Why couldn't tonight's patch wait til next Tuesday?

[StaticJoe]

they took it down in order to prove that they listen to the people on the forums and that they were able to fix abug that a large number of people were complaining about.. i dont see why bioware trying to be a responsible game designing company is a bad thing.. they made a mistake by adding a new bug, they fixed it in a fairly prompt manner.. if no one expected this down time then you are just silly.. they had the bug in the announcements and said they would be fixing it as soon as possible...to me that says.. more downtime when the patch is complete.

 

 

There are 2 problems:

 

1) The issue would have been discovered had the patch been properly tested BEFORE going to the live environment

 

2) The patch was NOT gamebreaking--if you can login and you can play then the issue can wait until the next maintenance window...the fact of the matter is today's downtime was BW's own fault, due to their own incompetence and their own negligence

 

Your point about BW fixing bugs--which they themselves created--has been refuted

 

[Qaoz]

 

 

Well let's see here, the system was down on Tuesday for regular maintenance...but...the patch they pushed out is the root cause of people's Matrix Cubes disappearing...so they have to take the system down again to patch the patch...?? Uh, no--completely unacceptable, again not that the servers were down but the reason they were down and the fact the game did NOT need to be taken down because the issue was NOT gamebreaking

 

 

 

 

What's up with the size 3 text? And what are you talking about? I was on Tuesday during maintenance hours and people in the Fleet told me that it had been cancelled.

[Armourboy]

To put things into perspective, WoW had 8 hours of maintenance last Tuesday.

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/4877377912

 

SW:TOR only had less than 4. With today's maintenance, it will still be less than WoW's maintenance for this week.

 

Not really, some weeks WoW doesn't even have Maintenance, the just do a server restart so nice try. Besides the time that they do theres is generally better for most players. In the US most people are either at work, school, or asleep ( if you work nights). I believe it hits EU prior to prime time unless it runs over, which unless its a major content patch is rarely does.

 

I have no problems with them bringing down servers multiple times a week if it is fixing something that is game breaking or creating all kinds of issues. Sorry, but matric cubes don't fall into that.

[StaticJoe]

And what are you talking about? I was on Tuesday during maintenance hours and people in the Fleet told me that it had been cancelled.

 

I live near Chicago so the system goes down for maintenance every Tuesday at 2.00AM CDT...which happens to be right when I get home from work....

 

 

What's up with the size 3 text?

 

It's size 3, right between size 2 and size 4

 

 

[StaticJoe]

 

i have no problems with them bringing down servers multiple times a week if it is fixing something that is game breaking or creating all kinds of issues. Sorry, but matric cubes don't fall into that.

 

 

Exactly!!!!!! Thank you!!!!!!

[Qaoz]

Seriously, what's with the huge text?

[alifaraaz]

Considering they are still widely considered BiS relic for most classes, they're a pretty big deal. Having said that, thye intended to do it Wed Morning (UK time, Late Tues/Early Wed for US), but it got delayed because naturally they tried to fix it but couldnt till Thursday morning. Since we dealt with it for 2 nights, tbh I wouldn;t have cried or cared if they waited till next Tuesday, but that's me who has spare Ops relics in my bank. Others dont, for them it was a massive gimp to their stats, like everyone losing an implant or whatever.

 

Not to mention, people went crrrraaaaaazzzzzyyyyyy on tuesday from seeing their matrix cube gone. A 50 page thread made in a couple of hours of people posting their name, char, server, and name of cube missing. So when people go THAT crazy, BW are gonna assume " Oh **** this needs to be dealt with ASA-***********-P, because people are going ape ****".

 

I hope you get my point, their reaction was in response to the communities reaction. I just wish the reacted the same to our Server transfer request earlier on

[Adderdin]

Seems every week we have this same issue pop up.

 

Weekly scheduled maintenance occurs. They implement a new patch. That patch breaks something. We get a second maintenance period for the week.

 

Week after week after week.

 

To top it all off, for both scheduled and unscheduled maintenance, they take the servers down during peak oceanic play times. Now before everyone attempts to school me in the fact that this is an american game, which I clearly already know, lets have a think about the root issue here.

 

Why aren't they testing these patches before implementing them?

 

 

 

One maintenance period per week should be more than enough.

 

This is the one maintance that actually was needed.

[ptolmy]

'your country' makes this game? LOL

 

this is just hilarious.

 

He's a proud resident of the Bioware commonwealth.

[ptolmy]

Also, not sure if anyone read the notes, but it wasn't just matrix cubes, there was a general mission items problem. I can imagine people being stuck on certain missions, unable to progress to the next planet since tuesday, flipping out and spamming angry bug reports...

[chaosdefined]

To put things into perspective, WoW had 8 hours of maintenance last Tuesday.

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/4877377912

 

SW:TOR only had less than 4. With today's maintenance, it will still be less than WoW's maintenance for this week.

