Discussion: Live Server Maintenance - 9/17/11
By
15bribri15,
Posted on: 2011-09-16 18:53 in News, Events and Announcement Discussion
Disappointing.
As Uber said, not because they are fixing things -- that is always good -- but because they have to fix things. This is the third, several hour shutdown this week.
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Originally Posted by Death_Badger
I always thought a hotfix was applied to software that was still running.
Anyway world won't end with a bit of downtime, luckily we are paying for the privilege of using buggy software so that the non payers can come in to a smooth service. |
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Originally Posted by Jetpack
/nod - it was pushed out a bit early, but these things happen.
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Originally Posted by CactusBrawler
I very rarely, as in once in a blue moon get time off from work. This week is one of those rare occasions, but I've had down time pretty much every day, because rather than using the beta to fix stuff, the devs or marketing or whoever decided to push a buggy build onto the servers.
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"Superman died fighting Doomsday because he allowed his toggles to drop, and didn't beat Doomsday before Unstoppable wore off, sad really..."
If it had been *me* there wouldn't be any EU players coming to my house with sticks and a score, because there never would've *been* EU players, the game simply wouldn't have been released to that market, and if they wanted to play they'd buy a US copy and deal with the US rules and downtime. As much as I understand NCSoft's "business decisions" I've never been happy with how much catering they've done to the EU group "lately" (they used to fairly well ignore them, as you stated). When they changed the maintenance time to accomodate the EU players, it fell right smack dab into the middle of my usual top playing time (I keep strange hours and tend to play from about 1am est up till about 10-11am EST when I am free, maintenance runs 7am-10am when it's "normal" now). Sure, that's probably a bit petty, but everyone else in the thread is being kinda petty right now, so I feel I'm within my rights to do it too.
Out of curiosity though, aside from largely being ignored and playing second fiddle to the US servers, what is it you feel the EU players have "had to deal with in the past" exactly?
Honestly, I see it as neccisary evil. I play a fun F2P WW2-related game that was developed by Russian devs. For all intents and purposes the US players of said game are basically red-headed stepchildren compared to the RU and EU servers, but I can't really expect much else, can I? The game is "native" to Russia, and the EU is closer. As much as it annoys me, I don't complain, it's a "home" game to them. That's just how it works, same reason Canadians pay way more for stuff than we do.
"Superman died fighting Doomsday because he allowed his toggles to drop, and didn't beat Doomsday before Unstoppable wore off, sad really..."
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One could, if one were feeling cheeky, apply this logic to your own apparent need to tell others to stop complaining. After all, reading the forums is an entirely optional activity.|
Originally Posted by PeerlessGirl
Get off your high horses and deal with it, or for the love of Pete, find something else to do for four hours. Might I suggest calming meditation. Or strong drugs.
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Of course, I would never be so bold as to suggest such a thing...
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I like the cut of your jib.
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Originally Posted by Voidstalker
One could, if one were feeling cheeky, apply this logic to your own apparent need to tell others to stop complaining. After all, reading the forums is an entirely optional activity.
Of course, I would never be so bold as to suggest such a thing... |
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Once upon a time, there was a European presence. There was a European publisher that had servers in Europe and maintenance that didn't affect EU prime time, there were a European board, they had European game fair presence, European shelf presence, even European marketing in game magazines. |
Originally Posted by PeerlessGirl
Out of curiosity though, aside from largely being ignored and playing second fiddle to the US servers, what is it you feel the EU players have "had to deal with in the past" exactly?
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We European customers entered a business agreement with that publisher, by the way. I.e. "we give you, the Euro corporation in Brighton, UK, our monies, and you let us play on your Euro servers in Frankfurt, Germany".
That publisher was killed. With it, any kind of European presence was killed - no more fairs, no more marketing, not even boxes in European stores!
The European forums were killed, the European forum community was smashed to smithereens, and we had to move over here. The nice things were that if there were a name collision, both parties were equally affected.
That didn't happen at the server list merge. Well, the merge was nice, but if there were any name collisions, the European player was the one shafted and lost their global name.
Still @Shadow Kitty
"I became Archvillain before Statesman nerfed himself!"
