I wake up and what do i see...
I hope it fixes the EU login bug as well, at least.
OK, let's run through this one more time for the hard of thinking:
- Yes, ZOS need to fix bugs.
- Yes, in a game this big and complex, a new patch may introduce new bugs or resurrect old ones, so after a big change you can expect a lot of smaller patches in the days immediately after it.
- No, the servers do not need to be taken offline to do it, and saying "it has to happen" just makes them think that it's fine and we're all happy with it and gives them no motivation to stop doing it.
Any of you who defend them would, I'm pretty sure, be happier if it didn't happen, so once again I will explain the process that every server admin on the planet knows how to do:
- Test your update as much as possible on a test server.
- Push the update to a deployment server. This can be done without touching the live server -- that can be left running and people can still use it.
- When the update is ready and the deployment server is up and running, switch the deployment and live server roles: new players logging in will be directed to the new server, and users on the old pre-update server can be sent a message saying maintenance has been done and they need to log out and back in again as soon as possible. (Note: it may even be possible to do this "invisibly" by pushing people from one server to another whenever they switch zones, but a forced relog is easier.)
- When the old server is empty it's then ready to be the deployment server for the next set of updates.
Voila, servers updated, no downtime, and the biggest inconvenience is some people have to log out and back in again. There's also the extra bonus that if something's gone really wrong with the update they have the previous version ready to reinstate immediately.
This happens all around the world thousands of times a day, but you never notice because the process is designed to be seamless and invisible. It's also not new or radical: I learned how to do it in college three decades ago and it was old news by then, and I've seen it in practice in businesses from "small, the servers are only a small part of the business" to "freakin' huge, and can't function without them". An MMO is a computer program and not magic, so there's no technical reason they cannot do it this way; the only reason I can come up with that they don't do it this way is because it requires having some duplicate hardware and therefore costs money.
ZOS' entire business is based on having functional servers, so it strikes me as ludicrous that they don't do everything they can to make sure that the servers are (barring complete disaster) always running.
(On a final note, those of you who are fine with it need to stop telling the rest of us to put up or shut up; this is a genuine grievance, and this is the best place to air it. Don't want to hear about how annoyed we are? Skip these threads, then, rather than coming in and telling us we're whiny entitled idiots.)
mlstevens42_ESO wrote: »Note that I am not defending any one but large patches tend to break something. Which mean hotfixes until the wrinkles are worked out.
Not sure about the deal for eu server ( as in where it is located) but it sort of makes sense that they would try since they are based in US, to do things when it is convenient for them in their time zone. It seems to me that this happens in companies that are not US based even gaming companies. Not all games are made in US and not all times for maintaining games are built around when it is convenient for US. I understand it is frustrating to have the game be down again after such a short time. It doesn't just hit Oceanic or Europeans....know lots of those blasted Americans up and about during this time frame. It doesn't please them any more then it does you. Still if whatever they are fixing gets fixed then the down time was worth it.
Shad0wfire99 wrote: »There are probably more players online during US prime time than EU prime time, besides, ZoS is a US company, so, I'm not sure why you'd expect anything else.
Shad0wfire99 wrote: »There are probably more players online during US prime time than EU prime time, besides, ZoS is a US company, so, I'm not sure why you'd expect anything else.
GrumpyMuffin wrote: »mlstevens42_ESO wrote: »Thing is even with a test server one does not always get a feel of what things will do on live. There are a lot more setups on live a lot more people on live often doing things that people do not test for. So there will always be some wrinkles.
The EU login issue would have been present on the test server. It was ignored
Not to pile up on ZOS misery but this game is definitely the MMO with more maintenance ever, and I played almost all the relevant MMOs since UO.
6-8 hours for a REGULAR maintenance is just ridiculous, having that more than once a week is unacceptable.
ZOS should really get their act together.
ZOS_KaiSchober wrote: »GrumpyMuffin wrote: »mlstevens42_ESO wrote: »Thing is even with a test server one does not always get a feel of what things will do on live. There are a lot more setups on live a lot more people on live often doing things that people do not test for. So there will always be some wrinkles.
The EU login issue would have been present on the test server. It was ignored
Please explain how issues with the combination of two clients into one and the restructuring of addition of the server selection was present during the test with one PTS client without server selection.
We aren't defending the current issues, but they could have never come up during the PTS phase and therefor weren't ignored.
Not to pile up on ZOS misery but this game is definitely the MMO with more maintenance ever, and I played almost all the relevant MMOs since UO.
6-8 hours for a REGULAR maintenance is just ridiculous, having that more than once a week is unacceptable.
ZOS should really get their act together.
Not to pile up on ZOS misery but this game is definitely the MMO with more maintenance ever, and I played almost all the relevant MMOs since UO.
6-8 hours for a REGULAR maintenance is just ridiculous, having that more than once a week is unacceptable.
ZOS should really get their act together.
Well it is also the BEST MMO in both gameplay and graphics