 

It's actually kind of funny, I know that every thread I go into, you're gonna be in it bashing WoW.

Are you banned from the WoW forums and so you're venting on here instead?

[demiposer]

The problem here isn't bioware, it's the community.

 

Bioware is damned if they do and damned if they don't. There is so much whining on here that if they don't fix this or that or this they are going to unsub. These problems mean a great deal to some subs and nothing to others.

 

Now Bioware found a problem that happened shortly after it happened and went a head and fixed it. OH NO!!! Call the Police we better freak out about that too. Seriously, do you want problems to be fixed or not. I'm sorry you missed a couple of hours of gaming. Suck it up, but please stop the whining.

[utio]

He's a proud resident of the Bioware commonwealth.

 

He also doesn't understand that it matters not a bit where it was made. If a company makes a game, and invites the world to play it live, then it's a global game, with a global customer base. Any company selling to the world, and then asking them to stick to their own rules/timezones is naive at best.

As for the cube, it's been fixed now, so the crybabys that can't possibly play the game without them can now be content. I would like bioware to please bring servers down ASAP to fix the companion invisible gun bug, and the auto target targeting my companion bug, and the disappearing companion bug. They won't of course, and I jest anyway. Though I fin the bugs annoying as hell, I'll wait until a normal maintenance day.

[Lakhesis]

Also, not sure if anyone read the notes, but it wasn't just matrix cubes, there was a general mission items problem. I can imagine people being stuck on certain missions, unable to progress to the next planet since tuesday, flipping out and spamming angry bug reports...

 

Tonight's patch notes are here: http://www.swtor.com/patchnotes/1.2.3a/5102012. Only the matrix cubes are mentioned at present.

 

And to summarise why people are freaking out look at the patch note dates & compare them to a calendar.

 

This week: 8th & 10th of May

1 week ago: 1st of May

2 weeks ago: 24th & 27th April

3 weeks ago: 17th & 19th April

4 weeks ago: 12th & 13th April

5 weeks ago: 3rd April

6 weeks ago: No maintenance

7 weeks ago: 20th & 23rd March

8 weeks ago: 13th & 15th March

 

If you check against the community news blog, you'll see posts confirming all those as maintenance days except 13th April, 23rd March & 15th March. I'd be prepared to swear to the maintenance on 23rd March but don't recall the other two with certainty, tho I've never heard of them doing a hotfix rather than a maintenance so I'd be surprised if they weren't maintenances. If you want to check this forum for old posts you could probably confirm via complaining Oceanics on those dates.

 

So 6 out of 9 weeks are double maintenances during the Oceanic region's prime time.

 

Is it really surprising people are upset? Precisely how many game-breaking emergencies does this game have? Is a trinket breaking really such an emergency? Is this competent MMO management?

 

IMO: No, not many, no & absolutely not.

 

Looking at the dates, it seems to me that the development team's work cycle makes a thursday or friday update convenient for them and their attitude is "stuff the customers, just update the game". It's a shame they don't actually realise that there's a hell of a lot more to an MMO than just nice neat code.

Edited May 10, 2012 by Lakhesis

[netskink]

Where I work, we build HUGE servers. I imagine swtor runs on these servers or something like it. Just to run memcheck during boot takes minutes. Seriously have you ever seen a server with a terabyte of memory boot? They take a long time. So I imagine half of what they do during maintenance is simply shutdown, copy patch, restart and reestablish network connections with other servers. Afterwards they probably run some sanity test to see if everything is working.

 

I don't think they can do this any faster than 4 hours.

[biRdyxLoCo]

Where I work, we build HUGE servers. I imagine swtor runs on these servers or something like it. Just to run memcheck during boot takes minutes. Seriously have you ever seen a server with a terabyte of memory boot? They take a long time. So I imagine half of what they do during maintenance is simply shutdown, copy patch, restart and reestablish network connections with other servers. Afterwards they probably run some sanity test to see if everything is working.

 

I don't think they can do this any faster than 4 hours.

Thank you I think most of the complainers believe all Bioware has to do is press an easy button to patch the game.

[DeltaEkotte]

 

Why aren't they testing these patches before implementing them?

 

Because a lot of the player base can't wait a few days while bioware tests patches, its all we want new **** now! fix this now! So Bioware rolls out the patchs and fixes to please those people and geuss what, it either doesn't work or it breaks something else and then everyone yells at bioware why didn't you test this im leaving /rage quit.

 

Learn to wait for good things and things that work, in other words take the golden spoon out of your ***.

[Itukaaj]

I generally support some QQ but to cry over them fixing stuff rapidly. That's over the top. In case it hasn't been posted thanks Bioware despite what this poster says we appreciate rapid fixes.

