Whatever happened to no maintenance time?

[memetootoo]

Hi, I remember a while back blizzard was toying with the idea of doing a maintenance with the realms still online. Was wondering how that went, as I don't remember seeing a noticeable increase in lag after it was done. Any news if this will be the norm, or any news about the subject at all would be appreciated. :)

[Magikhat]

Never heard of that but obviously it didnt go over well.

[DraedynLei]

some maintenance probably just can't be done while the servers are running would be my guess.

[MellanCholera]

Yeah they skipped a couple weeks of maintenance, but still had rolling restarts every week or so for many servers (but it was 15 minutes downtime instead of hours) then went back to the regular downtime. I guess the BC has too many updates or it didn't work out as well.

[mesonm]

some maintenance probably just can't be done while the servers are running would be my guess.

What your statement ignores is that blizz themselves said a few weeks before BC that they were going to a 'live' maintenance system...

Perhaps you are guessing?

[cyks]

I think it was just a way of them to give their team off for the holiday weeks- but not something they actually intended to keep long term.... or at least not when there is also a patch in the process.

We haven't had a patch-less week in a while now... so maybe when things settle down a touch, they may try it again.

[JPaterson]

Yeah, I recall that message logging on one night.

My assumption would be, as normal, Blizzard talked out their asses about doing something they don't have the capability to do. It's entirely possible to do it, it just requires a lot of work. And they try to do as little as possible.

[mesonm]

Yeah, I recall that message logging on one night.

My assumption would be, as normal, Blizzard talked out their asses about doing something they don't have the capability to do.


Actually, I think it is more that there is so much to do, since BC just came out...

My guess is that they are working on the scheme, and we'll see it in under six months.

[Janggala]

I think when it (live maintenance) was mentioned before it was specifically for normal weekly maintenance.

As was stated we haven't had a "normal" weekly maintenance for a while now, so blasting Blizz for something they are trying in an effort to decrease scheduled downtime seems a little harsh.

Besides, it's been like this forever. You know there's a good chance the realms won't be up on Tuesdays, yet complain about it constantly. Plan accordingly and you won't be disappointed.

[Tanitha]

Out of curiosity - why does maintenance bother people so much? It's scheduled in off-peak times, happens once a week and it's published well in advance so you can plan your play-time around it.

I'm lucky, for me it runs from when I go to bed until I wake up most Tuesday nights - but surely it's not that bad if you're in the US - is it?

[memetootoo]

Out of curiosity - why does maintenance bother people so much? It's scheduled in off-peak times, happens once a week and it's published well in advance so you can plan your play-time around it.

I'm lucky, for me it runs from when I go to bed until I wake up most Tuesday nights - but surely it's not that bad if you're in the US - is it?

Doest really bother me during school days, as I don't usually get out of class till around 4 or 5. But during vacation I always forget what day it is, and log on to WoW and realize its offline... I just thought it would be pretty cool if it was possible just because oh how hard, and how much work having a live maintenance must be.

[Xlorep DarkHelm]

Hi, I remember a while back blizzard was toying with the idea of doing a maintenance with the realms still online. Was wondering how that went, as I don't remember seeing a noticeable increase in lag after it was done. Any news if this will be the norm, or any news about the subject at all would be appreciated. :)

No maintenance downtime only applies when there is no patch. I forget which post on the official forums stated this, but basically when there's a patch, there is upgrades also done to the servers, which do require the servers to go down. However, on non-patch maintenance, there should be no downtime.

[Tanitha]

I just thought it would be pretty cool if it was possible just because oh how hard, and how much work having a live maintenance must be.

Well, the team at ArenaNet managed to pull off a live maintenance system. But their game runs on an instance based system so that might make it easier to simply redirect the load to other machines while you're doing whatever needs to be done to the main ones. And their code will invariably be structured very differently as - as I understood - this was part of their design originally.

They do have a brilliant updating system though - it works much much better than the one Blizzard did. But, conversely - it did seem while I was playing actively as if their servers are more laggy and down with greater frequency.

Coming to the Blizzard way certainly started to make me appreciate the regular maintenance schedules.

[teck21]

I have nothing against weekly maintenance, but I play on an Oceanic server (in nothing but name of course, so it's cheaper for Blizzard), and the 'off-peak time for maintenance is infact Tuesday evening where I am, from 7pm to 3 am.

Which is in fact. as peak as it gets. So Oceanic players get seriously shafted. We pay the same amount each month, but are in fact getting less playtime ech week than players not in Oceanic time zones playing on servers that are not Oceanic, very reasonably assuming that we need to eat, sleep in order to go to work and all that cool RL stuff.

And I'm not even getting started on our latency issues.

Janggala, 'Besides, it's been like this forever. You know there's a good chance the realms won't be up on Tuesdays'

Actually, I didn't know that. Blizzard were the ones telling me the realms would be up on Tuesday. Let's see how things pan out after BC gets stable or something, but I'm not really expecting very much.

Not once have they responded to why Oceanic servers are located in the US, or why 50,000 accounts (and I'm probably being very ridiculously conservative) cannot pay to have some Oceanic servers located in Oceania and still actually make them some money.

[Gealach]

I'd say the physical location of the server being in the US doesn't really matter much. Most of Oceania likely has better and more direct connections to the US than they do to each other, so you'd be in good shape if the server were in your country but not necessarily so well off if it was in, say, Samoa.

The more critical issue is prolly the timing of the maintenance. I'm not sure what time zone Oceanic servers observe, but Oceania covers a lot of space. If I were Blizz, I'd put them as whatever time zone Sydney is in, set the maintenance accordingly, and call it good.

[mesonm]

but surely it's not that bad if you're in the US - is it?

I often do not even notice...I'm at work most of when the maintenance period occurs.

