Too much maintenance...

DBZVelena · May 2017

Darcwolf wrote: »

Emothic wrote: »

The maintenances that your are refering too only happens once a week unless a critical issue has happen. These maintenances are actually server maintenances. They are not to fix any in game problem such as glitches or bugs. These are hardware maintenances that enable to keep the servers up and runing without any major issue. With out these maintenances the servers will crash and can stay down for days/weeks if not properly maintained. Every MMO does this because of the large amount of players they have on a single server frame. .

WRONG! Go play GW2 for a year and tell me how often servers go down for maintenance. And for someone like me who works swing shift I guess I'm just screwed, I get home from work, workout, eat dinner, shower. Sit down to play, oh great maintenance again!

BTW the reason why GW2 is never down is because they use a layered system of servers. In fact AreanaNet patented their system. Which is prob why other games don't use the same/similar system to keep server maintenance times down.

GW2's servers do go down for maintenance, probably once a week or more often. We don't know because they have other servers take over the time those servers are offline for maintenance. So Server A goes down for maintenance, Server B takes over. Server B goes down for maintenance, Server C takes over. Server A is finished with maintenance and re-joines the que of servers. So on Player side its like the game is never down. But on server side, they can do their maintenance without forums flooded by complaints about server down time.

I wish A-net would license that tech to more games. Bet Especially for euro players on mmo's, it happens often that server maintenance is done during our play times.

VeenixO · May 2017

DBZVelena wrote: »

Darcwolf wrote: »

Emothic wrote: »

The maintenances that your are refering too only happens once a week unless a critical issue has happen. These maintenances are actually server maintenances. They are not to fix any in game problem such as glitches or bugs. These are hardware maintenances that enable to keep the servers up and runing without any major issue. With out these maintenances the servers will crash and can stay down for days/weeks if not properly maintained. Every MMO does this because of the large amount of players they have on a single server frame. .

WRONG! Go play GW2 for a year and tell me how often servers go down for maintenance. And for someone like me who works swing shift I guess I'm just screwed, I get home from work, workout, eat dinner, shower. Sit down to play, oh great maintenance again!

BTW the reason why GW2 is never down is because they use a layered system of servers. In fact AreanaNet patented their system. Which is prob why other games don't use the same/similar system to keep server maintenance times down.

GW2's servers do go down for maintenance, probably once a week or more often. We don't know because they have other servers take over the time those servers are offline for maintenance. So Server A goes down for maintenance, Server B takes over. Server B goes down for maintenance, Server C takes over. Server A is finished with maintenance and re-joines the que of servers. So on Player side its like the game is never down. But on server side, they can do their maintenance without forums flooded by complaints about server down time.

I wish A-net would license that tech to more games. Bet Especially for euro players on mmo's, it happens often that server maintenance is done during our play times.

Well that sounds like a great system! Or just a backup server for during maintenance would already be cool.

Insandros · May 2017

Every single MMO i played since i started mmo's in 2000 or so had weekly downtimes for maintenance, so that's part of the deal man, and when a major patch came out like on 22nd, you can expect to have some hotfixes/patches or for sure maintenance. Maintenance and patches simply means they are taking care of their stuff, to be honest, what's to you 4-5 hours of downtime out of 168 total hours in a week, i'm sure you can get a few hours out of those remaining 164 hours to play at least a few hours spreaded on one week

Take it the good side, the maintenance leaves you time to come over here and realised there is an existing forum :P

Belidos · May 2017

zaria wrote: »

VeenixO wrote: »

No I am not new to mmorpg games -_-

I am just saying that they should take an example of blizzard... Those servers are pretty much never offline...
If they can do hotfixes and stuff without the players even noticing it then why can't ZOS do this as well?
Just saying...

WOW have maintance, think its every second week or something, much like ESO.
The issue with ESO is the long downtime, had it been 10 minutes nobody would complain.

No idea why it takes so long, i assume its testing after update.

WoW's maintenance is every tuesday, usually an hour long, and not only every tuesday, but they have another maintenance scheduled for tomorrow as well, two in two days!

Panomania · May 2017

No I am not new to mmorpg games -_-

I am just saying that they should take an example of blizzard... Those servers are pretty much never offline...
If they can do hotfixes and stuff without the players even noticing it then why can't ZOS do this as well?
Just saying...

