

...plus GW2 and a handful of others for a few months...

Are you sure you played GW2? Because if you had you would know it barely has any downtime, because it effectively has rolling updates like virtually every other modern service does.

There is no weekly maintenance downtime in GW2, just like Google does not go down for weekly maintenance. When there is a patch for content, balance, etc, you get a message in game saying there is a new patch and you have 2 hours to log out, so you log out any time you want in those two hours and then spend 2 minutes waiting for the client to patch and you are done, back to the game.

In 12 years there has been less downtime in GW2 than you get in ESO in 3 months, GW2 has only had downtime measured in hours on a handful of occasions for exceptional changes (hardware upgrade, data center going down, fundamental change to the software, etc).

Asheron's Call, Everquest, even WoW can all be excused for not having for having downtime as they were created back when the vast majority of software services had regular downtime, ESO on the other hand was released 2 years after GW2.

AzuraFan · December 2023

Sylosi wrote: »

Are you sure you played GW2? Because if you had you would know it barely has any downtime, because it effectively has rolling updates like virtually every other modern service does.

I was going to call BS on that too. GW2 is the gold standard for patches and such. They figured it out. For ESO, I can only speculate that the code/backend/infrastructure/database/something was architected so badly that they can't apply a patch without it taking hours and hours. Oh well, there are other things to do.

Elyu · December 2023

flubber77 wrote: »

TheGrace wrote: »

I would love to have an explanation of why they do it during daytime for eu, i mean, im paying eso+ but its gonna be already 2 days that i can’t play for me with the last week maintenance, i dont get why they are not able to run it during nightime

You think eve or night players did not complained when server went down before? this has changed over the years from late evening to night and now mornings, no matter what time it is there will always be at the cost of players time and from what i see for the pvp part, this time is the least playerbase online on EU server, i guess this apply for pve also even a bit more players do pve.

Don't think the downtime quite matches up with lowest population, at least on PC EU.

Lowest population would be around 11pm GMT - 4pm GMT next day, at least from my experience, as majority of players seem to work 9-5 jobs.

But maybe ZOS has player data that says otherwise, who knows.

centime · December 2023

imrilaoi wrote: »

Vrienda wrote: »

I've never played an MMO with this much downtime, It's absurd.

Is this your first major MMO?
I've played (starting year until I no longer played): Asheron's Call (1999 - 2003), EverQuest 1 (1999 - 2005), Asheron's Call2 (2002 - 2003), EverQuest 2 (2004 - 2016), World of Warcraft (2004 - ?), FFXIV (2010 - 2012, 2019-2020) Elder Scrolls Online (2014/2015 - ?), plus GW2 and a handful of others for a few months - I usually end up playing two MMO's during the same time periods.

All of them have had this much downtime at different periods in their history. WoW also has weekly downtime, plus frequent 6h+ downtimes for other things. And Akatosh forbid they have an actual content patch, because those frequently have the game down for 10+ hours - like they did about a month ago. The servers were down for ~11 hours for patch 10.2 For me (CST), that was the entire day - ~7 AM until ~6 PM.

FFXIV? I think most people who play FFXIV know to never, ever take days off for patches. Patch days downtime typically lasts 22 - 24 hours - and thats whats *scheduled*. Its longer if anything goes wrong.

Scarefish wrote: »

People are on and on about what time would be appropriate. Less time is the only time that would be appropriate. Fortnite is usually ready to go in 15 minutes, and that game is huge. You could do the patching at any time of day if it's only going to take 15 minutes.

ESO's downtime isn't anything absurd or excessive. We usually don't see multiple extended maintenance like this, as you can see in the Maintenance Announcement forum, but these are just par for the course for any MMO with actual content - like, really, who compares Fortnite to an RPG? That game isn't "huge", it just has a large playerbase and an absurd amount of cosmetics.
Its what, a third of the size of ESO on disk? IIRC it was less than 50GB when my oldest kid asked if he could play it. ESO is 126GB with thousands upon thousands of lines of dialogue, an older code base, and a lot more to the game than a PvP mode, a PvZombies mode and a "Decorate Me" island.

Very well said, imrilaoi. I had to laugh when they said that ESO's maintenance could be as short as Fortnight's. Though I have never played the latter I am familiar with the game and it, as you say, is much smaller and less complex than ESO. Much different maintenance requirements.

