Why can't MMO providers learn how to do availability during maintenance?

FlopsyPrince
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Many companies keep their systems up and maintain them without long downtimes....
PC
PS4/PS5
  • Paulytnz
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    GW2 does and that's older than this game................

    This game? No idea why, probably has something to do with dollars somewhere. :p
  • alanmatillab16_ESO
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    Paulytnz wrote: »
    GW2 does and that's older than this game................

    This game? No idea why, probably has something to do with dollars somewhere. :p

    GW2 can spawn new servers at will, even with different game versions. If you want to compare games at least find one with the same or similar server architecture.

  • Marto
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    Many companies keep their systems up and maintain them without long downtimes....

    Because MMOs are large.
    They are very, very large.

    Animations, assets, coding... they could all show up anywhere, in any zone, with any player.

    The devs cannot isolate one portion of the game, patch and change it, and then re-enable it. It would cause more problems than what it fixes.

    Guild Wars 2 is one of the very few games that is able to do such a thing. It's the exception, not the rule.
    And GW2 is only capable of it because of sacrifices made in other areas of the game. Systems, performance, latency, particle systems, textures, character data... All considerably worse than what ESO offers.
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  • Mayrael
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    It depends. You can't work on a database and use the same database at the same time. To do that you need at least a duplicated infrastructure, which in turn carries a much higher cost. Looking at how ZOS has been neglecting the state of Cyrodiil for all these years and for example during MYM Cyrodiil although not working perfectly but accommodating much larger numbers of players is doing decently I dare say that ZOS has no intention of adding even a single cent where it absolutely does not have to do so, after all we will play anyway, we will complain, grumble and then politely log in with gratitude and buy that reskinned (for the 50th time) mount.
    I'm done with this game because of ZOS pushing us into Vengeance, because they don't know how to fix Cyrodiil.
  • Sylosi
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    Paulytnz wrote: »
    GW2 does and that's older than this game................

    This game? No idea why, probably has something to do with dollars somewhere. :p

    GW2 can spawn new servers at will, even with different game versions. If you want to compare games at least find one with the same or similar server architecture.

    Anet built their architecture with no downtime (outside of exceptional circumstances) in mind, just like most online services, sites, etc do. GW2 is 2 years older than ESO, there was nothing preventing Zenimax doing the same, they chose not to and decided an inferior (and cheaper) customer experience was the way to go.

    The comparison is fine, one company did a good job, put customer experience before Dollars, the other didn't. It's also much more pleasant for GW2's devs.
    Edited by Sylosi on June 25, 2021 10:11AM
  • Grandchamp1989
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    Marto wrote: »
    Many companies keep their systems up and maintain them without long downtimes....

    Because MMOs are large.
    They are very, very large.

    Animations, assets, coding... they could all show up anywhere, in any zone, with any player.

    The devs cannot isolate one portion of the game, patch and change it, and then re-enable it. It would cause more problems than what it fixes.

    Guild Wars 2 is one of the very few games that is able to do such a thing. It's the exception, not the rule.
    And GW2 is only capable of it because of sacrifices made in other areas of the game. Systems, performance, latency, particle systems, textures, character data... All considerably worse than what ESO offers.

    All problems ESO suffer from in its current form, despite having to deal with long server downtimes.
    Edited by Grandchamp1989 on June 25, 2021 9:51AM
  • Danikat
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    I've never understood why MMOs created later on didn't copy the system Guild Wars 2 uses, especially ESO since Arenanet says it's using a 'mega server' system which enables them to do that, and ZOS calls theirs a mega server as well. I suppose it might be using the same name for entirely different things but if not it sounds like ZOS should have the capability to do it.