Blizzard? So you ARE new to MMO's

A few things.....first, Warcrap has been around for a while, and they have kind of gotten their maintenance down to a science. This definitely wasn't always the case. I started on that game during beta with my Everquest guild, and played to a few months after launch before leaving for the first time (boring, lackluster content, little to know challenge compared to what I was used to). In that time I saw almost day long downtimes as they struggled to deal with issues (post launch, not beta). I saw character rollbacks that spanned days, not hours. I saw nearly a week of lost characters as Blizzard struggled to restore a mountain of lost info. Was I happy with it? Hell no. Did I whine about it? No, because I understood that in any new or recently updated game you will have issues. Eventually things get ironed out.

Fast forward to BC, when I decided to try that game again. Patches and fixes and patches to patch the patch that patched the last patch....sometimes several in a week. And yes, saw all the same whining on the forums, and just shook my head at player ignorance....because, again, when you have major changes you WILL have issues. Everquest taught me that, Warcrap drove it home. Seen few games since without these type issues during launch of new content (I think early Rift was probably the smoothest).

Yes, I know....tl;dr

We just had a major update to the game. If you cant get your head around that check out the size of the last patch notes. ANY TIME you have changes like that expect issues, and potential downtime. Any time you make such changes and introduce a new class you can expect server pop to increase, so a smart company will either beef up or add to infrastructure to handle the increased load. I know for well over a decade now any time I am in a game thats doing a major update I warn people in any guilds I run to avoid major in game plans for a week or three, because unsuspected issues arrive in EVERY game (including games with little real programming content or graphic complexity, like WoW) when they make such changes.

Emissary_Vex · May 2017

The down time seems extremely excessive for how little they patched

DBZVelena · May 2017

VeenixO wrote: »

DBZVelena wrote: »

Darcwolf wrote: »

Emothic wrote: »

The maintenances that your are refering too only happens once a week unless a critical issue has happen. These maintenances are actually server maintenances. They are not to fix any in game problem such as glitches or bugs. These are hardware maintenances that enable to keep the servers up and runing without any major issue. With out these maintenances the servers will crash and can stay down for days/weeks if not properly maintained. Every MMO does this because of the large amount of players they have on a single server frame. .

WRONG! Go play GW2 for a year and tell me how often servers go down for maintenance. And for someone like me who works swing shift I guess I'm just screwed, I get home from work, workout, eat dinner, shower. Sit down to play, oh great maintenance again!

BTW the reason why GW2 is never down is because they use a layered system of servers. In fact AreanaNet patented their system. Which is prob why other games don't use the same/similar system to keep server maintenance times down.

GW2's servers do go down for maintenance, probably once a week or more often. We don't know because they have other servers take over the time those servers are offline for maintenance. So Server A goes down for maintenance, Server B takes over. Server B goes down for maintenance, Server C takes over. Server A is finished with maintenance and re-joines the que of servers. So on Player side its like the game is never down. But on server side, they can do their maintenance without forums flooded by complaints about server down time.

I wish A-net would license that tech to more games. Bet Especially for euro players on mmo's, it happens often that server maintenance is done during our play times.

Well that sounds like a great system! Or just a backup server for during maintenance would already be cool.

It is a great system, its also the reason why GW2 is always waved around when the topic of server maintenance comes up. When ArenaNet made GW2 they knew from the start, they wanted as little down time possible, since its everybody's pet peeve when talking about the MMO they like to play.
So they first build a server system that would combat that.
And then they build the game on top of that system.

Its kind of hard/impossible to do it the other way around, and might not even be possible as a solution for ESO because of how they handle pve questing. Which is a shame, in a perfect world, i'd love this system for all mmo's out there.

Saturnana · May 2017

It's really not an issue at all.
It's keeping the hardware in working order, therefore preventing issues before they arise.
Also, you're confusing server maintenance (hardware) with software patches and bugfixes.
Server maintenance doesn't fix the game itself, it fixes the system that keeps the game running.

Maintenance for the week of May 29:
PC/Mac: North American and European megaservers for patch maintenance – May 30, 8:00 UTC (4:00AM EDT)
Xbox One: North American and European megaservers for maintenance – May 31, 10:00 UTC (6:00AM EDT)
PlayStation®4: North American and European megaservers for maintenance – May 31, 10:00 UTC (6:00AM EDT)

Now granted, seeing the above, we're probably getting both today. And we're getting it today because yesterday (monday is regular maintenance day) was a US holiday. But regardless of all that, expect to see more frequent maintenance on both hardware and software until at least halfway through June. Because of Morrowind's release and all.

