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Why will tomorrow's maintenance last 8 hours?


oldshatterhand

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Everyone likes to guess why or what goes on during these maintenance times. For the sake of the thread I will give my assumption now. I believe tomorrow they are going to use the 8 hour downtime to (manually) copy all of the toons that have been accepted to test 1.2 patch over to the test server. Just my 2 credits

 

This is by far the best post in this thread and I wouldn't be surprised to find out its true.

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As the title says, why will tomorrow's maintenance last 8 hours when there is no patch? All non-patch maintenances so far only lasted 4 hours.

 

Why are you asking us?????

 

As far as I know, the forum membership are not the ones handling the maintenance cycles.

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It's so when it only lasts 4 hours everyone is surprised and happy that they came back 'early'.

 

Used to see the same thing all the time in WAR. Schedule way more time than you actually need so it looks good coming back 'early', and if there is a problem that you need more time...you're still on schedule as far as the playerbase knows.

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/offtopic on

 

I am a developer by trade. Would it be acceptable if I told my boss that I can't program something that has already been done before, by multiple organizations, unless my boss gives me R&D 1-2 year lead time? I would probably get terminated or at the very least bumped off the project. Good software development is a balance between using OOTB functionality, using or purchasing existing functionality provided by libraries developed already, or in the last possible situation custom development to meet your needs.

 

I am just saying... BioWare doesn't need to reinvent the wheel here.

 

/offtopic off

 

I'm a software developer myself, and I strongly disagree with your assessment. There are several aspects to this whole thing that you've neglected, and I can understand why. They have little to do with the act of writing code. However, they are no less important.

 

First is the issue of project management. You have X people, Y dollars, and Z time. When you need to create a schedule that uses X, Y, and Z effectively, you need to prioritize what actually gets designed and implemented. Perhaps doing hotfixes and such was determined to be of low importance for the time being.

 

Second, the methods Blizzard (and others) uses to do their maintenance could be (and likely are) proprietary. I doubt (unless there's a patent) the solution they've implemented is available for the whole world to scrutinize. They may even be protected by patents. If so, you have potential legal issues to consider.

 

Third, we have no idea what they are doing during this maintenance other than patches. I imagine some of it is database reorgs, access path revisions based on current database statistics, and minor code revisions for performance increases, but god knows what else it is. It depends on exactly how they've constructed the application. One piece of software isn't necessarily the same as the next even though their basic descriptions (MMORPG) are the same. Doing hotfixes or maintenance during uptimes may be a completely new thing on their particular platform. Perhaps it is more hardware dependent and therefore more cost prohibitive for them at the moment.

 

But really, it all comes down to the fact that we have absolutely no idea how Bioware is running this game. So we're in no position to judge whether or not their actions are appropriate. The most we can do is request less downtime and hope that makes Bioware move it up the list. And, though the downtime doesn't bother me personally, I think less downtime is a fair request.

Edited by mojotele
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I love this forum

 

Threads:

 

I hate the game ( but am subscribed )

I am quitting SWTOR ( notice this is the 437th time I have quit )

The game is dying cause you don’t have ( insert WOW like feature here )

This game Sucks!

 

followed by

 

How can you take the game away from us in the wee hours while you do maintenance! We will all die!

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Cabinet J needs a complete type 7 upgrade due to the issues caused in the artifact chamber loss of power, that and they're obviously doing a jupiter level excess feed termination on flow coupling valves.

 

You sir win the internetz!

 

Don't forget they have to go thru tons of cans of compressed air to clean everything out nice and proper like...

Edited by Vincynt
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I love this forum

 

Threads:

 

I hate the game ( but am subscribed )

I am quitting SWTOR ( notice this is the 437th time I have quit )

The game is dying cause you don’t have ( insert WOW like feature here )

This game Sucks!

 

followed by

 

How can you take the game away from us in the wee hours while you do maintenance! We will all die!

 

Tell that to those playing in Australia, New Zealand etc who lose an entire evenings play.

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/offtopic on

 

I am a developer by trade. Would it be acceptable if I told my boss that I can't program something that has already been done before, by multiple organizations, unless my boss gives me R&D 1-2 year lead time? I would probably get terminated or at the very least bumped off the project. Good software development is a balance between using OOTB functionality, using or purchasing existing functionality provided by libraries developed already, or in the last possible situation custom development to meet your needs.

 

I am just saying... BioWare doesn't need to reinvent the wheel here.

 

/offtopic off

 

Yeah, because I am quite certain that Blizzard and Sony and all the other games that have spent time developing the background processes that allow them to hot-patch are quite willing to sell the processes to their competitors.

 

Honestly, people talk like games are all open-source, that each game is simply an extension of the code from previous games, and that nothing is proprietary. It is utterly irrelevant what feature a game previously developed may have or how smoothly it works if the next game company has to start from scratch to develop it even if copyright or other issues were not involved.

 

Bioware will likely institute hot-patching at some point. But updating core processes in a new game is no simple task, and as a developer, you should know that.

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Not only WoW but practically everyone except BioWare does this. Guild Wars, Everquest 2, etc. They all do a form of background patching. You would think for $300 million we could get some of these pseudo standard things implemented.

 

I seriously couldn't remember 4 or 8 hour patches since my Everquest days. Glad I am asleep or at work when that is going on.

 

Wasn't one of the reasons that Bioware went with the Hero Engine that they could essentially add things to the game while the servers were online? I seem to remember this from an interview.

Edited by Thaed
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As the title says, why will tomorrow's maintenance last 8 hours when there is no patch? All non-patch maintenances so far only lasted 4 hours.

 

The entire SWTOR community got together and voted on it. Sorry you missed your chance to vote for the 4 hour schedule. Many of us thought 8 hours would make the game better.

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Wasn't one of the reasons that Bioware went with the Hero Engine that they could essentially add things to the game while the servers were online? I seem to remember this from an interview.

 

Basically the engine does support it but, that doesn't necessary mean the game currently does.

Edited by DarthRavnos
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I just hate how BW doesn't care about it's subscribers outside US and steals 1 day of play from us every week. It was manageable when it was only 4 hours, but 8 hours is too much especially since there is no patch or any reason at all for it to be that long.

 

And ofc USA will troll this topic, for them the maintenance is during sleeptime so they don't care if it takes 1 hour or 10.

Edited by oldshatterhand
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I just hate how BW doesn't care about it's subscribers outside US and steals 1 day of play from us every week. It was manageable when it was only 4 hours, but 8 hours is too much especially since there is no patch or any reason at all for it to be that long.

 

And ofc USA will troll this topic, for them the maintenance is during sleeptime so they don't care if it takes 1 hour or 10.

 

I object. I'm from the UK not the US. I don't care if it takes them 24 hours to do what they need to do, I just go to the pub, or...during the time they update I'm actually in work.

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Wasn't one of the reasons that Bioware went with the Hero Engine that they could essentially add things to the game while the servers were online? I seem to remember this from an interview.

 

 

 

EXACTLY!? thats how you can tell they are blowing smoke or either inept because they say one thing but actually their actions prove otherwise.

 

its 2012, theres no reason for there to be 8 hour regular downtimes, i can see it once in a while during extensive hardware upgrades but EVERY PATCH? people are leaving in droves and bioware is still clueless as to why. well this is a good example. completely out of touch with the community.

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As the title says, why will tomorrow's maintenance last 8 hours when there is no patch? All non-patch maintenances so far only lasted 4 hours.

 

Not all non-patch maintenance days, have lasted 8 hours in the past. I have no doubt, tomorrow will be no different.

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