    That and it was already standard practice in other industries before GW2 launched. Even when I worked for a tiny company with 35 employees total we could backup the servers, update them, move them etc. without taking the systems offline completely and end users never needed to know when we were doing that work.
    Marto wrote: »
    Guild Wars 2 is one of the very few games that is able to do such a thing. It's the exception, not the rule.
    And GW2 is only capable of it because of sacrifices made in other areas of the game. Systems, performance, latency, particle systems, textures, character data... All considerably worse than what ESO offers.

    For me the performance and latency is pretty much the same in both games (playing on the EU servers in both), except GW2 crashes less often

    Mentioning systems, textures and particle effects sounds like you're confusing art style and game design with server systems and I have no idea what you mean by character data being worse, especially since GW2 is capable of copying character data between regions, and therefore letting players move without having to start over from scratch.
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  • jircris11
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    Keep in mind gw2 is the ONLY mmo with this feature. Meaning their game was build for it from day one. Remember though it was not always a mega server architect they use to be single servers.
    Edited by jircris11 on June 25, 2021 12:25PM
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  • phaneub17_ESO
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    World of Warcraft does this with smaller hotfixes, you'll get the new update while playing, it applies after logging out and can resume soon after it patches.
  • Reverb
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    It’s not about “learning how” it’s about having a high-availability or real-time redundant technical environment. Zeni’s Megaserver cluster isn’t built for that to be possible.
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  • jaws343
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    Sylosi wrote: »
    Paulytnz wrote: »
    GW2 does and that's older than this game................

    This game? No idea why, probably has something to do with dollars somewhere. :p

    GW2 can spawn new servers at will, even with different game versions. If you want to compare games at least find one with the same or similar server architecture.

    Anet built their architecture with no downtime (outside of exceptional circumstances) in mind, just like most online services, sites, etc do. GW2 is 2 years older than ESO, there was nothing preventing Zenimax doing the same, they chose not to and decided an inferior (and cheaper) customer experience was the way to go.

    The comparison is fine, one company did a good job, put customer experience before Dollars, the other didn't. It's also much more pleasant for GW2's devs.

    2 years older, but they both began development at the same time, so there is no way that ZOS would even know that that was how they were designing their infrastructure.
  • Elsonso
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    Many companies keep their systems up and maintain them without long downtimes....
    Paulytnz wrote: »
    This game? No idea why, probably has something to do with dollars somewhere. :p

    Probably. They chose to spend their IT infrastructure money somewhere else, and they tightly coupled the server and client versions. Taking the server down is more simple, more reliable, and easier to manage. This is a game, after all. It is not critical that it be up continuously.

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  • Sylosi
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    jaws343 wrote: »
    Sylosi wrote: »
    Paulytnz wrote: »
    GW2 does and that's older than this game................

    This game? No idea why, probably has something to do with dollars somewhere. :p

    GW2 can spawn new servers at will, even with different game versions. If you want to compare games at least find one with the same or similar server architecture.

    Anet built their architecture with no downtime (outside of exceptional circumstances) in mind, just like most online services, sites, etc do. GW2 is 2 years older than ESO, there was nothing preventing Zenimax doing the same, they chose not to and decided an inferior (and cheaper) customer experience was the way to go.

    The comparison is fine, one company did a good job, put customer experience before Dollars, the other didn't. It's also much more pleasant for GW2's devs.

    2 years older, but they both began development at the same time, so there is no way that ZOS would even know that that was how they were designing their infrastructure.

    And?

  • jaws343
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    Sylosi wrote: »
    jaws343 wrote: »
    Sylosi wrote: »
    Paulytnz wrote: »
    GW2 does and that's older than this game................

    This game? No idea why, probably has something to do with dollars somewhere. :p

    GW2 can spawn new servers at will, even with different game versions. If you want to compare games at least find one with the same or similar server architecture.

    Anet built their architecture with no downtime (outside of exceptional circumstances) in mind, just like most online services, sites, etc do. GW2 is 2 years older than ESO, there was nothing preventing Zenimax doing the same, they chose not to and decided an inferior (and cheaper) customer experience was the way to go.