I see why it's needed, the lag over the last couple of days has been impressive.
I know that there are a LOT of moving parts in the server setup for the game.
I KNOW that it's not an easy job to figure out what's broken, then figure out how to fix it.
Yet given all that, I'm still NOT happy that yet again it's EU primetime getting the hammer. Especially since it's eating into the later end of primetime.
Between repeatedly losing playtime this last week to maintenance and being logged out of the damn boards every 3 minutes, my patience is running low.
Well, at least I *can* play the game when it's up, unlike previous posters who can't even log in.
Warning:
The above post may contain Cynicism, sarcasm and/or pessimism. If you object to the quantities contained, then tough.
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I'm honestly trying to understand this...I assume in some form or fashion you're talking about NCSoft or some branch of it, but I'm not entirely sure I understand what you mean. The way I understood it (and could be wrong) CoH was/is an American-developed product released first in the US, and only later released in the EU on a different set of servers and a different 'game" entirely (so much so you had to buy the appropriate copy of the game to play on that server list).|
Originally Posted by Shadow_Kitty
We European customers entered a business agreement with that publisher, by the way. I.e. "we give you, the Euro corporation in Brighton, UK, our monies, and you let us play on your Euro servers in Frankfurt, Germany".
That publisher was killed. With it, any kind of European presence was killed - no more fairs, no more marketing, not even boxes in European stores! The European forums were killed, the European forum community was smashed to smithereens, and we had to move over here. The nice things were that if there were a name collision, both parties were equally affected. |
I can't see how they'd need to kill any publisher to do that, but maybe I don't fully understand how it went down. Later after CoH was released in the US (and presumably the EU) (around issue 4) they attempted to market the game to Korea as "City of Hero" but it didn't end up taking off, and was cancelled just before it was to launch. That's also where the old "offline costume creator" (that was current up to i4) used to come from. It was designed and marketed to/for them, because so much of their internet use was from cafes, and this way someone could use a computer at home, and work on costumes and characters there. I used to have a copy of that creator before I lost my HDD, it was still useful up till about CoV.
"Superman died fighting Doomsday because he allowed his toggles to drop, and didn't beat Doomsday before Unstoppable wore off, sad really..."
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However, you have just highlighted the massive difference between the other game you mention and CoH.|
Originally Posted by PeerlessGirl
If it had been *me* there wouldn't be any EU players coming to my house with sticks and a score, because there never would've *been* EU players, the game simply wouldn't have been released to that market, and if they wanted to play they'd buy a US copy and deal with the US rules and downtime. As much as I understand NCSoft's "business decisions" I've never been happy with how much catering they've done to the EU group "lately" (they used to fairly well ignore them, as you stated). When they changed the maintenance time to accomodate the EU players, it fell right smack dab into the middle of my usual top playing time (I keep strange hours and tend to play from about 1am est up till about 10-11am EST when I am free, maintenance runs 7am-10am when it's "normal" now). Sure, that's probably a bit petty, but everyone else in the thread is being kinda petty right now, so I feel I'm within my rights to do it too.
Out of curiosity though, aside from largely being ignored and playing second fiddle to the US servers, what is it you feel the EU players have "had to deal with in the past" exactly? Honestly, I see it as neccisary evil. I play a fun F2P WW2-related game that was developed by Russian devs. For all intents and purposes the US players of said game are basically red-headed stepchildren compared to the RU and EU servers, but I can't really expect much else, can I? The game is "native" to Russia, and the EU is closer. As much as it annoys me, I don't complain, it's a "home" game to them. That's just how it works, same reason Canadians pay way more for stuff than we do. |
City of Heroes STARTED (nearly) with an EU presence. They made the decision "We will have the EU in here too." There was an EU team, events, all that.
And then it died. For a very long time, EU players went from being equals to US players, as it should be, to being practically ignored by support and devs alike. We had no events (we still barely do, the only one I know of was player organised), no competitions, no acknowledgement whatsoever.
And, had it ONLY been a US game (like the Russian one you mention), then yes, we would have had to suck it up. Because, you know, it would always have been that way.
But it was not a US only game. Do you see the difference there?