TragedyOA · May 2017

Half a day or whole day this time,i wonder.

idk · May 2017

VeenixO wrote: »

So I have been playing this game for about a week and a half and already had 3 times maintenance...
I think this is way too much! Instead of making crappy updates maybe they can first test things out on the test server, patch that stuff and after a month or so upload the update to the real servers. Then a week or two after the real update they can patch the issues that appear on the real server and then focus on the next real update.

It is so annoying that there is so much maintenance... create a good patch or test it first on test servers on don't make updates at all... it is as simple as that... Take an example of other mmorpgs like WoW... Seriously I love this game but the company behind it sucks. Sometimes I wish Blizzard would buy this game, atleast then we would have a normal update and maintenance routine and some good customer service (which also sucks atm... 2-3 days to fix a problem that already popped up a few years ago and not even letting the players know how things are going is just crazy..)

Sorry if it seems like I am whining atm but this really is a big issue. I really hope this will change so that players can just play the game like they should instead of having 2-3 times maintenance in a week...

What do you guys think about this?

It is a big issue that Zos doe maintenance. It is a big issue that Zos works to fix some things and we should be grateful.

One of the fixes today has had a big negative impact on one of the 4 things that were added in the update. Some may not be interested in BGs but that is no reason to get upset the GF is, hopefully, getting fixed today.

Linaleah · May 2017

just to add to the whole they should look at Blizzard! deal.

I have played that game for close to a decade (started in burning crusade). I'm super casual nowadays, but used to be it was my primary MMO. fun fact. people still run gambling pools as to how long the maintenance will be extended. whenever there is a major patch - not only there is a 90% probability that maintenance will be extended, but most likely - you can forget doing any raids (trials) for at least a few days after. best case scenario - you can zone in but fights are buggy, worst case scenario, you cannot even zone in.

I have never EVER been through a completely smooth launch of ANYTHING with WoW. in a decade of playing it, there are always issues, the only difference is the magnitude of those issues.

having played variety of MMO's - game going down for maintenance is par of the course. GW2 might not do it as often, due to their spiffy little backup server system? but even GW2 occasionally goes down.

such is the nature of MMO's.

Insandros · May 2017

Emissary_Vex wrote: »

The down time seems extremely excessive for how little they patched

Excessive? with all respect man, i think what is excessive, is us the players whining about evrything and crying around them for taking care of the game, and every single week there are whining about the same thing on and on and on, and when you get in times where they don'T do much maintenance, like the chrismas holidays, well people get to cry because there is lots of lags and issues on and whining because servers needs a maintenance, that, is what i call being EXCESSIVE

They should just pin the thread so people can simply post in the same thread about maintenance instead of creating new threads every single maintenance days for the same excessive subjet.

But hey, those threads makes me write something and help the time goes by.

Agalloch · May 2017

Yes , ESO has the most long maintenances in the MMO world.

Gkaruk · May 2017

Darcwolf wrote: »

Emothic wrote: »

The maintenances that your are refering too only happens once a week unless a critical issue has happen. These maintenances are actually server maintenances. They are not to fix any in game problem such as glitches or bugs. These are hardware maintenances that enable to keep the servers up and runing without any major issue. With out these maintenances the servers will crash and can stay down for days/weeks if not properly maintained. Every MMO does this because of the large amount of players they have on a single server frame. .

WRONG! Go play GW2 for a year and tell me how often servers go down for maintenance. And for someone like me who works swing shift I guess I'm just screwed, I get home from work, workout, eat dinner, shower. Sit down to play, oh great maintenance again!

I have read a lot of this post and comparing other MMO games schedules for Server Maintenance is good or better, but we would also need to know the underlying technology implemented for those games to compare like with like.

For a game like Guild Wars 2 it uses microservices which allow the uptime to be constant and their approach of development of the services which run the game allow for this type of patching (hotfix or otherwise). For those interested in DevOps and what microservices are and how it allows for near 24/7 uptime of an MMO its worth a read of the deck presented at last years (2017) Game Developer Conference (GDC).
http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1024442/-Guild-Wars-Microservices-and

The deck is very informative and tbh I would like to see ZeniMax be as open about their tech and how/why we have such long server maintenance. This would then provide factual evidence at a level we the community can appreciate, understand and help stop threads like this. Most important to me is, it shows true care and attention for your community or in Zenimax eyes (those paying the bills) to be this open with your community. Just and idea

Layla_Dawn · May 2017

As many have said - this is just how MMO's are. If you cant handle it, maybe playing MMO's isnt for you, or go try GW2?