    The comparison is fine, one company did a good job, put customer experience before Dollars, the other didn't. It's also much more pleasant for GW2's devs.

    2 years older, but they both began development at the same time, so there is no way that ZOS would even know that that was how they were designing their infrastructure.

    And?

    Your argument is there was nothing preventing ZOS from doing something entirely different because this other company did something entirely different 2 years earlier. Which is wrong. Expecting Zos to change the entire build of their game after 5 years of development is crazy. Especially when that build was/is industry standard setup. If GW2 is the only relevant game that has non-interruptive maintenance, it is pretty unreasonable to expect contemporary games to take on that risk unknowingly.
  • Sylosi
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    jaws343 wrote: »
    Sylosi wrote: »
    jaws343 wrote: »
    Sylosi wrote: »
    Paulytnz wrote: »
    GW2 does and that's older than this game................

    This game? No idea why, probably has something to do with dollars somewhere. :p

    GW2 can spawn new servers at will, even with different game versions. If you want to compare games at least find one with the same or similar server architecture.

    Anet built their architecture with no downtime (outside of exceptional circumstances) in mind, just like most online services, sites, etc do. GW2 is 2 years older than ESO, there was nothing preventing Zenimax doing the same, they chose not to and decided an inferior (and cheaper) customer experience was the way to go.

    The comparison is fine, one company did a good job, put customer experience before Dollars, the other didn't. It's also much more pleasant for GW2's devs.

    2 years older, but they both began development at the same time, so there is no way that ZOS would even know that that was how they were designing their infrastructure.

    And?

    Your argument is there was nothing preventing ZOS from doing something entirely different because this other company did something entirely different 2 years earlier. Which is wrong. Expecting Zos to change the entire build of their game after 5 years of development is crazy. Especially when that build was/is industry standard setup. If GW2 is the only relevant game that has non-interruptive maintenance, it is pretty unreasonable to expect contemporary games to take on that risk unknowingly.

    Wrong.

    My point was it was becoming more common for large web sites, services, etc to operate without having to go down for regular maintenance. It was no longer so much of a technical mountain that you had to invent a programming language like Ericsson did with Erlang 35 years ago so they could update the software of telephone switches without taking down the telephony system and interrupting users phone calls.

    So whilst older games like Everquest, DAoC, WoW, etc could be excused for building their MMORPGs in the way they did, given zero downtime in tech (especially consumer tech) was a real rarity back then, games the age of ESO cannot, as GW2 shows. The notion of no downtime (outside of exceptional circumstance) was not some secret in the IT world back then.

    Most MMORPGs simply don't bother with it because it is only of very marginal benefit to them, increases costs, most customers are low value, adds extra dev time at the start of the project, etc. Which is why pretty much no other MMORPG does it (that I'm aware of), even ones released long after both GW2 and ESO.

    Arena Net should be commended on actually putting its players first. Imagine that. ;)

    Edited by Sylosi on June 25, 2021 2:45PM
  • spartaxoxo
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    Sylosi wrote: »
    jaws343 wrote: »
    Sylosi wrote: »
    jaws343 wrote: »
    Sylosi wrote: »
    Paulytnz wrote: »
    GW2 does and that's older than this game................

    This game? No idea why, probably has something to do with dollars somewhere. :p

    GW2 can spawn new servers at will, even with different game versions. If you want to compare games at least find one with the same or similar server architecture.

    Anet built their architecture with no downtime (outside of exceptional circumstances) in mind, just like most online services, sites, etc do. GW2 is 2 years older than ESO, there was nothing preventing Zenimax doing the same, they chose not to and decided an inferior (and cheaper) customer experience was the way to go.

    The comparison is fine, one company did a good job, put customer experience before Dollars, the other didn't. It's also much more pleasant for GW2's devs.

    2 years older, but they both began development at the same time, so there is no way that ZOS would even know that that was how they were designing their infrastructure.

