Discussion: Extended Live Server Maintenance - Thursday, September 22, 2011
By
Aggelakis,
Posted on: 2011-09-21 10:36 in News, Events and Announcement Discussion
Quote:
I have a hard time believing you work in the software industry if you can't see the difference between a server being actively played on 24/7 vs a new version of your product you probably had weeks if not months to develop and test the new version for I'd guess under 1000 users. |
Originally Posted by FloatingFatMan
I work in a software house that provides 24/7 service to the paper industry. If we screwed up a live publish like this, people would be fired over it.
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Let me say I know a player in-game that had some additional issues with powers and rewards from i21 (greyed powers) and she spent at least an extra hour in petitioning and being available in game for a "dev" to help. She didn't whine or complain and ended up getting her 6th costume slot for free, had she complained like you? I doubt she'd have seen anything =)
I for one feel closer to the devs of CoH than any other game out there and would rather continue with a day of downtime each week. The streams are fun and make us all laugh, it's just a game, one we get to help test. Want a game without issues? Try one that doesn't add new content, I hear they don't need to do updates often.
Devs, doing a great job, despite all the unrealistic people out there. Working in the gaming industry is one thing, but on a MMO where you run the servers too?
Remember, Left 4 Dead may update and be ready to play, but it takes more than half the server population a day or MORE to notice and update and patch up. I bet most of you complaining about downtime have something you could do for someone. Look at the downtime as good for you =)
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I'm going to say yes. Yes it would. For it to do otherwise requires assuming those posting for compensation are just shallow folks looking to ***** when they post here, and not get anything from it.|
Originally Posted by Lothic
So will having like an extra day of time tacked onto your account really provide you any satisifaction here?
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Originally Posted by Olantern
Good lord. The level of entitlement this player base has developed sickens me.
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Quite sickening.
Regarding the treatment of the EU community:
- We still only get a maximum of a 6 month sub. (6+1 during promos.)
Compared to the NA 12 month (12+2).
- Downtimes during peak hours.
- Accounts and Globals second place to NA ones.
- Even NA banned accounts took priority over EU paying accounts during the server list merger.
- And for those who are unaware the NA/EU lists were merged prior to both the Trial account rename and any opportunity for players with both NA & EU accounts to rename theirs as appropriate.
I'm still sore that I lost my global to a confirmed INACTIVE NA account.
- Even NA banned accounts took priority over EU paying accounts during the server list merger.
- Find most events are in the early hours of the morning:
Last Thursdays and Mondays Costume Comps 1:30 AM BST! (2:30 AM CEST!)
I must however thank the DEVS for the earlier Friday one, 9:30 PM BST.
- As for EU events, the only CoH one in Europe recently was an unofficial one!
Note the following 2 EU events that NCsoft will be attending...
And you guessed it NO Paragon Studios.
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It would be nice to have a complementary gift or gesture of goodwill from Paragon Studios / NCsoft for all this.
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Originally Posted by NCLauncher
NCsoft will be attending Eurogamer Expo
September 20, 2011 11:29 AM We are pleased to announce that NCsoft will be attending this year's Eurogamer Expo! Following on from our extremely successful ... Quote:
September 20, 2011 4:28 PM We're delighted to confirm that NCsoft will be attending Paris Games Week 2011! Following on from our extremely successful demos ... Quote:
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Nuff Said...
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um while I was reading this thread I decided to log in.
Freedom server is down!?
or is it just me?
What happened?
At this rate, when the gw2 private beta launches I'll be staying there (with the rest of my guild who have also been invited) and not coming back to City of Freedom of waiting to play.
Now Liberty is down.
is this happening to anyone else or is it my system that has gone nuts?
Excessives maintenances lately. Too long, too often.
We want goodies in exchange, its been a crappy month for we "VIP" players.
That is some damn good timing. I get off of work at 4:30.
Now lets see if its only 12 hours. I wont be surprised if it goes over the scheduled time.