Thankfully, the current Dev and Community team have gone a long way to repairing that damage. Zwill, Second and Beastyle showing up in PD, on the live servers no less (A big deal. The Devs might as well not have existed for us given the times they ever showed up compared to the US servers [i.e. never]), Avatea being an absolute dear every time she's been around (and fixing things like griefers in Pocket D) and the EU finally getting in on contests and the like.
The EU group are as big a part of the community as the US side, maybe not numerically, but certainly with nearly as much impact. We've been here from nearly Day 1 (ok, maybe day 2, heh), unlike your example. And we pay our subs the same as anyone, which in turn means equal treatment. It's really that simple.
Edit: I realise Issue 4 isn't exactly 'Day 1'. However, the EU crowd have still been around for 17/21 Issues. That's still well over half.
I guess my point is; had the game never had EU servers, EU dedicated stuff and suchnot, then so be it. It'd be the same other games with similar models. But that choice was made, and so should be honoured. For the most part, these days, it is, which is good. And necessary maintenance is still necessary, don't get me wrong.
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Originally Posted by Zwillinger
GG, I would tell you that "I am killing you with my mind", but I couldn't find an emoticon to properly express my sentiment.
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Originally Posted by Captain_Photon
NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.
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It's all the server hamster's fault. Someone "accidentally" fed him some water from the Well of Furies, and now Paragon Studios has a fully Incarnate hamster playing havoc with their network. How can you expect the servers to withstand frequent tier 4 Ion Judgments and constant summoning of angry hamster Cimerorans? Last night he unlocked the Omega slot, which is clearly a violation of the EULA, so they have no choice but to take the servers down and send in some incarnate gerbils to "arrest" the server hamster.
Positron isn't available for comment because he's still recovering from an Ion Judgment to the face. Hell hath no fury like a hamster scorned.
And yes, it probably is a Nemesis plot. Nemesis asked for some vacation time this weekend, but his request was denied.
Anyone come up with a picture of a hamster in Ascension armor? 
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I am glad its today, I'm getting reblonded at noon (eastern) so that's good. |
Originally Posted by White Hot Flash
I've never understood why people complain when a game with bugs is getting some of those bugs fixed.
You'd seriously rather play a game that's less stable or more buggy, or both? I21 will still be just as shiny when the game comes back online. A few hours of not playing it won't kill anyone. |
And yes, thanks to the devs for coming in on Saturday to fix something that quite possiblely might not have needed fixing had they waited to release I21 when it was more stable and had fewer issues.
Thanks, NC Soft, for closing my favorite game ever without warning and with plenty of life still left in it, and thus relieving me of the burden of EVER wanting to buy, try or even hear about another game from your company. Will my decision make a dent, or persuade them in anyway, shape or form? Nope, obviously not. Don't care. NC Soft is dead to me. ~ PsyFox
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City of Heroes was originally developed by American company Cryptic, and published by NC Soft's US branch (NC Soft is Korean, but has an international presence through affiliate companies in other countries). It was released to the EU market through NC Europe in February 2005.|
Originally Posted by PeerlessGirl
I'm honestly trying to understand this...I assume in some form or fashion you're talking about NCSoft or some branch of it, but I'm not entirely sure I understand what you mean.
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Then, in september 2008, NC Europe, NC Interactive, NC Austin and ArenaNet were merged into NC West. Although never confirmed, it is likely that the Tabula Rasa spectacle was one of the reasons. The Brighton office was all but closed and the CoH EU operations moved to US.
Still @Shadow Kitty
"I became Archvillain before Statesman nerfed himself!"
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Not forgetting the EU players are still forced to lose out on all the 12 month +2 subscription bonuses, best we get is 6+1, as the longest sub you can buy for an EU account is 6 months!|
Originally Posted by Shadow_Kitty
City of Heroes was originally developed by American company Cryptic, and published by NC Soft's US branch (NC Soft is Korean, but has an international presence through affiliate companies in other countries). It was released to the EU market through NC Europe in February 2005.
Then, in september 2008, NC Europe, NC Interactive, NC Austin and ArenaNet were merged into NC West. Although never confirmed, it is likely that the Tabula Rasa spectacle was one of the reasons. The Brighton office was all but closed and the CoH EU operations moved to US. |
Yes even with CoH:Freedom!!!