    And?

    Your argument is there was nothing preventing ZOS from doing something entirely different because this other company did something entirely different 2 years earlier. Which is wrong. Expecting Zos to change the entire build of their game after 5 years of development is crazy. Especially when that build was/is industry standard setup. If GW2 is the only relevant game that has non-interruptive maintenance, it is pretty unreasonable to expect contemporary games to take on that risk unknowingly.

    Wrong.

    My point was it was becoming more common for large web sites, services, etc to operate without having to go down for regular maintenance. It was no longer so much of a technical mountain that you had to invent a programming language like Ericsson did with Erlang 35 years ago so they could update the software of telephone switches without taking down the telephony system and interrupting users phone calls.

    So whilst older games like Everquest, DAoC, WoW, etc could be excused for building their MMORPGs in the way they did, given zero downtime in tech (especially consumer tech) was a real rarity back then, games the age of ESO cannot, as GW2 shows. The notion of no downtime (outside of exceptional circumstance) was not some secret in the IT world back then.

    Most MMORPGs simply don't bother with it because it is only of very marginal benefit to them, increases costs, most customers are low value, adds extra dev time at the start of the project, etc. Which is why pretty much no other MMORPG does it (that I'm aware of), even ones released long after both GW2 and ESO.

    Arena Net should be commended on actually putting its players first. Imagine that. ;)

    Only games that started development after guild wars 2 can reasonably held to that standard. If ESO started development at the same time, they would be looking at games that came out before them for guidance.
  • Sylosi
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    spartaxoxo wrote: »
    Sylosi wrote: »
    jaws343 wrote: »
    Sylosi wrote: »
    jaws343 wrote: »
    Sylosi wrote: »
    Paulytnz wrote: »
    GW2 does and that's older than this game................

    This game? No idea why, probably has something to do with dollars somewhere. :p

    GW2 can spawn new servers at will, even with different game versions. If you want to compare games at least find one with the same or similar server architecture.

    Anet built their architecture with no downtime (outside of exceptional circumstances) in mind, just like most online services, sites, etc do. GW2 is 2 years older than ESO, there was nothing preventing Zenimax doing the same, they chose not to and decided an inferior (and cheaper) customer experience was the way to go.

    The comparison is fine, one company did a good job, put customer experience before Dollars, the other didn't. It's also much more pleasant for GW2's devs.

    2 years older, but they both began development at the same time, so there is no way that ZOS would even know that that was how they were designing their infrastructure.

    And?

    Your argument is there was nothing preventing ZOS from doing something entirely different because this other company did something entirely different 2 years earlier. Which is wrong. Expecting Zos to change the entire build of their game after 5 years of development is crazy. Especially when that build was/is industry standard setup. If GW2 is the only relevant game that has non-interruptive maintenance, it is pretty unreasonable to expect contemporary games to take on that risk unknowingly.

    Wrong.

    My point was it was becoming more common for large web sites, services, etc to operate without having to go down for regular maintenance. It was no longer so much of a technical mountain that you had to invent a programming language like Ericsson did with Erlang 35 years ago so they could update the software of telephone switches without taking down the telephony system and interrupting users phone calls.

    So whilst older games like Everquest, DAoC, WoW, etc could be excused for building their MMORPGs in the way they did, given zero downtime in tech (especially consumer tech) was a real rarity back then, games the age of ESO cannot, as GW2 shows. The notion of no downtime (outside of exceptional circumstance) was not some secret in the IT world back then.

    Most MMORPGs simply don't bother with it because it is only of very marginal benefit to them, increases costs, most customers are low value, adds extra dev time at the start of the project, etc. Which is why pretty much no other MMORPG does it (that I'm aware of), even ones released long after both GW2 and ESO.

    Arena Net should be commended on actually putting its players first. Imagine that. ;)

    Only games that started development after guild wars 2 can reasonably held to that standard. If ESO started development at the same time, they would be looking at games that came out before them for guidance.

