GG blizz

[JoeMuggs]

You can't tell me someone tested this POS patch and came to the conclusion that it was ready to go live. I mean would waiting another week or two been so bad ><

[Havoc Jack]

Did you test the patch?

[bwirum]

Isn't this the exact same comment that comes after each and every patch?

Either we need to shut up and put up or Blizzard seriously needs to review their Q&A.

[Oatmealsmurf]

Nah I think this patch was worse than others in the past. I expect lag maybe a restart here or there when a new patch goes live but this patch clearly wasn't ready and if problems with the cross realm battlegrounds are going to cause entire battlegroups to be taken off line then they really need to test more thouroughly and maybe second guess this approach.

Watching all the realms go down and be taken completely offline so that they don't show on the realm list last night was ridiculous. At one point there were more realms down than up.

[Jugthug]

Guys, you need to realize that on the patch realms, they didnt have 10 different servers are linked together. So reguardless there are going to be problems. I dont understand why you cant just go watch TV or browse the net for a few hours. Maybe god forbid not play for a day. Relax...

This patch was a huge change to gameplay, next time, go into a patch of this caliber expecting problems for the first few days.

[rgirty]

Blizz has a growth problem with WoW. Any and every company that has expanded at such a rapid rate has these types of issues. Eventually when *if* growth levels off Blizz will catch up until then the best thing is to be patient. For 15$ a month it is still the best entertainment value for the money. After all, if it wasn't so good there wouldn't be 4000 people here simply discussing it.

[MellanCholera]

with a patch of this magnitude and affecting the network, you'd think they would have piloted it out to one server cluster at a time, since yeah, they didn't have 10 test servers and enough people to test it. but, well that's hindsight.

don't worry, i'm sure people will get fired over this one, this is the worst ever. I don't plan on playing much the next week, since there's no way they'll get this fixed anytime soon. Cross server lag problems are just the worst. It's not like they can just throw more bandwidth at it. They've got all sorts of synch problems, and unlike those of us that work in IT, game developers aren't as good at multithreading and syncing and esp. syncing across servers. They just don't ever do it.

They really need to hire new project managers. It's not the devs or QA, the project manager is ultimately responsible for getting everyone on the same page, and they have consistently failed. I think hiring from more professional minded pool outside the game industry would be the best bet.

[Xaero]

Its always easier to sit on the outside and point fingers when things go wrong than it is to actually be in the fire trying to put it out. A patch of this magnitude was bound to have some problems and only a niave idiot would expect otherwise.

Go outside, get some sun. or watch TV, read a book. Its not like they are EA, who won't even acknowledge gamebreaking bugs.

[Wasabee]

I want to Thank Blizz for trying to update content and do "new things". I accept the casualty of not being able to play sometimes. I would hope they could credit for the down time. (Look at peak hours and make adjustments accordingly.) I don't care if the server is down between 1am and 5pm, or during the time I'm at work. When it impacts the time I do have to play, that's when I'm concerned, but even then stuff happens and they should have it fixed soon.

Nice try Blizz, keep trying!

[Piemaster]

If I see one more thread (on any forum) with the title 'GG Blizz' or 'GG Blizzard' I'm going to scream. If you're going to whine at least come up with an original title.

[SirBazturd]

I don't like how Blizzard handles their product any more than most people. But I enjoy the game so I put up with it.



There are only a few ways to make your point.
1. Cancel your subscription.
2. Get in touch with the people who run Venvidi or Blizzard.

[rgirty]

Yeah, if 1 million upset people would cancel that would get their attention!

It would also take the load off the system and the rest of us would have less trouble :P

[Dynatos]

This gave me time to start a new alt! (Since to hell if I'm going to pay the repair costs of dying to lag on my epic-geared Druid or my semi-geared Warrior).

[bhroam]

I personally know enough about networks and databases to know that what blizzard has to deal with is anything but simple. They can only QA these things so much on the PTRs... and when you throw 6 million people at it, everything is gonna goto hell in a handbasket.

So one would think that doing rolling upgrades would be the way to go. You upgrade one realm or battlegroup... see how it goes before unstablizing all the servers. Well Blizzard does this as much as they can. The problem comes back to the fact that in order to handle 6 million people, they had to parallelize things. They did this by making 250+ servers. Everyone can choose to make accounts on any server.

The problem lies right there. The game lies on your computer. If they upgrade one server or battlegroup and patch all the ppl who log onto those servers, those people are no longer backwards compatible to any other server. You can't run 1.12 on a 1.11 server.

Now it is possible to code in a backward compatible way... but thats a lot of effort for blizzard to do for very little good. I'd expect you'd see a patch take twice as long... just for the week of stability for patching.

I hate the instability of patch week as much as the next person... I can accept it for the speed of these patches coming out. A major patch greatly enhances gameplay... and these happen every few months.

OK enough babbling....

[Xlorep DarkHelm]

I personally know enough about networks and databases to know that what blizzard has to deal with is anything but simple. They can only QA these things so much on the PTRs... and when you throw 6 million people at it, everything is gonna goto hell in a handbasket.

So one would think that doing rolling upgrades would be the way to go. You upgrade one realm or battlegroup... see how it goes before unstablizing all the servers. Well Blizzard does this as much as they can. The problem comes back to the fact that in order to handle 6 million people, they had to parallelize things. They did this by making 250+ servers. Everyone can choose to make accounts on any server.

The problem lies right there. The game lies on your computer. If they upgrade one server or battlegroup and patch all the ppl who log onto those servers, those people are no longer backwards compatible to any other server. You can't run 1.12 on a 1.11 server.