BTW did you know that ALL NA accounts took priority during the merger?
Yeah it included: Trials, Banned, Permabanned, etc.
N.B. I lost my ACTIVE EU @GLOBAL to an inactive NA ACCOUNT during the server list merge.
Nuff Said...
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^ Ditto this. Which I am still passively hacked off about.
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Originally Posted by Zwillinger
GG, I would tell you that "I am killing you with my mind", but I couldn't find an emoticon to properly express my sentiment.
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Originally Posted by Captain_Photon
NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.
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YAY! The 4 hours I was just about to play BEFORE I had to leave for work, I can't play now! Thanks NCsoft! Let me go buy 12039102391023 paragon points! NOT.
Horrible, now I need to do everything I was going to do today to get my new char to 50, IO it, and start incarnate stuff, ALL tomorrow instead of doing all trials tomorrow. GREAT service!
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Thankfully they DID change any non-paid trial account to a random global @TRIAL XXXXX before the integration. I had checked several globals with my NA account and they had been changed afterwards.
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Originally Posted by Coolio
Not forgetting the EU players are still forced to lose out on all the 12 month +2 subscription bonuses, best we get is 6+1, as the longest sub you can buy for an EU account is 6 months!
Yes even with CoH:Freedom!!! BTW did you know that ALL NA accounts took priority during the merger? Yeah it included: Trials, Banned, Permabanned, etc. N.B. I lost my ACTIVE EU @GLOBAL to an inactive NA ACCOUNT during the server list merge. |
Tyger (50), Mutation-Controller Mind/FF - oldest Mind/FF on Union
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Originally Posted by Dispari
I don't know why Dink thinks she's not as sexy as Jay was. In 5 posts she's already upstaged his entire career.
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I understand being frustrated when something you were looking forward to gets blindsided, but they're going to implement a hotfix for a critical server instability problem just as soon as it's ready. Unfortunately, this time that happened to fall right in the middle of a peak playtime. Look at it this way: your planned play time wouldn't have been a whole lot less frustrating if the server had been unstable. Nothing like crashing in the middle of a fight or rubber-banding through every mission...|
Originally Posted by 15bribri15
YAY! The 4 hours I was just about to play BEFORE I had to leave for work, I can't play now! Thanks NCsoft! Let me go buy 12039102391023 paragon points! NOT.
Horrible, now I need to do everything I was going to do today to get my new char to 50, IO it, and start incarnate stuff, ALL tomorrow instead of doing all trials tomorrow. GREAT service! |
Chill. This actually is good customer service.
"And in this moment, I will not run.
It is my place to stand.
We few shall carry hope
Within our bloodied hands."
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I work in IT. My team both receives lots of "hotfix" patches from vendors and occasionally creates them for our own software.|
Originally Posted by Death_Badger
I always thought a hotfix was applied to software that was still running.
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A "hotfix" is just a targeted patch, often for one software component, that's released outside of a normal patch schedule, usually due to urgent need. Regular patch schedules typically include patches to multiple bugs across multiple components, where a hotfix is usually just to fix one thing.
Whether or not a "hotfix" can be applied to running software depends immensely on the nature of the software and on what's being patched. Having to stop the software for the patch to be picked up is typical.
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HAHAHAHAHAHA this made me laugh XD they need an incarnate sewer rat to run the servers... They are tough and can take a lot of stress :P
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Originally Posted by TwilightsRequiem
It's all the server hamster's fault. Someone "accidentally" fed him some water from the Well of Furies, and now Paragon Studios has a fully Incarnate hamster playing havoc with their network. How can you expect the servers to withstand frequent tier 4 Ion Judgments and constant summoning of angry hamster Cimerorans? Last night he unlocked the Omega slot, which is clearly a violation of the EULA, so they have no choice but to take the servers down and send in some incarnate gerbils to "arrest" the server hamster.