    Wow, that is really damning on the Zenimax devs, I 'm sure they were more competent than that.
  • vamp_emily
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    I'm sure this will not be a problem in the future.

    If they Migrate over to Microsoft's Azure servers, I think they will be able to eliminate their down time.

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  • spartaxoxo
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    Sylosi wrote: »
    spartaxoxo wrote: »
    Sylosi wrote: »
    jaws343 wrote: »
    Sylosi wrote: »
    jaws343 wrote: »
    Sylosi wrote: »
    Paulytnz wrote: »
    GW2 does and that's older than this game................

    This game? No idea why, probably has something to do with dollars somewhere. :p

    GW2 can spawn new servers at will, even with different game versions. If you want to compare games at least find one with the same or similar server architecture.

    Anet built their architecture with no downtime (outside of exceptional circumstances) in mind, just like most online services, sites, etc do. GW2 is 2 years older than ESO, there was nothing preventing Zenimax doing the same, they chose not to and decided an inferior (and cheaper) customer experience was the way to go.

    The comparison is fine, one company did a good job, put customer experience before Dollars, the other didn't. It's also much more pleasant for GW2's devs.

    2 years older, but they both began development at the same time, so there is no way that ZOS would even know that that was how they were designing their infrastructure.

    And?

    Your argument is there was nothing preventing ZOS from doing something entirely different because this other company did something entirely different 2 years earlier. Which is wrong. Expecting Zos to change the entire build of their game after 5 years of development is crazy. Especially when that build was/is industry standard setup. If GW2 is the only relevant game that has non-interruptive maintenance, it is pretty unreasonable to expect contemporary games to take on that risk unknowingly.

    Wrong.

    My point was it was becoming more common for large web sites, services, etc to operate without having to go down for regular maintenance. It was no longer so much of a technical mountain that you had to invent a programming language like Ericsson did with Erlang 35 years ago so they could update the software of telephone switches without taking down the telephony system and interrupting users phone calls.

    So whilst older games like Everquest, DAoC, WoW, etc could be excused for building their MMORPGs in the way they did, given zero downtime in tech (especially consumer tech) was a real rarity back then, games the age of ESO cannot, as GW2 shows. The notion of no downtime (outside of exceptional circumstance) was not some secret in the IT world back then.

    Most MMORPGs simply don't bother with it because it is only of very marginal benefit to them, increases costs, most customers are low value, adds extra dev time at the start of the project, etc. Which is why pretty much no other MMORPG does it (that I'm aware of), even ones released long after both GW2 and ESO.

    Arena Net should be commended on actually putting its players first. Imagine that. ;)

    Only games that started development after guild wars 2 can reasonably held to that standard. If ESO started development at the same time, they would be looking at games that came out before them for guidance.

    Wow, that is really damning on the Zenimax devs, I 'm sure they were more competent than that.

    How is it damning to not be aware of a product that is under development and who's details are purposefully kept secret from competiting developers?

    Games that end up being influential tend to influence the stuff that comes out after, not stuff being developed at the same exact time. Unless some details on how you're doing stuff leaks and your competitor rushes to put out a similar product for the sake of competition.

    It's got nothing to do with incompetence but the nature of the market place and time.
    Edited by spartaxoxo on June 25, 2021 3:09PM
  • Sylosi
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    spartaxoxo wrote: »
    How is it damning to not be aware of a product that is under development and who's details are purposefully kept secret from competiting developers?

    That you think their devs were unaware of broader trends in tech like no regular downtime for maintenance becoming more of a thing for web sites (at least the large ones), online services, etc. Would never have considered the idea or be aware of its possibility without GW2 doing it first. That is harsh, I'm sure they were better than that.
    spartaxoxo wrote: »
    but the nature of the market place

    I agree, which is why no other MMORPG has done it, for the reasons I outlined earlier (low value customers, very marginal benefit, increased costs, etc), including Zenimax, no doubt.
    Edited by Sylosi on June 25, 2021 3:24PM
  • spartaxoxo
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    Sylosi wrote: »
    spartaxoxo wrote: »
    How is it damning to not be aware of a product that is under development and who's details are purposefully kept secret from competiting developers?