[det]

What bothers me about maintenace is that lately the wednesday after was usually game free due to "unforeseen occurances during maintenance"

^^

[mesonm]

Which is in fact. as peak as it gets. So Oceanic players get seriously shafted. We pay the same amount each month, but are in fact getting less playtime ech week than players not in Oceanic time zones playing on servers that are not Oceanic, very reasonably assuming that we need to eat, sleep in order to go to work and all that cool RL stuff.

Not sure how not being able to play five hours during a week (7pm-midnight, unless you actually play until 3am your time) equates to "seriously shafted"....

It also isn't less than others get...It is the same...It is merely shifted a bit in time...Both maintenance periods are during the day for each group.

[teck21]

mesonm, seriously shafted may not quite be the word for it, and no, I'm not hopping mad about it either. :smiley:

It is the principle.

Quite logically speaking, most players would play between 7pm to 3am, something players on American servers get to do even on a maintenance day. Many Oceanic players get 'effectively' no playtime at all on Tuesday, so I'll just round it down to 10% less playtime the average Oceanic player has each week compared to American players on US servers.

Would you be happy paying the same price for a meal at restaurant and getting a 10% smaller serving than the person next to you unless you pop in at 3 in the morning?

The gripe is not that Blizzard can't, but won't, umm, so I guess shafted is still the word! :smiley:

[Gealach]

So Teck, how many time zones does Oceania cover, and which one are you in?

As I said before tho, the physical location of the server doesn't matter, just the time zone its set to.

[Clavina]

So Teck, how many time zones does Oceania cover, and which one are you in?

As I said before tho, the physical location of the server doesn't matter, just the time zone its set to.

It doesn't really make a difference, Blizzard perform maintenance during their staffs normal office hours. This happens to be peak time for the Oceanic guys.

[mesonm]

Would you be happy paying the same price for a meal at restaurant and getting a 10% smaller serving than the person next to you unless you pop in at 3 in the morning?

Well, I actually look at it from an overall value proposition....I can play an unlimited number of hours (to the extent that there are 24 hours in a day...) except where real life gets in there and wrecks things....

So, that there is one day where my real life and Blizzard maint interfere with each other would not annoy me. If it did and the annoyance was high enough, I'd just move on....

Suppose they said "we'll move your maint. time, but you have to pay our overtime...". Would that satisfy you?

Suppose there weren't US servers, and they said that.....still?


As I said before tho, the physical location of the server doesn't matter, just the time zone its set to.

IMO, the physical location DOES matter, since blizz prolly wants to do maintenance on everything at once, if possible, and wants to do it during the workday...

More people are available then, and problems can be resolved much more quickly, and less overtime is accrued, then if the server is elsewhere.

[Gealach]

So you are saying there are no people in Australia qualified to maintain a server cluster? I would never have guessed that. THey seem to have employees in europe that can handle the job.

I also said tho, that a US location prolly gives the best connection times to most of Oceania so it makes sense to put them here. On the other hand, I see no reason why Oceania servers can't have their ROUTINE maintenance handled during hours that make sense at least for people in the time zone Sydney is in. Shift work isn't a new concept.

[mesonm]

So you are saying there are no people in Australia qualified to maintain a server cluster?


I said no such thing...Where the heck you came up with that from what I said is.....beyond me...:rolleyes:

If blizz doesn't want to have to establish a DIFFERENT business center just for Oceanic, it is possibly due to the business proposition...Maybe they don't yet have enough Oceanic users to justify...

That is all I meant.

And, we are all guessing here, in any case.

[teck21]

Clavina and gealach got it right, I have let the physical location of the servers detract from my original point, which is that maintenance downtime for Oceania is unfair to Oceanic players when it doesn't have to be.

They don't even need to spend any money setting up servers in Australia or anything. All we ask of them is that they have their engineers do the maintenance on Oceanic servers a few hours later. Is that so hard for them to do?

Gealach, Oceania I think would cover the time zones from Singapore / Malaysia to Australia and New Zealand for I imagine something like most of the players in Oceania who choose to play on Oceanic servers come from these places.

Mesomn, I cannot say for sure how many paying accounts there are in Oceania, But I do know that SIngapore alone has approximately 30,000 accounts.

Throw in the accounts from the rest of Oceania, there is absolutely no way the number of paying accounts on Oceanic servers is anywhere under 100,000 accounts. That is very very conservative an estimate.

How much in subscription does that work out to a year? Is it possible that that amount is still not enough to pay to have Oceanic servers in Oceania and still make money? I doubt it, nevertheless I will just assume that it will cost Blizzard $18million USD a year just to do that, in which case not having them in Oceania is understandable.

But simply to schedule maintenance times for Oceanic servers a bit later to be a bit nicer to players here?

[Gealach]

Ok, assuming 50,000 players in Oceania (Teck's estimate) times a 50 cent increase in the monthly fee, you'd have an extra $25,000 per month, which should cover the overtime severalfold. At a guess I'd bet that Oceania players would pay an extra $.50 per month for better downtime schedules. Even at $.25 it should still cover it handily.

Cutting corners to drop the fee a few cents is prolly not really worth it.

[rottentomato]

here is how i see it, the oceanic servers are down from 7pm-12am their time, its usually 6am-11am pacific time, imagine if they changed it to eastern time as opposed to how it is now, then it would be 4pm-9pm your time....i dont complain when i wake up tuesdays and the server is down at 9am eastern time until around 3pm...recently it hasnt been going the whole length, just a couple hours. granted i love the two weeks they did the rolling mait. but im not exactly complaining about the only day i have off losing the few hours it takes for them to make the game work rather than the server crashing and me having to sit around all day waiting for a fix like a few weeks ago with the log on problem we had where is sat on retrieving char list for hours and then signed you off.