Honest Question that hasn't had a decent answer

Deronius

I see lots of posts about angry players dealing with downtime. The responses to them are 'look at the schedule', 'it's needed', and the useless 'If you don't like it go play something else'. I've posed this question before, but why can't ESO patch in place. I know it it's possible. There is a game with a multi-million user player base that has little downtime because they patch in place. They add content, fix quests, reset things that need resetting all while users are playing the game. The worst that happens is you have to re-log to get the updated game version. Why isn't patching in place for ESO a possibility? Apologists, please don't respond with this is a different game. We're talking server technologies. Not game mechanics. I think accepting that there will just be downtime with all MMOs lets game makers off the hook from considering alternate ways to handle maintenance. There are better ways to do this so why aren't you?

nerevarine1138

What's the game you're referring to?

WoW has been running for a decade. It has the largest playerbase of any MMO on the market. It has weekly maintenance.

Altheina

I maybe mistaken but I think GW2 has that nice feature where patches are implemented without really having server downtime and there will be system prompt to inform players to restart the game.

I think is a nice feature which I hope to see it in TESO too but of course there maybe some restrictions that we know nothing about...

Eisenhovver

Weekly maintenance is acceptable I think. Twice a week for up to 14 hours is not acceptable. I am glad that they are working to fix the game but to take up a whole half day (on good Friday especially when most ppl are off work) is just ridiculous. And they give very little warning as well. Very disappointed when I woke up and was told I couldn't play for another 4-6 hours at least.

nerevarine1138

Eisenhovver wrote: »

Weekly maintenance is acceptable I think. Twice a week for up to 14 hours is not acceptable. I am glad that they are working to fix the game but to take up a whole half day (on good Friday especially when most ppl are off work) is just ridiculous. And they give very little warning as well. Very disappointed when I woke up and was told I couldn't play for another 4-6 hours at least.

Tuesday's maintenance went over; last week's didn't. Aren't selective memories fun?

And even if you think that most people aren't working on Friday morning, there is no version of a regular adult day where 4 hours is "a whole half day".

Aett_Thorn

I've played games with patching in place, and it would tend to cause horrible lag and loading times for me and many other players, especially when transitioning to new zones, where you had to download a ton of various patches. You could be in the middle of combat, and all of a sudden - BAM! - instant lag while you downloaded a patch to the zone you were in.

I'd much rather have a single patch in a week, and we will get there with this game. Every MMO I've played has had more maintenance in the first few months than they have later on, just because the game is new and needs a few more fixes. Things will even out over time.

While I definitely disagree with the Friday maintenance (Tuesday-Thursday would be fine), I understand why it needs to happen and prefer the way they are doing it to patching in place.

Lalai

Eisenhovver wrote: »

Weekly maintenance is acceptable I think. Twice a week for up to 14 hours is not acceptable. I am glad that they are working to fix the game but to take up a whole half day (on good Friday especially when most ppl are off work) is just ridiculous. And they give very little warning as well. Very disappointed when I woke up and was told I couldn't play for another 4-6 hours at least.

For a launch title.. two maintenances a week is perfectly acceptable. Especially when they total (on average) less than half a day.

Sihnfahl

silenthunter29 wrote: »

I think is a nice feature which I hope to see it in TESO too but of course there maybe some restrictions that we know nothing about...

One of the main problems ESO has is a mix between the phasing and the 'staging' of various quests.

I would assume that a few of those staging quests create objects that have their own thread for processing on the server. Unless their thread management is pretty good, they probably have to reset the main server thread to clear out the running subthreads. But that means kicking everyone out of the area because there's no server thread to handle client requests, nor do they want new threads being created until the fix is in.

I doubt they're handling it as a separate process.

Raice

I've been playing MMO's since 2003. Since then, I've played only 2 games that had patching in place: GW and GW2.

Since both of those games are more or less candy-land adventure MMO's that have zero substance to them, I guess I would say that... yeah... patching in place is probably feasible.

But, really, like I said - I've been playing MMO's since 2003. Eleven years I've had to deal with maintenance, and to me... it simply isn't a big deal. Honestly, I don't know why anyone would have a big deal with it.

When the guy who fixes your AC unit comes over - do you know what the first thing he does is?

He shuts it down.

... And why does he shut it down?

.... For maintenance...

moxom

i have no problem with game going down. i just wish they wouldnt do it from the morning to early afternoon. would be great if they would during the night. wishful thinking

nerevarine1138

moxom wrote: »

i have no problem with game going down. i just wish they wouldnt do it from the morning to early afternoon. would be great if they would during the night. wishful thinking

Yes, it is wishful.

Most people play at night. Most people work during the day.

Elsonso

There are reasons that immediately come to mind that would require taking down the server.

One is to do database management.

Depending on what they need to do, they may need to take one or more of the databases offline. If the database software needs to clean itself up, it may require that the database be turned off in order to prevent updates while the database application is working. If they need to add a "field" to the database to store new data, they may have to take the database offline in order to add that information and prime the data. Databases can be huge and I expect that ESO will not be an exception. It can take hours to run a job across a database.