    That you think their devs were unaware of broader trends in tech like no regular downtime for maintenance becoming more of a thing for web sites (at least the large ones), online services, etc. Would never have considered the idea or be aware of its possibility without GW2 doing it first. That is harsh, I'm sure they were better than that.
    spartaxoxo wrote: »
    but the nature of the market place

    I agree, which is why no other MMORPG has done it, for the reasons I outlined earlier (low value customers, very marginal benefit, increased costs, etc), including Zenimax, no doubt.

    They may have been aware of the trend but thought it too complex to handle an MMO this way until GW did it.
  • Danikat
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    For what it's worth Guild Wars 1 (released in 2005) did the same thing, and it was apparently based on tech that Mike O'Brien had developed for Battle.net while he was still at Blizzard, so it's not like this was some previously unknown concept ZOS couldn't have known about at the time.
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  • TequilaFire
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    Actually the real elephant in the room is quality control testing before release.
    If there was better QA there would be less bugs to have to bring the servers down to fix in the first place.
    Skimping on QA actually cost more money and bad will with players.
  • ThorianB
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    Sylosi wrote: »
    Paulytnz wrote: »
    GW2 does and that's older than this game................

    This game? No idea why, probably has something to do with dollars somewhere. :p

    GW2 can spawn new servers at will, even with different game versions. If you want to compare games at least find one with the same or similar server architecture.

    Anet built their architecture with no downtime (outside of exceptional circumstances) in mind, just like most online services, sites, etc do. GW2 is 2 years older than ESO, there was nothing preventing Zenimax doing the same, they chose not to and decided an inferior (and cheaper) customer experience was the way to go.

    The comparison is fine, one company did a good job, put customer experience before Dollars, the other didn't. It's also much more pleasant for GW2's devs.

    You are just making wild assumptions and accusations here with no basis for your claim or any evidence. Not all servers are built the same. As they said server architecture matters. ESO servers are a different design than GW2, WoW, Eve Online, or any other game you can think of.

    You say they went with this design because it's cheaper. Yet their is obviously more work on the back end( read more labor intensive thus more cost) than others. We don't know what goes into maintenance. ESO is a very complex game. More complex than most games it's compared to. It is also much much larger than most MMOs. Nearly twice the size of GW2 which is also a fairly large game. It has multiple database servers plus servers for each megaserver that will all be ran through maintenance.

    It sucks that it takes so long, but they arent doing longer cycles because it is less costly. It is more costly because its a lot more labor intensive and servers that aren't up aren't making any money. People can't buy things when the server is down. So you would be incorrect in your accusation that we have long maint because ZOS wanted to save a dollar.
    Edited by ThorianB on June 25, 2021 4:11PM
  • PigofSteel
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    Marto wrote: »
    Many companies keep their systems up and maintain them without long downtimes....

    Because MMOs are large.
    They are very, very large.

    Animations, assets, coding... they could all show up anywhere, in any zone, with any player.

    The devs cannot isolate one portion of the game, patch and change it, and then re-enable it. It would cause more problems than what it fixes.

    Guild Wars 2 is one of the very few games that is able to do such a thing. It's the exception, not the rule.
    And GW2 is only capable of it because of sacrifices made in other areas of the game. Systems, performance, latency, particle systems, textures, character data... All considerably worse than what ESO offers.

    But Bethesda aka Zenimax aka Microsoft is huge huge huge as well ? So where is problem ?
  • Elsonso
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    vamp_emily wrote: »
    If they Migrate over to Microsoft's Azure servers, I think they will be able to eliminate their down time.