Positron isn't available for comment because he's still recovering from an Ion Judgment to the face. Hell hath no fury like a hamster scorned. And yes, it probably is a Nemesis plot. Nemesis asked for some vacation time this weekend, but his request was denied. Anyone come up with a picture of a hamster in Ascension armor? |
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Something for ppl to use
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Right. They can either stick a band-aid on a sucking chest wound of a problem and nurse it along with people petitioning every few seconds for an entire weekend.|
Originally Posted by Rajani Isa
Because when you need to do a critical patch, the time when the least number of people affected is always when the patch becomes available to you? Lucky you.
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Or they can fix it. They took the right approach here.
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| The teams have been going nuts all week. |
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| And for all we know, half the reason they chose 9AM Pacific is because that lets them patch /after/ it's cleared some kind of testing script that takes a while to run. |
Clicking on the linked image above will take you off the City of Heroes site. However, the guides will be linked back here.
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Question. Would you rather be playing but crashing out and having errors roll you back and glitches screwing the game up?|
Originally Posted by CactusBrawler
Yay another prime time EU downtime,I love those, thank you ever so much for spoiling us with another, wow four in a week and this one is even on a Saturday wow, thank you ever, ever, ever so much.
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You must be WAY more tolerant of that crap than I am.
Clicking on the linked image above will take you off the City of Heroes site. However, the guides will be linked back here.
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They've already pulled several overnighters this week.|
Originally Posted by Blue Rabbit
Although I commend you for coming on a Saturday I can't help but notice that yet again EU prime time gets hit hard. For the 4th time in less than week. I understand that it needs to be fixed but come on! Couldn't you come in a little bit earlier? As it is I and a lot of players aren't able to log in and we'll have to wait basically until tomorrow to play.
Again, thanks for coming in on a saturday and all, but geez! This is getting ridiculous! |
Plus, this patch may not have emerged from Q&A until late last night.
Clicking on the linked image above will take you off the City of Heroes site. However, the guides will be linked back here.
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If that were the case, they could have done it overnight or in the very early morning - the post announcing the downtime was just before 10p EDT.|
Originally Posted by Dollhouse
I understand being frustrated when something you were looking forward to gets blindsided, but they're going to implement a hotfix for a critical server instability problem just as soon as it's ready. Unfortunately, this time that happened to fall right in the middle of a peak playtime. Look at it this way: your planned play time wouldn't have been a whole lot less frustrating if the server had been unstable. Nothing like crashing in the middle of a fight or rubber-banding through every mission...
Chill. This actually is good customer service. |
It's great that they're willing to pay people to come in to work on it on Saturday* but if they were going to do it "as soon as it's ready" then it would've gone in overnight when the fewest players are on. At my last job anything critical enough to pull things down during a peak activity time happened as soon as they knew about it (ie, no announcement 14 hours in advance) and anything that could wait 14 hours could wait until 3am when the rest of the maintenance gets done.
* - which really probably means they're salaried and don't get overtime, my natural cynicism points out
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Originally Posted by PleaseRecycle
it has gone from unconscionable to downright appalling that we have no way of measuring our characters' wetness.
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Originally Posted by Brillig
It's hard to beat the entertainment value of Whackjob Wednesdays.
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Back off, man.
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Originally Posted by TwilightsRequiem
It's all the server hamster's fault. Someone "accidentally" fed him some water from the Well of Furies, and now Paragon Studios has a fully Incarnate hamster playing havoc with their network. How can you expect the servers to withstand frequent tier 4 Ion Judgments and constant summoning of angry hamster Cimerorans? Last night he unlocked the Omega slot, which is clearly a violation of the EULA, so they have no choice but to take the servers down and send in some incarnate gerbils to "arrest" the server hamster.
Positron isn't available for comment because he's still recovering from an Ion Judgment to the face. Hell hath no fury like a hamster scorned. And yes, it probably is a Nemesis plot. Nemesis asked for some vacation time this weekend, but his request was denied. Anyone come up with a picture of a hamster in Ascension armor? |
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Rock, rock on Hamster.
Although I commend you for coming on a Saturday I can't help but notice that yet again EU prime time gets hit hard. For the 4th time in less than week. I understand that it needs to be fixed but come on! Couldn't you come in a little bit earlier? As it is I and a lot of players aren't able to log in and we'll have to wait basically until tomorrow to play.
Again, thanks for coming in on a saturday and all, but geez! This is getting ridiculous!
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