Umm, what happened to the servers? Did they start early?
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Originally Posted by Coolio
Regarding the treatment of the EU community:
It would be nice to have a complementary gift or gesture of goodwill from Paragon Studios / NCsoft for all this. |
1) I am *semi* certain that due to some stupid EU/UK regulation, that a 12 month subscription offer starts to constitute a contract, and that means that 18 year olds *cannot* subscribe to the game at that point in time.
2) Only when they overrun or are designated as "extended" do they start to hit into our peak time (ie 5pm onwards)... the *typical* downtime is normally over by 4pm... i do understand why players are annoyed at the moment as "short" downtimes seem to be in limited supply
3) Fair enough, i lost my Global as well (never seen the guy post on the forums either)...
4) If they are set to run on the "non" VIP american servers, i aint going to complain about the time frame. I do believe that the Exalted server events should have been ran at a more sensible time (or maybe twice at EU/US times), but with so many servers (i dont believe that all US servers are getting events either) it gets harder.
5) I believe that NCsoft are only going to be showing Guild Wars 2 and non of their other titles there (*possibly* something to do with Wildstar but i do not know).
Considering the timing of the events, i think it would have been a bad move for PS to hit them in a "heavy" fashion. Now if there was a UK gaming event that was during the summer months (no later than Leipzig Games con.. maybe a couple of weeks later) I would tell them to get their *** into gear and move it there...
And strangely enough, what we have now is a total reversal of what was happening a few years ago of when the EU had all the events/playermeets with staff, and the US players had *nothing*
Note: There have been 2 EU "unoffical" player meets in the UK in the past year(ish): one just happened, and one the year previously... and we are looking at possible venues for next years (if it does happen), and to be honest, we have had *no-one* from Paragon Studio's attend them either... a guy from Ncsoft yes, but not a member of Paragon Studios
Yeah... Something just broke 4 of the servers. http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showt...83#post3889483
Friends don't let friends buy an ncsoft controlled project.
old friend comes back....check
agree to meet up for long play session.....check
lose a day.....typical
i blame my friend
im just hoping you dont scare any returning veterans away
that ive been harping onto that the games changed cause they wont look back
ill be playing eve (pew pewing rocks)
The excessive downtime, crashing, and extended maintenance will, without question, generate a negative public image - and this is plainly evident.
Bemoan the folks who are complaining all you want, but it just looks as though you're coming to the defense of an injured dog, rather than for a service you are paying for. Can you find another fee based service you have that has had comparable repeated downtime/issues that you also stick your head up their arses when it happens?
When it gets this bad, it's time to wipe the poo from your nose and start drawing some lines.
-mouse
The servers crashing make it clear that further maintenance is NOT need...
waiiiit.
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1: Massive software upgrade.|
Originally Posted by IncredibleMouse
The excessive downtime, crashing, and extended maintenance will, without question, generate a negative public image - and this is plainly evident.
Bemoan the folks who are complaining all you want, but it just looks as though you're coming to the defense of an injured dog, rather than for a service you are paying for. Can you find another fee based service you have that has had comparable repeated downtime/issues that you also stick your head up their arses when it happens? When it gets this bad, it's time to wipe the poo from your nose and start drawing some lines. |
2: Multiple massive hardware upgrades.
3: Paragon PLAINLY doesn't have access to the funny-talking guy in the blue box.
When are they SUPPOSED to do them? During the witching hour?
Or are they supposed to just leave the problem, instead of being proactive, and wait until it's so bad that this looks like a good idea instead?
Jeeze. Reach down and get a grip.
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Maybe its time to blow up the game, close those servers and start working on CoH2
I don't care if you know why it's happening, why it needs to happen, what's going on over there with the devs, or anything else.
The fact remains, I'm paying for a service, and the service isn't delivering what I'm paying for. This is business, and they aren't doing business very well at all.