ZOS doesn't do maintenance for the fun of it; they do it because it is necessary. The time of day it is done will always be unfortunate for someone, and I am sure they strive to balance how it affects players and employees alike. They simply cannot favor everyone. I'm not saying we have to like maintenance, just that we should understand that it is a part of the game, done for specific and necessary reasons, and the length of time isn't decided on a whim.

Sorced · December 2023

imrilaoi wrote: »

Vrienda wrote: »

I've never played an MMO with this much downtime, It's absurd.

Is this your first major MMO?

I've literally been playing MMOs for 20 years, and yes, ESO's maintenances are excessive. There's a lot of effort to make up excuses and reasons here in this thread, but no, it is not normal for a big MMO to need this much maintenance, and there is no rational reason to to try normalize it or to conceive of creative reasons for why ESO might need it. Apparently yes, they need a lot maintenance, and no, they don't want to prioritize the maintenance times in a more fair way. That's all we know. And it is most definitely an unusual amount of maintenance. 10+ hours happens in other games, but ESO has very extended maintenances on a weekly schedule, and that's not even accounting for the frequent extended unscheduled maintenances.

centime · December 2023

Sorced wrote: »

imrilaoi wrote: »

Vrienda wrote: »

I've never played an MMO with this much downtime, It's absurd.

Is this your first major MMO?

10+ hours happens in other games, but ESO has very extended maintenances on a weekly schedule, and that's not even accounting for the frequent extended unscheduled maintenances.

When have they done "extended maintenances on a weekly schedule"?

jaws343 · December 2023

Sorced wrote: »

imrilaoi wrote: »

Vrienda wrote: »

I've never played an MMO with this much downtime, It's absurd.

Is this your first major MMO?

I've literally been playing MMOs for 20 years, and yes, ESO's maintenances are excessive. There's a lot of effort to make up excuses and reasons here in this thread, but no, it is not normal for a big MMO to need this much maintenance, and there is no rational reason to to try normalize it or to conceive of creative reasons for why ESO might need it. Apparently yes, they need a lot maintenance, and no, they don't want to prioritize the maintenance times in a more fair way. That's all we know. And it is most definitely an unusual amount of maintenance. 10+ hours happens in other games, but ESO has very extended maintenances on a weekly schedule, and that's not even accounting for the frequent extended unscheduled maintenances.

"more fair way"

Because nothing is more fair than forcing employees to work odd night hours to appease a subset of a playerbase of an entertainment product.

I think, not forcing employees to work even earlier in the night is literally more fair.

imrilaoi · December 2023

Sorced wrote: »

imrilaoi wrote: »

Vrienda wrote: »

I've never played an MMO with this much downtime, It's absurd.

Is this your first major MMO?

I've literally been playing MMOs for 20 years, and yes, ESO's maintenances are excessive. There's a lot of effort to make up excuses and reasons here in this thread, but no, it is not normal for a big MMO to need this much maintenance, and there is no rational reason to to try normalize it or to conceive of creative reasons for why ESO might need it. Apparently yes, they need a lot maintenance, and no, they don't want to prioritize the maintenance times in a more fair way. That's all we know. And it is most definitely an unusual amount of maintenance. 10+ hours happens in other games, but ESO has very extended maintenances on a weekly schedule, and that's not even accounting for the frequent extended unscheduled maintenances.

Its not normal, yet... nearly every major MMO that hasn't been put on maintenance mode is doing it. FFXIV might be the only one that doesn't do it weekly. EVE does it daily.

Sluggy · December 2023

barney2525 wrote: »

OtarTheMad wrote: »

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/648108/cyrodiil-population-cap-testing/p1

Pretty sure this is why.

I'm missing the logic between this link - which is a test where players Need to be IN game and playing, and the length of time a maintenance takes, when players are Not playing the game. Especially since they can run their multiple tests without being offline and can adjust their evaluations without stopping the server.

The implication is that they are making some changes to the servers. More than likely they changing the configuration for the population controls as well as installing several new tools to help collect telemetry for later analysis (one would hope anyway). There could be any other number of aspects involved in the backend that are part of the long-term multi threading updates that have been deeply tied to all of this as well. These tests aren't magic. They require code and data and tooling which might not currently be available to the live servers until they are installed, hence the maintenance.