Am I reading it correctly: 14 Hours for Patch Maintenance?

Aerius_Sygale · June 8

Is that for real? Over half a day straight for an update to put in the Werewolf Refresh, and a few Dynamic Encounters...? Or will it not actually be taking that obscene amount of time?

Kickimanjaro · June 8

Yes, sometimes they do finish up a little early though.

Edit: and sometimes a little late.

MidniteOwl1913 · June 8

Yes, for me it means no ESO at all today. PDT shutdown before dinner not back up until tomorrow.

Maintanence has become longer and longer and more frequent.

I don't see that changing.

heimdall14_9 · June 8

it would seem they are doing maintenance along side of update so 14 hours really aint that bad when you look back at we've had just maintenance take that long before

BardokRedSnow · June 8

If it takes 24 hours I wouldn't care, do it right or not at all. Let them take the time they need.

Gabriel_H · June 8

Aerius_Sygale wrote: »

Is that for real? Over half a day straight for an update to put in the Werewolf Refresh, and a few Dynamic Encounters...? Or will it not actually be taking that obscene amount of time?

Take servers offline
Perform entire system backup
Disk management, defragmentation and cleanup
Upload new code
Verify integrity of code
Spin server up for private use to test
Bring servers online publicly

It doesn't matter if it's 100MB or 100GB proper server maintenance takes time. Add into that they are now updating three different platforms at once, with the same sized team as before. So the two console platforms start earlier, while the PC one starts later, but all 3 need to come online at the same time.

Haenk · June 8

Gabriel_H wrote: »

Take servers offline
Perform entire system backup
Disk management, defragmentation and cleanup
Upload new code
Verify integrity of code
Spin server up for private use to test
Bring servers online publicly

Not using multiple server pools to quasi-instantly switch between revisions is a monetary decision, not a technical decision.

Gabriel_H · June 8

Haenk wrote: »

Gabriel_H wrote: »

Take servers offline
Perform entire system backup
Disk management, defragmentation and cleanup
Upload new code
Verify integrity of code
Spin server up for private use to test
Bring servers online publicly

Not using multiple server pools to quasi-instantly switch between revisions is a monetary decision, not a technical decision.

And will you be providing the necessary funds to ZOS? Then it's going to be a 14 hour maintenance.

And regardless of financing, there would still be 3 platform server types, as they C++ code is different for each one.

Orbital78 · June 8

Better to estimate too long rather than low and extend multiple times. They have to bring down old campaigns and bring up the vengeance campaign. The patch is also fairly significant.

Treeshka · June 8

Aerius_Sygale wrote: »

Is that for real? Over half a day straight for an update to put in the Werewolf Refresh, and a few Dynamic Encounters...? Or will it not actually be taking that obscene amount of time?

They also close some Cyrodiil campaigns and bring Vengeance in permanently. If i remember right these also take extra time.

merevie · June 8

'Never play on patch day' is a thing. At least this time it won't constantly be taken down. Well, yes, it will. Just plan something else for 48hrs.

albertberku · June 8

Do you like die when you dont play on a Monday on mostly dead hours, 2-3 times in a month? My god, MMO players...

How long does it suppose to take? A major release, all servers at once, a MMO with this scale. And maybe possibly some backend work for future updates planned, like Crossplay, as they announced before.

Same thread every single maintenance day. I assume you would want it more than anyone else in the world to have as less downtime as possible, when you are a billion dollar company with a massive MMO as the main product. Or not?

Old_Foggy · June 8

I do understand the need for maintenance and I'm glad they do it where some other games fail and quests etc cannot be completed because of the lack of proper maintenance. I for one won't complain about downtime but I do worry how it will be if and when they do this cross platform thing.

Gabriel_H · June 8

merevie wrote: »

'Never play on patch day' is a thing. At least this time it won't constantly be taken down. Well, yes, it will. Just plan something else for 48hrs.

I still remember old WoW patch days. Maintenance will end at 9am ... sorry, we meant 11am ... erm, it's going to be after lunch ... good evening everyone, sorry about that we're just doing final tests and the server should be up in an hour ... did we say hour, we meant tomorrow.

