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Quarterly Producer Letter for Q2 2024 ×

Ever heard of hotfix/rolling restarts?


SINOperahouse

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As the title says, I am beginning to wonder if Bioware has heard these terms. Because taking the servers down multiple time per week for more than 15 minutes is beginning to get a bit old for some of the things they are doing.

 

I understand the need to fix things, but I have to wonder how many of these itsy bitsy patches could have been solved by a hotfix and a rolling restart.

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What is with you people? How many mmo launches have you seen? I'm assuming most of you have seen a few by now. Haven't you learned yet that this is what happens in an mmo launch? You guys have no patience and you shoot your game in the foot.

 

Theres a 6 month backlog of thigns that need to be fixed and added. It wont happen over night it wont happen in one giant patch. It's going to be months of gradual fixes, tweeks, additions, and changes. Yes there's a lot of downtime. Get used to it more is sure to come. And trust me when I say GW2 will have the same period of fixes and tweeks, and so will whatever mmo your going to next.

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What is with you people? How many mmo launches have you seen? I'm assuming most of you have seen a few by now. Haven't you learned yet that this is what happens in an mmo launch? You guys have no patience and you shoot your game in the foot.

 

Theres a 6 month backlog of thigns that need to be fixed and added. It wont happen over night it wont happen in one giant patch. It's going to be months of gradual fixes, tweeks, additions, and changes. Yes there's a lot of downtime. Get used to it more is sure to come. And trust me when I say GW2 will have the same period of fixes and tweeks, and so will whatever mmo your going to next.

 

I think what the OP is trying to get at is adding all those gradual fixes, "tweeks," additions and changes in the same way many other commercial, server-based services are improved, by fast, rolling restarts that don't take the entire service down for hours at a time.

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I think what the OP is trying to get at is adding all those gradual fixes, "tweeks," additions and changes in the same way many other commercial, server-based services are improved, by fast, rolling restarts that don't take the entire service down for hours at a time.

 

Im sure they will do it when that becomes a viable option for them. I seriously doubt they are taking the server down to apply these fixes if they had another way of doing it.

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What is with you people? How many mmo launches have you seen? I'm assuming most of you have seen a few by now. Haven't you learned yet that this is what happens in an mmo launch? You guys have no patience and you shoot your game in the foot.

 

Theres a 6 month backlog of thigns that need to be fixed and added. It wont happen over night it wont happen in one giant patch. It's going to be months of gradual fixes, tweeks, additions, and changes. Yes there's a lot of downtime. Get used to it more is sure to come. And trust me when I say GW2 will have the same period of fixes and tweeks, and so will whatever mmo your going to next.

 

Rifts first few months was a million times better than swtors, patches deployed in less than 30mins. And trust me when i say GW2 will NOT have the same period of fixes and tweeks. Ive played guild wars proph since it first came out and arena net are super quick at patching and there is never any downtime. Their patching system is excellent.

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Im sure they will do it when that becomes a viable option for them. I seriously doubt they are taking the server down to apply these fixes if they had another way of doing it.

 

I agree, which prompts the question why was the game not designed in such a way so it could be dynamically updated? We're in 2012 now and MMOs have been in existence for years. Lessons should have been learned long ago...

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As the title says, I am beginning to wonder if Bioware has heard these terms. Because taking the servers down multiple time per week for more than 15 minutes is beginning to get a bit old for some of the things they are doing.

 

I understand the need to fix things, but I have to wonder how many of these itsy bitsy patches could have been solved by a hotfix and a rolling restart.

 

In before close.

 

If you read the patch notes you will notice it is fixing a bug introduced in Tuesdays patch that is causing many customers to freeze!

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I spoke with my wallet when BW took the servers down that Friday at Midnight (PST) for a 6 hour downtime.

 

EVE Online, joined first day up years ago, never downtime like BW does.

Rift, there at launch, hardly any unexpected long downtime.

DDO, was in headstart, again no unexpected downtime.

 

What's most interesting (exciting?) about tonights downtime is it's only claimed to be for 2 hours (!!)- a BW first. And the forums are still up.

