Dev team or other powers that be, I'd like to request some clarification, and offer a suggestion. First, when you use the /calendar command in game, it states that Kunark launch for Rizlona and Aradune is "Aug 19 4:00PM to Aug 19 10:00PM". Does this imply you're giving it a window going forward, or is this the result of the patch? Last I understood expansions launches were set on a timer, and once that timer reaches its end it unlocks immediately. What happens if the patch runs late, could the expansion be open as soon as the server opens afterwards? I wasn't sure if it has been altered somehow. It does make it hard for guilds to plan activities without a clear understanding. As always, people are likely taking time off of work, so some clarification to help folks plan would be appreciated. My suggestion would be, given that it's a patch day and this can heavily disrupt the launch of an expansion, I'd like to suggest perhaps you guys push the patch up an hour or two to give us a little more of a buffer between expected end and the launch of the expansions on these servers. I understand if it cannot be done, but just know the players on these servers appreciate your efforts, and anything you can do to help enhance our expansion launch experience is appreciated. Stay safe and thank you for taking the time regarding this post.
The "window" is I believe there in case there are any server-specific problems that happen when the expansion unlocks. For example: Certain expansion specific npc's Teleporters, Quest NPC, Vendors, in expansion zones or existing zones (like PoK) might fail to spawn or may fail to carry the right items / spells etc. necessitating some interventions from the team, like repopulating zones. Not every unlock goes off without a hitch as many TLP veterans could attest to.
No hate, but Dupre is about as veteran as it gets on TLPs.. Its a valid question, an unlock has never been handled this way. When it comes to planning correctly especially when you are taking time of work its nice to be able to clarify.
The coinciding of a patch day with an expansion unlock was an inevitability, sooner or later it was bound to happen somewhere. I myself would plan for an extended patch and if it comes up anywhere near time for it to be a bonus & not take a day off / holiday day for it, so what if someone gets bragging rights for server-first kills, if they want to potentially waste a day off work on that good for them. So much can go wrong on a patch day it's a gamble, the dev team simply can't give any more assurances about it other than they'll do their best, like always, I know that's little comfort but there really isn't much more to it than that, unless they took the unusual step of delaying the patch (which can & does happen every so often for different reasons) but that just kicks the can down the road in any case. Onto the patch unlock overlap, yeah the unlock should go ahead & once the servers are open if that is within the unlock window the calendar/event system will effect any changes needed to have the expansion open, certainly it is my understanding the patch won't delay the unlock scheduling.
All the unlocks show on the calendar in this way and have for awhile. They don't say exactly 4PM or 5PM or whatever timezone your calendar is adjusted to because then when the xpac is 10mins delayed because the PoK stones didn't populate or whatever they have an out. OP, Dupre, it'll be out between 5:00 EST and 5:10 EST, unless the server is still down due to a patch.
It's really because on Aradune if you dont log in in say the first, 7.3 seconds you will be in a multi-hour queue
Have people learned nothing? Never take a day off work for an expansion launch. You are just gonna be spending the whole day bored waiting and then pissed when stuff isn’t loaded in or it’s super laggy and you get rolled backed.
Unlocks have never been "immediate". There are scripts that have to be run, to do such mundane things as add new OW zones, populate said zones, add NPCs to existing zones, add new loot tables, etc. Depending on the size of the expansion, this process has been known to take as much as a couple of hours. Devs have always given unlock times in a range, to allow for the unexpected, as whenever they give an exact time for anything, and it doesn't match exactly, there is all sorts of grief expressed here. Players will be let into new zones as soon as they are available. Because it is a patch day, this process won't begin until after the patch is complete and servers are up. If the patch is delayed, the unlock window is delayed. It is what it is.
Realistically the "Slush" on unlocks is about an hour. I.E. sometimes things don't "change state" on the unlock. If an NPC has a spawn time, it actually still tracks it's spawn time. When it's spawn time is up, it asks the server if the requirements on it "pass" if they do not, it resets it's spawn timer to try again on the next "re-spawn" So these NPCs won't spawn until their timer comes up. There is also a variable that needs to be set, it's on the periodic minute (I.E. it's run every minute) BUT there is also a throttle in the script so it only checks every 5 minutes (if a stored variable is not mod 5 = 0 it early exits) This variable is required for a ton of the other scripts (not all) and thus there is that delay. There is another variable that goes faster, but makes testing things before they go live basically impossible. The slower variable we can temporarily force, making testing possible, the "instant" one, we cannot manipulate. There is more detail to this, but that is enough for now. Some zones will only check for the above variables once an hour. Therefore, before I get serious about checking not spawned things... I wait an hour. 95% of the time they spawn, but are delayed due to the above variables. "Why not check faster, more often" the answer is server load. The times in the calendar are overly generous.
We had strange things on selo lag behind as well, such as the wall in city of bronze connecting to Shards Landing didnt disappear for a while on rof launch. But overall, yeah, 2pm pst if server is up.
My experience is its usually within 5-10 minutes of the earliest time. Also depends on the expansion and how much stuff there is to load in. Remember that all the zones are there, they are just inaccessible. They just have to spawn everything for the expansion. This has been seen before in TLP's when people managed to get into zones behind lockouts, usually accidentally via some bug. The zones were there, just without npc's.