Another reason to take the server down is to replace applications that are in memory. ESO is nothing more than a server application that interacts with back-end databases. Just like any application, if you want to change it you need to unload it from memory and restart it.

A third reason would be to do a 'clearing of the throat'. I think that this is what Blizzard is doing on most Tuesdays when they do a "rolling restart" of their WoW servers. They shut everything down, force in-memory data to write to storage, then restart.

Dalexx

Deronius wrote: »

Why isn't patching in place for ESO a possibility? Apologists, please don't respond with this is a different game. We're talking server technologies. Not game mechanics.

I think the technical answer to your question is, it is a design decision they made with the database. Some Operating Systems can have a lot of patches applied and don't require a reboot, other OSes like Windows, will pretty much require a reboot for every patch you put on.

ZOS would have to explain why they went the direction they did and what it offers versus going with a system that allows a in place upgrade. It's possible that in 6 months from now, we might not even have outages on maintenance day.

Also, just remember, for all the bugs we solve today, we make it a better game for our console masters. So they get a near perfect launch once the PC gamers work out all the bugs.

Aznoxus

I know your frustration, but it coming from someone just as irritated as you, it really is necessary.

My days off I spend at home with my newborn daughter, so there's not really too much I can do. My off days are generally falling on some kind of maintenance days as well. Dealing with server maintenance is just something we have to put up with for now. I'm sure maintenance will become less time consuming once they get their mega server under control, and figure out the most time efficient way to deal with pushing patches to clients.

The good Friday thing has nothing to do with any of it. It's a religious holiday that a lot of people don't give two *** about, and contrary to popular belief, i'm pretty sure most people actually work today anyway.

Coggage

What is this game of which you speak, OP? Are you being coy?

I couldn't care less when they schedule maintenance. It's always peak time somewhere on the planet, and if it happens to be my peak time I just do something else.

dolmen

@Deronius, honestly I don't think anyone else can really answer the question other than ZOS. All we can do is speculate based on our opinions and backgrounds etc.

I wish they would or could do as GW2 does. I'm happy enough that there is a constant maintenance going on. The downtime is frustrating at times, I would like to keep playing, but that isn't the case so I just have accept it for now and hope and advocate for a change in the future.

No reason to not keep asking: Why?

Edit: Fixed my bad Engrish.

kyuven

If it's something only GW1 and GW2 do, which are the only games I've seen do it as well, then it's entirely possible there's a patent or trademark on the software or whatever that does it.
Or, if there isn't and that's the most ridiculous load of BS ever said (I'm not a programmer nor am I a copyright attorney, nor do I claim to be) it could also be that they're simply not sharing how to do it, or that the technique is only practical if you build your system(s) around it.

Ulvich

nerevarine1138 wrote: »

What's the game you're referring to?

WoW has been running for a decade. It has the largest playerbase of any MMO on the market. It has weekly maintenance.

Yep, every Tuesday. And it's funny that on every Tuesday people still go to the forums and complain about it. And it has been going on since launch.

RaZaddha

If you want to compare technologies, you need to give the name of the game you mention and we also need insiders from both these games to explain the technologies, anything else is just speculation.

Deronius

GW2. Phasing servers have been around for awhile. Check their downtime statistics.

temjiu

Plus,

If they're using a virtual server technology (sounds allot like they are), then they may have multiple physical chassis connected together being ran by a small group of virtual management servers. each "thread" that players run on could be its own virtual Node...most likely is.

This should allow them to load balance virtually across all the VM's. problem is, at some point they all do have to be run by a singular (or a few) management complexes. and those mgmt complexes will need maintenance as well...and the virtual servers cannot run without the mgmt complex.

And then you run into issues with the communication links between the mgmt complexes and the VM's. which, again, isn't a physical entity but a virtual link between all the physical nodes shared along a backplane usually. what if an issue occurs along that interconnect? it impacts all the VM's in addition to the mgmt complexes

Plus, you also tend to have background "Applications" for lack of a better word, doing allot of menial tasks. those Apps have their fingers in everything, from mgmt complexes, to Databases, to VM's. an issue with one of those can bring just about everything down.

This is part of the danger of a "partially informed and aware" public. we know just enough about technologies to know that certain things can be done, but possibly not enough to know exactly what is going on in any situation...so it's really tough to just say "they should be able to do X" I'm not being an apologetic here, but trying to give you an idea of how even in spite of the amazing technologies out there, there are still flaws in them.

Elsonso

Sigh. I was fooled into thinking that the OP actually wanted an answer.

Grubsnik

Doing in-place maintenance is hard. It's possible, but it's hard to do. And stuff that is hard takes developer ressources to fix. During alpha and beta-testing it is hardly a priority task to get done, which means it doesn't happen.

When the deadline starts creeping closer and you have to make some hard choices on what you want to leave for after launchday, this is one of the first items on the list.

Chances are you can only do a subset of upgrades without needing to shutdown at least part of the server. So for a huge MMO that suddenly gets a ton of bug-reports all over the place, odds are high that even if you had in-place upgrades, it would still be affecting the players. So why try to do it halfway.

If they had promised to have "no downtime" and had it anyhow, everyone would be furious. So it's all loss and no gain... Which is why we are all posting on the forum right now instead of playing the game. Sadly.