 

I'm still following the game and playing till my time runs out and if they fix how they do unexpected downtime outside weekly maintence, or totally stop doing those downtimes, I'll re-sub.

Edited by MeanPi
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The patching system does seem kind of amateurish. Go ahead and drop external connections so you can reboot and check logs and stuff. Maybe replace some files with patched versions and run a few diagnostics to make sure everything is talking.

 

But unless the servers are running Windows 2008 SBS or something, I'd like to know what is being done that takes them down for hours at a time several times a week.

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The patching system does seem kind of amateurish. Go ahead and drop external connections so you can reboot and check logs and stuff. Maybe replace some files with patched versions and run a few diagnostics to make sure everything is talking.

 

But unless the servers are running Windows 2008 SBS or something, I'd like to know what is being done that takes them down for hours at a time several times a week.

 

This.

 

Also to the people saying "this is what happens with new MMO's, get over it", you are just giving BW an excuse to continue providing a poor service. Like a few have mentioned before there have been plenty MMO's released that have managed to not have a minimum 6 hours downtime a week, the most recent being Rift which often had full expansions released and WORKING within 2 hours. BW needs to step it up if this game is going to survive GW2

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The proper way of doing this is to have a redundant system, Server A (Live) Server B (Standby) you patch Server B test then you issue a reboot then bring down Server A

 

Or better yet if your on a SANS system that is redundant you can Update SAN storage B Do a HSRP Swap to SAN Storage B bring down SAN Storage A for same update or even better yet you can use OnTap to replicate the two SANS and then you can issue rolling reboot on the servers that way the game world is only down 10 minutes it takes to reboot.

 

 

personally I think they should have a farm of XenServers making the GAME world more efficient across a 10GB Fiber channel. Figure you can run about 60 VMs per Server head.

 

Assuming they even have a SANS setup.

 

Oh well its their CTOs / Director of Engineering Brain child they could be running all this on Atari 2400 for all we know...

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Despite some opinions, I have a hard time believing that the devs have all gone "full-retard" and don't know what hotfixes and rolling restarts are.

 

I'm not so sure. There must be some reason they are doing this, but I have played quite a number of MMOs...even second rate ones, and never saw this constant server jerking we are dealing with...

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What is with you people? How many mmo launches have you seen? I'm assuming most of you have seen a few by now. Haven't you learned yet that this is what happens in an mmo launch? You guys have no patience and you shoot your game in the foot.

 

Theres a 6 month backlog of thigns that need to be fixed and added. It wont happen over night it wont happen in one giant patch. It's going to be months of gradual fixes, tweeks, additions, and changes. Yes there's a lot of downtime. Get used to it more is sure to come. And trust me when I say GW2 will have the same period of fixes and tweeks, and so will whatever mmo your going to next.

 

That is why you save it for one effing weekly maintenance and stop messing with your customers because it is convenient for you. End of story.

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Also, performing maintenance at the same time for EU and US servers is idiotic. We live in different time zones, maintenance windows should be chosen when there's the least amount of impact for the users, which is obviously not going to be the same for everybody.
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I'm not so sure. There must be some reason they are doing this, but I have played quite a number of MMOs...even second rate ones, and never saw this constant server jerking we are dealing with...

 

Clearly the developers are twirling their Snidely Whiplash mustaches as they laugh maniacally, pulling the oversize lever to shut the servers down. In between guffaws, they joke to one another, "Ha! Ha! Let's see them play their precious game now!" And then they bring in a basket of puppies (the standard unit of puppies, of course) and put a food of bowl up just too high for them to reach iit, and high-five each other.

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Clearly the developers are twirling their Snidely Whiplash mustaches as they laugh maniacally, pulling the oversize lever to shut the servers down. In between guffaws, they joke to one another, "Ha! Ha! Let's see them play their precious game now!" And then they bring in a basket of puppies (the standard unit of puppies, of course) and put a food of bowl up just too high for them to reach iit, and high-five each other.

 

LMAO>>>>WOW YOUR HILARIOUS...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

not

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