sad to say that everquest will not be getting my game money next time my account is due. (not that they care im just a small drop in the bucket) gets old all the problems
There is not a game on the market at the moment that dont have or get issues. Its apart of the industry it will be everywhere. So people couldnt play for 20 hours of of 31 days to 30 days of the month. It is not the end of the world there are a lot productive things in life to accomplish when a game is down. Dont let it get ya down be glad after 20+ year everquest is still kicking and producing. So giving the age expect hardware issues at times.
This time it was a firmware update. I won't say that this would not be avoidable if changes in software and hardware would always be made on round-robin systems but this is also a matter of cost. Nevertheless a change in firmware has always the risk of crashing something - so if the price of a server is too high to have as backup then DGB is quite broke or highly greedy or they don't have a real emergency plan for high availability. Even buying the complete hardware instead of renting it is not the world. The high bandwith connection is another thing. Heck, even my provider gives me Server with SSDs meanwhile for a joke price. I am in this business for over 20 years now - if I would have done this then the customer would have left long ago. EQ has no real competitor for the ones who are into EQ for a long time and the ones who are addicted would not leave so easy without a fight - like a drug addict licking the back of their dealer to get their dope. Nevertheless some ideas should be standard: 1. Hardware: - have emergency hardware available - double copy every system which got patched - automate copy/patching/switch completely - if something goes wrong be always ready to switch to an emergency system with an exact copy on the fly - if one login server cannot handle it, then simply make a second which jumps in at a specific number of connections 2. Software - make it round-robin -> every server will be - one after another - the first one who gets patches -> if the first patch is bugged (like always) then all others are still running -> if every month another server gets it first then EQ is really messed up for longer period only once a year and that server is the "alpha....beta... gamma..." tester But even then people can complain to not be the very first..... Hey DGB! If you would give more information about the hardware configuration, the problem and the way EQ is built - here are enough specialists who can make suggestions which you could use to choose the best solutions for problem solving (brainstorming) - and that without any cost. Remember how good EOK was when you started to work closer together with the players! Use the community as long as it is still there and a real community who wants the game alive and kicking!
Cool, someone that knows what they are talking about. That is rare. I don't think their budget allows them to have many spare parts on hand, even then, you would not keep them on site, they would be off site in the vault (as we called it), backups too. FEMA required us to have 99% uptime, so we needed the extra hardware. This game isn't mission critical, so I doubt they have the budget for that kind of uptime.
If i recall right everquest servers are not even stored in Cali but in las vegas if i remember right. So things to do with hardware i can understand taking some time as they have to call server owners to fix / replace stuff.
At seven hours/month of downtime, two nines is what many companies strive for. DBG has pretty close to this level of service. If you want to move up to three nines (about 40 minutes) downtime/month you need to double your IT investment.
The issues are rough, and we're just as frustrated as all of you are whenever they pop up. This game is old, technology has changed, and sometimes problems are unavoidable. We had developers in the office until 11 PM to get things back up and running. Heck, even I stayed late and got back online from home to try and provide updates to players the best I could. We definitely care, and the team is always working to fix and change some of the old systems to keep things running the best we can. While I completely understand the complaints and frustrations, please know that the team is always doing everything we can for our players.
