Discussion: Extended Live Server Maintenance - Thursday, September 22, 2011

I highly recommend compensation for the extra ordinary amount of down time lately. Paragon points would be sufficient, or game time.

MORE downtime?!? This is becoming unacceptable! A lot of us who work dont get to play every day and I had two chances this week, Tues and Today. Guess what... yep, doesnt look like ill be playing this week. Glad Im paying for a game I cant play.

Aww... I finally have a day off to myself, too!
Boo bunnies.

Disgrace....yes. UStream??????? why dont you give an extra fricking hand and get things rolling on your end???? this really is getting ridiculous. Please dont think that the game is so very popular with masses of people knocking on the door to play. Read the posts......your continually shrinking, small player base is getting smaller and ticked off. Please dont think since the game is going to be free that you can increase these disgraceful acts and remain a small contender within the ranks of MMO's. Really guys??? The BS is getting deep.
Please dont think that you can appease the many folks who know, understand and work within the same realms as you all. We know that live publishing can be an ugly mess, but it seems you guys simply lack the management of resources to make this work. STOP already.

A downtime of this magnitude should have been announced via email.
Do not for for one second believe they didn't know they'd be doing this for some time.

I may not be a "tech-ie?", but I think they need some blue collar guys like me to get this done quicker. Obviously lifting things is NOT thier forte'

... sometimes even I am at a loss. As I have said before, and will state again clearly, so there will be absolutely NO misunderstanding:

Until such time as CoH Freedom actually goes live-WE ARE ALL BETA TESTERS!

In order to put forth the massive undertaking of upgrading AND going F2P, there are going to be many, many things that need to be tweaked now so that when it is released the tweaking will be at a minimum. This can only be accomplished one way: through massive player testing.

CoH beta is available to all paying customers now, but how many actually use it? (My guess is probably many of you reading this now...) Point is, not enough in any case to find the problems, idiosyncracies, flaws, deadspots, crashes, broken links, etc. ad nauseum. The things we find and report in game are the things that cause these downtimes. I would also imagine that certain implementations are staged rather than dumped in all at once to prevent a colossal cluster-f***.

The only way to gauge the impact of these implementations on existing code is for all of us to use the hell out of it and find out where the problems are.

Yes it sucks that it seems to always be down (especially for the EU folks), and yes I'm as irritated as anyone. But the thing is changes this dramatic always have a downside, and that usually means downtime to fix issues. Its unfortunate that we are paying for this downtime, but that is what makes all of this possible in the first place. I empathize with everyone's grievances, but we have no control over it (unless you choose to leave the game).

I feel for the EU players, but seriously I play from Japan so unless they start at 6am PST or later it cuts into my prime time every single week. It's annoying but that's the way it is folks.

Making threats, yelling, screaming, and carrying on won't make the servers come up any faster.

It's not like they could've avoided any downtime whatsoever. Obviously something had to be fixed, something serious, and even if you postpone you eventually have to bite the bullet and do it. Better to do it now, for a smoother ride later.

Plus, they started this upgrade at 1:30 in the morning. That's above and beyond the call of duty.

Have some patience and quell the Standard Forumite Rage, okay? Contribute to the gross national product or just play some other game today. You can get back to playing tonight.

As per the facebook page, they are actually physically moving servers. As in, they are shutting them down, packing them up, moving them somewhere else, doing their maintenance, and turning them back on.

That's going to take longer than a couple hours.

And to the crowd saying how ridiculous this is: This is the most drastic change this game has undergone. Ever. And you expect them to just flip a switch to make all of it happen? The servers need to be physically capable of running the game with all the changes. You don't see it, but in California there are 16 large computer servers in a room that can overheat, crash, melt down, and have anything happen to them that can happen to your computer at home.

Lets have the devs keep the servers active 24 hours a day for the next few months. Then instead of a couple 12 hour maintenance times, they can shut the game down for days or weeks while they replace the servers that had a complete meltdown.

It's only a video game. If it's really so important to you that not being able to play it for half a day sends your entire life into a tailspin....well, maybe you should look into some therapy or something to help you with that problem. Again, it's only a video game.

As much downtime as we have had since the VIP started, you guys seriously need to credit at least 1 extra day to the paying customers who are beta testing for you.

It's really too bad this is a hardware issue, as in server changes and actual psychical machines/servers that are being removed, replaced and having their data transferred. If anyone here has ever done a system back up, hard drive replacement I hope you can understand what the heck is taking so long.

For those of us who have never done this, you'll find it takes a heck of a long time to back up all the data you need to save, verify that your back up has all the information you need and then replacing your hard drive, putting your OS and then reinstalling all your data back to a working state. Then you need to test and check that everything is installed both physically and digitally.

I didn't notice anything in these 10 or so pages that mentions this is a Hardware upgrade and not just some simple coding issue. So I thought I'd point that out, flame at me about down times and how it's not fair, and I'll flame back about nerfs and what not to my play time too. Everyone everywhere everyday will have an opinion about something they don't like, can't change, or have to deal with just to vent. I feel that is the main use of boards and threads like this. Vent away and find a solution that you feel is right.

Complain to CSR, post more threads, get a group of players to complain in game (when it's live that is) in petitions and what not. But don't hate PlayNC or the workers who for the most part really care about the game. To them, I'm quite sure, seeing the servers down for this long is like watching a good friend or dare I say child undergoing a delicate surgery. Would you want the doctor to rush Brain Surgery on your close loved one? I think not. 12 hours is a lot of time, but give the Devs some slack.

Thank you for reading my block of text. If you made it this far, your someone who actually takes the time to read a post and who knows, may be able to understand why this happening without flaming everyone with a contrasting opinion.

Now, away I go to the shadows to be ignored once more!

Edit: ClawsandEffect beat me to the punch with the pointing out about the hardware issue here, so it HAS been metioned in the last 10 pages lol

I honestly would prefer paragon points as compensation. What you say fellow forumites?

You know, I can understand maintenance here and there, but this is getting ridiculous to be honest. If lets say my cable service went off for 3 days, I wouldn't be charged those 3 days. I know because its happened to me. You just have to call and complain.

Now I know I hit the Agree button like everyone else and that legally screws me over from getting any type of compensation for the cash I paid and the game time I'm losing, but that doesn't mean they can't do whats right and give something to quell the masses. It would be a good business move and give back a little of the faith some of us have lost in paragon studios.

Its not really the downtime that bugs me, it's the lack of proper planning and communication.

Multiple lengthy downtimes and failed efforts to remedy long term problems suggest that no-one is looking far enough ahead to create contingencies for the problems that they should see coming.

Players such as myself are becoming frustrated because no-one is giving us sufficient advance warning of situations like todays. This server transfer has got to be big enough so that it has been planned for at least a week. If we had been told then, alot of angst could have been avoided.

Someone at a mangement level has decided that it is better for the company to keep these details back until the last moment.

Oh, and by the way - this thread is a prefectly natural place for people to vent their feelings. If this annoys you and causes you to make snide or insulting remarks then perhaps you should go elsewhere?