-mouse
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Irregular verb!|
Originally Posted by Olantern
Good lord. The level of entitlement this player base has developed sickens me.
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I am being ripped off.
You are complaining.
They have entitlement issues.
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Pretty much this. Speaking from experience, a 12 hour window for physically moving any kind of server farm is a lowball estimate. Usually, in a 9-to-5 world, this kind of thing is done on a weekend to mitigate user impact but, due to the 24/7 nature of the game, that wouldn't work here. Moving an entire farm usually takes a full day, minimum, if not two (hence the weekend) because you have to physically move the hardware, which is not an easy task in and of itself, set up the physical infrastructure again, test the physical to make sure there's proper connectivity and troubleshoot if there is not, then do a complete stress test to make sure the moved infrastructure isn't screwed up.|
Originally Posted by FloatingFatMan
So, a 12 hour downtime window, but they're actually physically relocating the servers?
Right, soo... See you all in about 48 hours then (and that's being optimistic). |
On the bright side, at least it's not a god awful SQL backend.
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Originally Posted by Zwillinger
We *always* significantly pad our estimates with additional time. So there is a chance the servers will be back online prior to what we estimated (there's also a chance it could go longer...that's just how these things work).
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It's pretty telling how much my friends and several SG mates feel about the estimated times; We've started a joke pool on the over/under of your "estimated" time several weeks ago. Almost everyone bets the over.
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The most logical explanation for a 12 hour "physical" move in a datacenter in 2011 is a set of virtualized servers is being relocated to a new virtual server cluster, and the 12 hours encompasses the time to transfer the data to a physically different SAN and restart everything.|
Originally Posted by Captiosus
Pretty much this. Speaking from experience, a 12 hour window for physically moving any kind of server farm is a lowball estimate. Usually, in a 9-to-5 world, this kind of thing is done on a weekend to mitigate user impact but, due to the 24/7 nature of the game, that wouldn't work here. Moving an entire farm usually takes a full day, minimum, if not two (hence the weekend) because you have to physically move the hardware, which is not an easy task in and of itself, set up the physical infrastructure again, test the physical to make sure there's proper connectivity and troubleshoot if there is not, then do a complete stress test to make sure the moved infrastructure isn't screwed up.
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No idea if City of Heroes runs on bare metal or virtual systems, but these days the unusual circumstance is running on bare metal, not running virtualized.
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It's Kahn, not Khan.
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Originally Posted by Derangedpolygot
Khaaaaannnn!
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Duo MoITF - 26:06 | Duo MoKahn - 25:50 | Duo MoLGTF - 29:34 |
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Thank you Gangrel. I'm glad someone remembers that it's us Oceanics that get hit every single time there's a patch or maintenance. This has been going on for around two months now but you EU guys are only starting to notice it because the downtimes have been longer and have extended into your peak times. I've stop tracking it now but I noted a few weeks ago that out of ten times my friends and I tried to play we were kicked off the servers an hour or so into starting seven times. It has gotten to the point now most of us are talking about which new MMO's we can try instead.|
Originally Posted by Gangrel_EU
Hell for once think about the poor Oceanic players....
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I must admit though I'm highly amused at the argument that this is all for our benefit. This is being done so that the company can get more players and make more money. (this is not a critiscm) We may benefit by getting more frequent additions to game but please don't treat us like fools by suggesting it's all just for us.
Now the question needs to be how long will the servers be up tomorrow before you will have to take them down again like seems to be sop here?
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Look at your User Agreement again bub.|
Originally Posted by IncredibleMouse
I don't care if you know why it's happening, why it needs to happen, what's going on over there with the devs, or anything else.
The fact remains, I'm paying for a service, and the service isn't delivering what I'm paying for. This is business, and they aren't doing business very well at all. |
You're paying for access to the service at all times BUT designated service intervals (which this is) and unforeseen events (like crashes).
As for not caring what the issues are sparking the need for this? Very adult.
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