Server Maintenance / Server Down Time Frames

Veterans of this game know real patience... good old days of grinding

I've played since launch and whether it was SoE or DB, neither company has ever been good about bringing up servers on time consistently.

Classic. "Acch! You didn't tell him how long it would really take did ya?"

The Scotty Factor also goes hand in hand with 'The Tardis Effect'. Problems often end up being much larger when you get into it than what they looked like from the outside/at first glance.

In the context of a business meeting with suit types, you always Scotty Factor because of The Tardis Effect.

Yes, I adapted that in real life after I had to learn my assumptions of time I probably need are torpedized by real life obstacles.
So I tell ppl I need a few days to get something done; with no obstacles I'm done after one day and all are happy .

Scotty and Tardis need to get their $h!t together.

Did beta and I am back from a 6-7 year downtime the time things are supose to take are very loose. I say sit down and relax and the game will start eventualy

After 15 years you get used to the vicious cycle that is Everquest patching.

Patch test server, but because population on Test is low AF nothing goes wrong. Test Patch gets pushed to Live but due to some glitches in the matrix, daybreak, patch, daybreak patch to fix what daybreak, but daybreak patch daybreak the patched patch and then push a patched daybreak to all the shards which in turn sh-art themselves because each shard has glitches in the matrix where daybreak and get locked until they fix what daybreak.

And the cycle continues until the last braincell that tries to fathom just what the FUQ Daybreak in the first patch is patched, until sometime later daybreak again.

That is one theory. However my old tech firm boss and I are discussing another.
DBG doesn't exactly have a stunning cache of superstar coders, to the point where they don't talk about their employees so much that it makes one wonder whether or not they outsource their jobs for updates, patches, expansions etc. etc., you know, "big" stuff.

This theory is reinforced by the fact that the only thing we have really had "new" since DBG has taken over is regurgitated and remodeled zones with amped up with higher level mobs.

If one is familiar with 3D art and coding, it is easy to see that much of our "new" content is actually old content that has been reworked and they are actually just tying the story in so it's not so blatantly obvious that original zone data was used in the first place.

Where these 2 things intersect is that if you are outsourcing your work, and only giving base material to the outsourcers to work with. Then the produced result will always have a "regurgitated" style. Whether by conformity to original game design or by sole intent, this is what you will end up with.

It could also be further compounded by the fact that if outsourced to an overseas element, not only do you have a time difference to deal with which hampers communication, but also in the fact that our measuring system being non-metric may interfere with certain aspects of interpreting proper calculations. Granted that wouldn't apply to many things in game, but all it takes is one critical thing to bring the trunked processes, and expected sub parses to a screeching halt.

I do agree with the "Scotty" factor post. I run my business with it. It works amazingly well.

But there are times where something is so AFU that even that can't help too much.

My existing theory right now for this delay is that they attempted to put in the various tradeskill combines for Velious, and I would imagine that something went horribly horribly wrong. Tradeskills are so stupid complex now just on our player end that I can only imagine the spaghetti mess that is on the back end for all aspects of it.

Yay for tradeskills. Just take them back out and let us play, and back to the drawing board. LOL.

Every MMO I've played, on patch day their forums act like only their devs are unable to consistently bring up the servers on time.

so... you had all the time in the world to get the expansion done, and tested. but the patch wednesday took a little longer (almost double) than what was estimated. no biggie, things happen. 2 days later, you need 8 more hours to fix problems you created by releasing a fully done/tested expansion? are they just guessing that the stuff will work when they release it? cuz they can't be testing it before hand.

Just wish I could sign up for text message alerts for server downtime for the start and the end.

He just did. He said oppsie, we screwed up big time. But they are working as quickly as possible.

Might be faster if they just reload the previous version and try their patch again, after they fix it, on Monday.

Ah the days of sitting at my computer waiting for them to patch Everquest correctly. It's almost as if it's 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005.....etc. all over again....

Time to go to bed in Europe. Thank you so much DB.

Well, life's like a box of chocolates. Sometimes you get chocolate, sometimes you get.....

We've run into a larger issue that could have caused a lot of problems and are doing what we can to get it fixed as quickly as possible. I'll update when we have an ETA

So... I am not one to say "I told ya so" but ya. If the issue was with the tradeskill system not taking the new stuff, I am all for revamping it into something manageable, on both front and back end. I'd take 3 days of downtime for that. (Fully credited to AA account time however. Might even be a nice "preview for the FTP players too, food for thought.)

I don't mind gathering enough materials to make many combines to skill up. But going out and getting materials just to make one silly trivial combine that I will never make again, so that my skill will go up seems tedious, boring, and not part of the game design, because there are hundends, if not thousands, of recipes that never were, and never will be, used for anything other than vendoring it after you make it.

But I digress. So major issue, so probably at least 4-5 more hours. Cause if the tiny one caused a 1.5 hour delay, then you pulled on that string and had a giant yarn ball fall on you, meh... maybe 6-8 then taking the Scotty factor into account....

K gang. I am headed off to run some errands, do some work, etc. etc. See ya later on!

They said 4 hours originally, never said 4 consecutive hours

Nice!!

we want double experience! for the delay Wahhh!

My question would be by now why would they update on a Friday? Do this on a Monday...