Server shutdown and restarts during primetime and alerts

Discussion in 'Player Support' started by NovaAustralis, Apr 19, 2013.

  1. Badger1972

    If you look we are not asking anyone to be inconvenienced unless you count the techs having to implement the patches and hey, that's IT for you and your getting payed. We are asking that all servers are patched outside their prime times.
    • Up x 2
  2. NovaAustralis

    FluffyM, I posted this straight after your post:

    "A lot of other games and companies are able to do 'rolling' updates and server restarts.
    There is no reason why SOE can't do the same for PS2.

    The servers in the US have no influence on the servers in AU or EU and vice versa.
    Nobody is advantaged or disadvantaged by an earlier or later update / hotfix.

    So why do SOE bring down ALL of the servers at the exact same time and thereby usually screw over the AU players?!"
  3. LameFox

    Yeah I've wondered why it would be so hard for them to do this at different times for different regions, especially considering the servers are in different regions. Maybe they have nobody in AU who knows how. And I suppose if they set it up to happen automatically they'd need patches to patch the patcher to patch patches. :eek:
  4. Paulus

    OK, i'm going to give this "who does it affect" question one more go, before i put it down to just being trolled.

    Put a ruler across the top of a globe, put one end of the ruler over your home city, the other end of the ruler is what is known as your "Antipode". Typicly (but not exclusivly) your Antipode will be 12 hours + or - (depending on which side of the Geenwich line you're both on) your own. Now having established we have 24 one hour sections into which the globe is devided, when you move your ruler one way or another by two sections, you can see the antipode of this section indicated by looking at the opposite end of the ruler.

    So, taking this crude or be it pertinent way of showing how 6AM in one place is 6PM in another, we can now start to look outside the antipode and see how the devision shifts in relation to the half way point between those antipodes. I'll give you a specific example, right at this moment, it is 15:30 GMT, and in my antipode (Tonga, lets say) it is 03:30. This much is easy to understand, however, if we look at the quarter points, it is also 09:30 in Chicago and 20:30 in Yekaterinburg (who are andipodes).

    So now we will address directly "who would it affect". You want the USA to get up a bit earlier and carry out maintenence with thier full team, because its not just one guy with a DVD Rom putting it in a slot, its a full team of people, plus devs on standby incase something goes wrong with the update to do the update at 4am, because this will take it our of your primetime. You basicly move the "primetime inconvenience" on to the inhabitants of the timezone 2 hours further ahead of your own, primetime still exists there, and it will still impact them.

    What you end up saying is "hey can someone else give up thier primetime? I don't feel like it"


    Now personaly, i have experienced issues which were addressed in my own primetime, just as you have, infact my server was unplayable for almost two consecutive days. What i would sugest we should be asking for is localised servers having thier own localised tech teams who carry out the updates and fixes. This would remove the whole "i put money into this F2P game i should have access to those things" that comes alive everytime something either doesn't go right with the update or the update is at a time that is inconvenient for a select group of people.
  5. FluffyM

    You're trolling yourself- no one is arguing that there is a perfect time for it, but there are times that are not primetime for the 3 most prominent timezones in the discussion at hand. Of course it will always affect someone, but that's a problem to be addressed once they, too, get dozens of people posting on these forums. As far as devs in location is concerned, I am not responsible for taking salary-considerations into account, and neither are you for that matter.

    Yea, but they still need people at location to push the patch, I highly doubt it's all automated.
  6. Gary

    No one is forcing you to pay membership, If you do not agree with the how they handle things then don't pay them. Or Accept that Maintenance happens. They deploy a big patch ofc we expect downtime. The following day they do another patch to fix some pretty big issues, That is also understandable.

    I am sure you are more then capable of finding something else to do on those nights when they take the servers down...

    To stop you going on about people being from EU... Quiet time in what part of the world is prime time in another. Since SOE are based in the US we often see downtime in the EU at prime time. However myself like many others know it happens and in the end it is to better the game.