Yeah, it sucks. Yeah, we all want to play. Just find another game to play on the days ESO is down. I think a majority of us do that. Plenty of F2P games out there to mess around with while the servers are down.

Barbara73 · May 2017

VeenixO wrote: »

So I have been playing this game for about a week and a half and already had 3 times maintenance...
I think this is way too much! Instead of making crappy updates maybe they can first test things out on the test server, patch that stuff and after a month or so upload the update to the real servers. Then a week or two after the real update they can patch the issues that appear on the real server and then focus on the next real update.

It is so annoying that there is so much maintenance... create a good patch or test it first on test servers on don't make updates at all... it is as simple as that... Take an example of other mmorpgs like WoW... Seriously I love this game but the company behind it sucks. Sometimes I wish Blizzard would buy this game, atleast then we would have a normal update and maintenance routine and some good customer service (which also sucks atm... 2-3 days to fix a problem that already popped up a few years ago and not even letting the players know how things are going is just crazy..)

Sorry if it seems like I am whining atm but this really is a big issue. I really hope this will change so that players can just play the game like they should instead of having 2-3 times maintenance in a week...

What do you guys think about this?

Compared to other MMO's I have played there is some lengthy maintiance/hotfixes/whatevers but compared to the quality of the other MMO's I have played it's worth it. There is a reason there are a lot of former WoW, and other MMO players here. I played a game for 5 years from Cryptic that had bugs existing before I played it that were never fixed. The only thing ever added were things to get your money. At least here those things you purchase are at least up to you and entertaining.

SilverWF · May 2017

There is too many mintenances, that very often becomes very long for just maintenance and subscribes get no any compensation for it.

necronomniconb14_ESO · May 2017

Emothic wrote: »

The maintenances that your are refering too only happens once a week unless a critical issue has happen. These maintenances are actually server maintenances. They are not to fix any in game problem such as glitches or bugs. These are hardware maintenances that enable to keep the servers up and runing without any major issue. With out these maintenances the servers will crash and can stay down for days/weeks if not properly maintained. Every MMO does this because of the large amount of players they have on a single server frame.

What you are thinking of is something called a "hot fix". A hot fix is something that can happen several times a week that fixes in game problems such as bugs and glitches. However a hot fix is a quick update that can only take 5 - 10 minutes to complete. While a Server maintenance will take several hours to do.

critical issues always happen with this game

rootimus · May 2017

I'd be fine with an hour a day of maintenance if it meant things got fixed in a timely manner.

Sylosi · May 2017

DBZVelena wrote: »

In fact AreanaNet patented their system. Which is prob why other games don't use the same/similar system to keep server maintenance times down.

I doubt their patent is worth much, they essentially do what large websites have been doing for years, it is nothing new, I'd suggest the reason most MMOs don't do it, is because it needs to be built in from the ground up (so would require a big rewrite of code/change to hardware setup to implement in existing MMOs who won't make fundamental changes on that level for merely convenience of their customers), it also takes more hardware and the reality is very few AAA MMOs (the most likely to do that sort of thing) have been released in recent years, because the genre is a stagnant mess.

kevlarto_ESO · May 2017

VeenixO wrote: »

No I am not new to mmorpg games -_-

I am just saying that they should take an example of blizzard... Those servers are pretty much never offline...
If they can do hotfixes and stuff without the players even noticing it then why can't ZOS do this as well?
Just saying...

wow server were down a lot when the game was new, but yes they have settled into an established routine now, I play a game called war thunder also their server are only down for major content updates, but when you log in your client will patch, SWG used to have maintenance every day at 2am to 4am pacific time.

I have played mmo's for years this game has more log in issues than most and they do have some downtime due to technical issues, but that is how mmo's roll there will be patches and hotfixes after a new update, then the normal cycle, I always welcome the down time in hopes something gets fixed lol

TheHsN · May 2017

i play Warframe,diablo3,titanfall 2,paladins,divisions and never seen long maintenance like 6 -7 hours but dont care about too just ones in a week

GnarlyMcGnasty · May 2017

SilverWF wrote: »

There is too many mintenances, that very often becomes very long for just maintenance and subscribes get no any compensation for it.