    Never gonna happen, for the same reason it cannot migrate to Amazon, Google, or any other cloud service. Not designed for it.
    PigofSteel wrote: »
    Marto wrote: »
    Many companies keep their systems up and maintain them without long downtimes....

    Because MMOs are large.
    They are very, very large.

    Animations, assets, coding... they could all show up anywhere, in any zone, with any player.

    The devs cannot isolate one portion of the game, patch and change it, and then re-enable it. It would cause more problems than what it fixes.

    Guild Wars 2 is one of the very few games that is able to do such a thing. It's the exception, not the rule.
    And GW2 is only capable of it because of sacrifices made in other areas of the game. Systems, performance, latency, particle systems, textures, character data... All considerably worse than what ESO offers.

    But Bethesda aka Zenimax aka Microsoft is huge huge huge as well ? So where is problem ?

    That does not mean unlimited budget. :smile:
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  • MirandaSharp
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    Paulytnz wrote: »
    GW2 does and that's older than this game................

    This game? No idea why, probably has something to do with dollars somewhere. :p

    GW2 can spawn new servers at will, even with different game versions. If you want to compare games at least find one with the same or similar server architecture.

    That's just the thing. The architecture... The software has to be built from the ground up with this in mind. ESO was basically a port from Skyrim that got tweaked to work for multiplayer.
  • FlopsyPrince
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    Marto wrote: »
    Many companies keep their systems up and maintain them without long downtimes....

    Because MMOs are large.
    They are very, very large.

    Animations, assets, coding... they could all show up anywhere, in any zone, with any player.

    The devs cannot isolate one portion of the game, patch and change it, and then re-enable it. It would cause more problems than what it fixes.

    Guild Wars 2 is one of the very few games that is able to do such a thing. It's the exception, not the rule.
    And GW2 is only capable of it because of sacrifices made in other areas of the game. Systems, performance, latency, particle systems, textures, character data... All considerably worse than what ESO offers.

    AIrlines, banks, large online companies (a la Amazon) are not large?

    No, it is a matter of not making availability a priority. It takes work and solid design (I know that from experience), but it can be done.

    I have yet to see an MMO that pushed toward that, which is probably why it is so uncommon. Little competition pushes for it.

    Note they can already load new features, such as for an event, before it starts and then turn it on with a switch, so this could be done.
    PC
    PS4/PS5
  • FlopsyPrince
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    I would guess most of you have not worked on large distributed systems.

    Yes, it would take a bit of a redesign, but if major systems in other areas, handling far more data, can do it, then an MMO could do it as well.

    I suppose my OP was a bit rhetorical, since the answer is "no competitive pressure forces it."

    Redesigning things like this would also reduce stress on the devs and support people, but management wouldn't likely get bigger bonuses, so the priority is very low/non-existent.
    PC
    PS4/PS5
  • Marto
    Marto
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    PigofSteel wrote: »
    But Bethesda aka Zenimax aka Microsoft is huge huge huge as well ? So where is problem ?

    Bethesda wasn't that big in 2014.

    Back in those days, their biggest accomplishments were the technical messes that were Brink and Rage. And their decent but not mainstream successes of Wolfenstein the New Order, Dishonored, and The Evil Within.

    True, they are big now, and they could put a lot of money into doing what you want.

    But this is also an MMO we're talking about. The most expensive genre to develop.
    Asking a publisher to throw an extra 100 million dollars on a game that already costed 300-1000 million to make is ridiculous.

    And besides, is it even possible? I'm not deeply familiar with the way ESO is designed, coded, built, and distributed. And ZOS isn't either, considering how many people have left and joined the studio in the past 10 years. It would take immeasurable effort to deconstruct and rebuild all there is.

    They'd need to rebuild delivery pipelines, texture streaming, NPC behavior, collision and world, UI systems, particle engines blah blah blah...

    It'd be considerably more time, money, and effort than just making a new game.
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