Now it is possible to code in a backward compatible way... but thats a lot of effort for blizzard to do for very little good. I'd expect you'd see a patch take twice as long... just for the week of stability for patching.

I hate the instability of patch week as much as the next person... I can accept it for the speed of these patches coming out. A major patch greatly enhances gameplay... and these happen every few months.

OK enough babbling....

I agree with what you have to say, and would like to buy a subscription to your magazine.

[bwirum]

with a patch of this magnitude and affecting the network, you'd think they would have piloted it out to one server cluster at a time, since yeah, they didn't have 10 test servers and enough people to test it. but, well that's hindsight.

don't worry, i'm sure people will get fired over this one, this is the worst ever. I don't plan on playing much the next week, since there's no way they'll get this fixed anytime soon. Cross server lag problems are just the worst. It's not like they can just throw more bandwidth at it. They've got all sorts of synch problems, and unlike those of us that work in IT, game developers aren't as good at multithreading and syncing and esp. syncing across servers. They just don't ever do it.

They really need to hire new project managers. It's not the devs or QA, the project manager is ultimately responsible for getting everyone on the same page, and they have consistently failed. I think hiring from more professional minded pool outside the game industry would be the best bet.
I'm sure people won't get fired over this.

1. They're allready understaffed.
2. You've gotta expect this with a patch of this magnitude. (See the first bit of advice in my last post).
3. It's not like it's gonna last very long.

Take a break, go outside, get some good nights sleep, you know you need it. You'll get back into it with a new glow!

:D

[Naolin]

This was expected and is the reason I don't plan to play on patch days. As a computer programmer I know that you can test all you wan't, but when you throw it into the lion pit known as live thing go explodix.

[Agricola]

It really does me good that so many people are responding to the current issues we have in such a thoughtfull and nuanced manner. More often than not Blizzard deserves this kind of credit. Hoewever, in this case I really am beginning to feel that they really botched this up unnescecarilly, and find myself agreeing to MellanCholera's point that there is a project management problem here.

Tuesday night EU-Aszune went down for maintanance. Wednesday afternoon Aszune is still down. Wednesdaynight, still down. Now, thursday 11 AM CET, Aszune is still down. And so are 24 others....

On the (current) Blizzard notice at the login screen, it is stated that there are still issues because, aside from the major 1.12 softwarepatch, at the same time they seem to have put through a major hardware update.

That is really asking for trouble.

If 1.12 requires hardware upgrades - what I can imagine - then surely you implement these 2-3 weeks before the major software patch? This will give you time to iron out problems that are not related to the patch, and will even give you a chance to tackle some problems (but not all of course) that would arise if the hardware and software update got together, because you can model your PTR's to the new hardware beforehand.

But whatever you do, you DO NOT go live with these at the SAME TIME.

If the hardware upgrades were not patch related, this big goof-up would even be more bewildering.

So although I fully respect and appreciate the credit that people here are giving to Blizzard to their defense, in this case it seems to me that they put themselves in a lot more trouble than should have been. And that imho some serious auditing of project management at Blizzard may be in order.

[Bryant]

I personally know enough about networks and databases to know that what blizzard has to deal with is anything but simple. They can only QA these things so much on the PTRs... and when you throw 6 million people at it, everything is gonna goto hell in a handbasket.

QFT.

Probably the best thing I'll read all day.

[rgirty]

I look at it in another way, after 24 hours of patching the game is immensely better. I used to que for an hour to do an AB or WSG. Last night, 30 seconds was the max time. I hit the first few que's in under 10 seconds. It was awesome.

[Naolin]

I look at it in another way, after 24 hours of patching the game is immensely better. I used to que for an hour to do an AB or WSG. Last night, 30 seconds was the max time. I hit the first few que's in under 10 seconds. It was awesome.

Note that everyone and his mother is running to do the cross realms bg's so it will probably get a longer queue with time.

[Trepidation]

1. Right now instant BG's are a self-fulfilling prophecy. ZOMG,,there are now queus...i'll sign up!

2. On a major patch that affects everyone (i.e. BG's ornew content and not just a class update)...EVERYONE and their mother logs on. Amount of users logged in greatly increases from the norm. For example...our guild typcially has about 80 people logged on at night...on tuesday it was 140.

3. Blizzard did something that is outside the norm...they are trying to share data between "realms" in a near realtime basis. While not horrible to do...it isn't fixing a "bug", it is adding new content that may have bugs. They were instantly behind the 8-ball...6 million of them.

4. In 24 hours things were better across "most" servers. On tuesday I was getting 30 second server lag on DE'ing items. On wednesday it was about 0.5 seconds. The server felt better as well in terms of response.

Of all the major patches....I feel that Blizzard could have done better, but they did an acceptable job of getting something that EVERYONE seems to be loving...no queue BG's. Now....need to win 233 more WSG's to get to exalted.

I'd be willing to suffer a near week or more of poor server performance for how BG's are now. I just love the fact that somebody in guild can say "starting an AB group" and know for a fact that in 5 minutes I will be pwning alliance in the fase :) Reminds me of D2 and how fast you could fill out an 8-man team and go have fun.


-tReP

[Valas Azuviir]

So although I fully respect and appreciate the credit that people here are giving to Blizzard to their defense, in this case it seems to me that they put themselves in a lot more trouble than should have been. And that imho some serious auditing of project management at Blizzard may be in order.

Just as an aside. Blizzard != Blizzard EU.
The latter is a sister company to Blizzard, not a daughter, so that makes a slight difference as to where the blame lies.

*Points at Vivendi Games*
They own both Blizzard and Blizzard EU. They're also the ones who decided to go for the whole localized versions route from the get go, as opposed to merged servers like EQ1 has.

So some of your beef lies probably with them as well.