Are you really asking for for compensation of $0.125 (12 1/2 cents) for 6 hours of downtime?

Kiralyn2000 · May 2017

VeenixO wrote: »

Wow isn't it amazing how poisonous some people on the forums are? xD
Nice way to welcome newer players

Part of it is probably because they see this same thread every week, from a new person. Add onto that the way that you kept arguing against them (it didn't seem so "poisonous" on the first two pages). /shrug

OP, you were just unlucky to start at the same time as an expansion. Those are always iffy times for MMOs - pretty much every MMO I've played has had problems that required extra downtime when they have a big content release. I'm used to it (just like I'm used to weekly maintenance). It's just the way it is. /shrug

You were lucky with WoW - they have separate EU and NA servers, so they can have all their maint times at 'dead' hours. MMOs that just have one server for EU/NA, I see these threads pop up all the time - "Why are they doing it when it's my gaming time?!?!?" (And heck, even with games that have an EU and an NA server, I still see those threads from Australia people....)

i play Warframe,diablo3,titanfall 2,paladins,divisions and never seen long maintenance like 6 -7 hours but dont care about too just ones in a week

None of those are MMOs. Heck, most of those are lobby games.

Reverb · May 2017

GnarlyMcGnasty wrote: »

SilverWF wrote: »

There is too many mintenances, that very often becomes very long for just maintenance and subscribes get no any compensation for it.

Are you really asking for for compensation of $0.125 (12 1/2 cents) for 6 hours of downtime?

While awesome, your logic is wasted against righteous indignation. Facts will never pierce the shield of priggishness.

Panomania · May 2017

Well, that and you'll never get these people to actually read the TOS/EULA, regardless what language its translated into.

jaye63 · May 2017

No such thing as too much.

elfantasmo · May 2017

Kiralyn2000 wrote: »

VeenixO wrote: »

Wow isn't it amazing how poisonous some people on the forums are? xD
Nice way to welcome newer players

Part of it is probably because they see this same thread every week, from a new person. Add onto that the way that you kept arguing against them (it didn't seem so "poisonous" on the first two pages). /shrug

OP, you were just unlucky to start at the same time as an expansion. Those are always iffy times for MMOs - pretty much every MMO I've played has had problems that required extra downtime when they have a big content release. I'm used to it (just like I'm used to weekly maintenance). It's just the way it is. /shrug

You were lucky with WoW - they have separate EU and NA servers, so they can have all their maint times at 'dead' hours. MMOs that just have one server for EU/NA, I see these threads pop up all the time - "Why are they doing it when it's my gaming time?!?!?" (And heck, even with games that have an EU and an NA server, I still see those threads from Australia people....)

i play Warframe,diablo3,titanfall 2,paladins,divisions and never seen long maintenance like 6 -7 hours but dont care about too just ones in a week

None of those are MMOs. Heck, most of those are lobby games.

PPL can talk all they want about, as it seems something they do not have a whole lot of expertise on. Plain and simple, this amount of maintenance is border line incompetent. I do not want to start talking about what I do or do not do in a professional capacity but in the world of no downtime, high availability and 8 9's uptime there are ways to provide better service from proper investment. IF however said service provider spends more of their development budget on crown crates and other money making feature requests, instead of continuous improvement. This is the result.

Kiralyn2000 · May 2017

elfantasmo wrote: »

Plain and simple, this amount of maintenance is border line incompetent.

Maybe I've just been playing MMOs too long. None of this seems odd to me, I pretty much expect crazy maintenance in the week or two after a major content release. /shrug

coplannb16_ESO · May 2017

I think the complain is valid.

We basically have 1 maintenance a week most of the time taking 8-12 hours. That means, as a subscriber paying for a month (4.2 weeks ) of ESO+ I only get the Service I pay for on 6.5 days per week assuming I could play 24/7. As european the maintenance is affecting my playtime much more however, but still on a peer week Basis thats an uptime of ~0,9285%.

Now if we compare this to any other online service, say like Amazon or Google (the websites) or Netflix, an average uptime of 0,92 % is basically suicide. A single hour of being offline can cripple your Business.

ZoS needs to negotiate serious SLA (Service Level Agreements) guaranteeing an uptime of at least 99,99%. as an IT professional this maintenance crap makes me a sad panda and is certainly not state of the art.