    Again you only have to pay if you feel the game deserves to be supported with money or if you want some of the benefits the membership provides. Way up the pros and cons and make a decision. Lastly do not complain when the servers go down for fixes... It is a tiny amount of time since considering how often the servers are up..
  7. Paulus

    Excellent, so you're now going to devide the playerbase into worthy and unworthy? I find this "oh you're from x, you're less important than y and z" train of thought worrying and indeed just another way of manifesting the very thing you want SOE not to do to you. The solution should be one where it doesn't ask "are you from a place thats not on this list?" it should be one where nobody regardless if they live in a beach hut or a high rise condo should not be made to give up thier equally valid rights to access thier game.
  8. FluffyM

    I am not, I'm just not a bleeding-heart white-knight and understand the concept of target-audiences. I'm out of here.
  9. Zcuron

    One alternative is to apply the patches at different times for different servers - this would probably require some infrastructure rework on SoE's side to make it fly, though.

    Perhaps the best alternative is to wade through the activity data they have and pick whichever time features the lowest global population, this would take the least amount of work, I think. (apart from doing nothing, anyway)
    • Up x 1
  10. GimpyGotcha

    OMFG Always with the ******** from aussies and eu players on Patches to Improve The Game. Get the hell over it. Sorry but it's a fact that game companys, ALL game companys, do downtimes for patches during the time which the least ammount of people are effected.

    Guess what that's always you guys sorry, fact. There are how many aussie servers? Oh yah 1. Half of all the servers are Us servers and the time they do it effects the least ammount of players there by. Also they did it during simi off time for Eu by having it Us morning/ Eu afternoon. You know what that means? 7 of the 8 servers get the downtime during off hours means, by the Laws Of Physics the ONE aussie server gets the downtime during primetime, whoopdie-Freeking-DO.
  11. Paulus

    :) please see above for a gentleman espousing exactly your point of view regarding economics. Whats the bet you disagree with him now?
  12. LameFox

    Yet not all of them do this simultaneously with all regions.

    Not sure what their hours are like but there's a pretty decent overlap between our quieter times and the first half of the (previous) day in the US/Canada. Coming up on midnight for me (+8) and 9:00am PDT (friday) for them, and it's already further into the early morning for the rest of AU and all NZ than it is for me and east-Asia.
  13. NovaAustralis

    Well I'm glad you're fine with it.
    But then your server doesn't regularly go down during prime-time (and this time an alert...)
    Agree that game companies all reboot servers and put in updates from time to time, however I'll bet that they're savvy enough NOT to do it during the prime-time of that server's player-base...

    Let us all be glad that SOE is so smart as to cater to the approx. 50% of the players in the US.
    While the EU and AU players get stiffed over.

    All because IT support can't organise rolling patches / updates in order to minimise disruption...
  14. FluffyM

    I don't need to disagree with him for he simply states the status quo, I am talking about how to improve it. You...you are being useless.
  15. 9squirrels

    Paulus - We're not saying someone else should be inconvenienced, just that if they did a rolling update and took down the AU servers at a different time, it would save a lot of frustration. While we don't HAVE to pay a membership, a number of people DO. I personally don't, but I am going to spend some cash in here, but if they regularly take down the servers on a Friday night (about the only time I get to play) then it's probably not worth my while.
    I don't see any downside to changing the server restart times for servers outside the US to their own low population times (except probably some extra work for SOE to coordinate it), and plenty of upside for everyone (happier players, less complaints, more money).
    • Up x 1
  16. Fire Works

    After all the postings I still havent found the reason for preventing a solution that all could live with...Why does it have to be at the same time?

    Why arent the servers patched in groups?
    Patch region A, afterwards region B and then region C.

    Patch region A with full force and standby developers etc. All thats needed like its now. If trouble occurs you dont have to have all other servers down too.
    If A is working as intended, have B. During the time that would fit best. Then C.

    Even if you need a full server to test the new update, only one region has to suffer down time. This could even go further and be only a single server, one by one.
    • Up x 1
  17. Ogedai

    Rolling updates would be nice. But I still feel that the most important part is that the updates should be on mondays not fridays! We're suffering through a rushed game but there's no need to suffer rushed updates too. All the mayor updates comes just before the weekend. then the developers take a weekend off and begin working on the loads of new buggs and issues they inevitably cause around monday, tuesday and starts with the hotfixes around Wednesday the week after meaning they ruin the whole weekend and then some.
  18. NovaAustralis

    Yay! Someone else gets it!
  19. Fire Works

    So whats hindering us beside that i post at a time where I usually dont get answers, again for said timing issue :)