MikeSkyrim333 · June 8

Its update 50 maintenance. What do you expect?

noblecron · June 8

I don't mind the long maintenance. THey're adding new rigging removing old rigging plus putting in new content some of which completely overhauls a starting zone. Completely understandable.

I also have other games I can play in the meantime

marcbf · June 8

It has to be said that one "mega server" consists of many actual servers. Those need to be taken down and spun up in a staggering fashion. Which of course takes time. Still hope they're done earlier than advertised, though.

Sylosi · June 8

People complain because it is 2026 not 1996 and most online services have little to no regular downtime (that the user sees) and that includes some games, even some MMORPGs (GW2, OSR, etc).

DarkStrifeYT · June 8

Its a major update, unlike maintenance which is quickly done by bringing over a sandboxed environment on patches and fixes this one they have to legit import so much changes and fixes on top of that. If they didn't well gl falling into the void nonstop.

tomofhyrule · June 8

Sylosi wrote: »

People complain because it is 2026 not 1996 and most online services have little to no regular downtime (that the user sees) and that includes some games, even some MMORPGs (GW2, OSR, etc).

And a lot of those update-while-it’s-running systems are also patented, meaning other companies can’t do them without incurring legal penalties. Which is exactly why their companies did it - the number of people who say “game X does it so we should play game X instead!”

Not to mention that ESO’s architecture of megaservers is unique in that you don’t need to swap server shards to play with friends like in most other MMOs, but at the expense that you can’t swap megaservers.

Sylosi · June 8

tomofhyrule wrote: »

Sylosi wrote: »

People complain because it is 2026 not 1996 and most online services have little to no regular downtime (that the user sees) and that includes some games, even some MMORPGs (GW2, OSR, etc).

And a lot of those update-while-it’s-running systems are also patented, meaning other companies can’t do them without incurring legal penalties. Which is exactly why their companies did it - the number of people who say “game X does it so we should play game X instead!”

Not to mention that ESO’s architecture of megaservers is unique in that you don’t need to swap server shards to play with friends like in most other MMOs, but at the expense that you can’t swap megaservers.

Anet's patents aren't worth the metaphorical paper they are written on. Nearly every online service these days has little to no downtime and the vast majority just use variations on the same basic technique (which is having redundant capacity that you can perform maintenance and updates on whilst your live servers are still up).

Nor for that matter, did Anet's patents stop OSR from implementing a minimal-downtime system long after Anet had already "invented it". (we will just ignore that these things were invented back in the 80's with stuff like Ericsson coming up with Erlang specifically to have no downtime for telephony sytems)

As for "megaservers", GW2 also has "megaservers", that architecture is actually an advantage if you want to implement a minimal downtime model.

AlienSlof · June 8

I'm just going to play Satisfactory today.

Fenris_Arainai · June 8

Why are you surprised? Their standard time is 8 (!) hours. So a longer maintenance is 12 or more.

So yeah, this game's maintenance times are ridiculously long. Nothing new.

Daoin · June 8

but its still supposed to be open 4 hours from now ?

Eldartar · June 8

I'd rather them take all day if need be, rather than "rushing" a Patch/Update through just to please impatient people and then have to take down the servers again to fix the problems encountered.

Do it once and do it right the first time, no matter how long it takes.

erickhwk · June 8

For me, it's the most expected update since Greymoor chapter. I'm good with them taking their time for a smooth update.

Major_Soulless · June 8

Id rather it be smooth in 14 hours than buggy in 8 tbh.

This update seems significant so the extra time is justified

SkillzMFG · June 8

People talking as if it's not going to be buggy even after 14 hours lol

Major_Soulless · June 8

SkillzMFG wrote: »

People talking as if it's not going to be buggy even after 14 hours lol

They aren't that incompetent.

Right

tomofhyrule · June 8

Also remember that the last quarterly was down extra time to do some backend crossplay prep, and we also got another round of backend crossplay prep on PTS week 5.

It’s extremely likely that that crossplay backend is also in this patch, which is why it’s longer.

SerafinaWaterstar · June 8

Want new / improved stuff in game.

Complain when / how they do it.

Welcome to the ESO Forums! 🤣

The Elder Scrolls Online

Am I reading it correctly: 14 Hours for Patch Maintenance?

Best Answer