[Lakhesis]

Where I work, we build HUGE servers. I imagine swtor runs on these servers or something like it. Just to run memcheck during boot takes minutes. Seriously have you ever seen a server with a terabyte of memory boot? They take a long time. So I imagine half of what they do during maintenance is simply shutdown, copy patch, restart and reestablish network connections with other servers. Afterwards they probably run some sanity test to see if everything is working.

 

I don't think they can do this any faster than 4 hours.

 

Yet their competition can all deploy hotfixes via restarts that take less than a minute or two?

 

I take your point about a full system reboot, but if their competition can work around that issue then surely Bioware is capable of it too.

 

Part of the whole advertising blurb of the Hero Engine is that it's got "Live Update and World Push" which doesn't require shutting the servers down for updates, so even if they're using a heavily modified version their basic system should be at least semi-capable of it. I can't imagine them deliberately removing that technology.

 

Regardless tho - how many of these double maintenances are genuinely necessary? That's the real issue.

[MrSchmo]

they need to take the servers done and keep them down until they add merges or transfers. I could care less about peoples matrix cubes wahhhhhhhhhhh

 

How about all the people who can't even play cuz they are the only one on there server

Comment of the day! Show him what he's won Johnny.

 

To fix low populations your solution is to not let anyone play. Awesome logic.

[Annedromeda]

 

Regardless tho - how many of these double maintenances are genuinely necessary? That's the real issue.

 

They're all genuinely necessary. Do you think Bio likes taking the servers down just to see the ragers everytime they take the servers down? Think logically please, because I'm pretty sure a company taking money from people would not intentionally make them unhappy whenever they could, just for the sake of it, because only one of the two server shutdowns a week were necessary.

 

If you want stuff fixed, they are genuinely necessary.

[rjkishida]

There have been countless people who have posted the same thing as the OP and Bioware just keep ignoring them and the fanbois just scream that we are QQing. If you can't take it quit, Bioware ain't going to be changing their attitude anytime soon.

[Lakhesis]

They're all genuinely necessary. Do you think Bio likes taking the servers down just to see the ragers everytime they take the servers down? Think logically please, because I'm pretty sure a company taking money from people would not intentionally make them unhappy whenever they could, just for the sake of it, because only one of the two server shutdowns a week were necessary.

 

If you want stuff fixed, they are genuinely necessary.

 

Seriously? OK, lets have a fact check here. Leaving out the tuesday "regular" maintenance & just looking at the "extra" six maintenances in the last 9 weeks:

 

Patch 1.2.3a - Fixed the relics

Patch 1.2.1a - Fixed an "item-related economic exploit"

Patch 1.2.0c - Looks like normal patch, whereas the one on that tuesday only fixed a codex entry & some item stats.

Patch 1.2.0a - Fixed an issue stopping characters being deleted. "Improved the ticketing system".

Patch 1.1.5d - Implemented changes to improve server stability

Patch 1.1.5b - Corrected the accidental extended free weekend pass

 

I'll give them the server stability patch & possibly the economic exploit as genuinely game breaking. The rest are stuff that could've waited for a normal scheduled maintenance. They will not cause the game to blow up. Heck, the accidental extended pass should even have helped get them more customers assuming the initial premise of the marketing scheme was actually sound.

 

If you honestly believe in nothing but quick patches, Bioware should implement a system where they run a quick 30-60 minute maintenance every day when the dev's finish work & push that day's updates immediately. It'd involve about the same total length of downtime as their current two-maintenances-per-week schedule, but provide for much more rapid updates.

 

I do not think that would be a good system personally. An MMO is an ongoing universe so the more frequently you shut it down & lock your players out, the more frequently your players will have the opportunity to go & find something else to do instead. Eventually they either find an activity that's more fun or just get so frustrated they give up on your MMO, but either way they don't come back.

 

Communities are living things. If you keep poking them with a stick & stuffing around with their environment, you just make life annoying & uncomfortable. It doesn't matter whether you mean well or not - it's like the mechanic whose car is always in pieces being 'improved', and so he virtually never gets to actually drive it.

 

Plus they're already having obvious issues with quality assurance at the speed they're updating. Slowing down enough to properly check their work is likely to improve quality, not going faster.

Edited May 10, 2012 by Lakhesis

[Blistrich]

Seriously Bioware. How about a bit of perspective on what's a major fault & what isn't?

1) Items disappeared from the game.

 

2) They fixed it with a patch.

 

3) Customers complain that they fixed something.

 

4) Customers complain that they fixed something.

 

5) Customers complain that they fixed something.

 

Sometimes it feels like people just wake up thinking of new ways to **** on this game.

Edited May 10, 2012 by Blistrich

[netskink]

Seriously? OK, lets have a fact check here. Leaving out the tuesday "regular" maintenance & just looking at the "extra" six maintenances in the last 9 weeks:

 

Patch 1.2.3a - Fixed the relics

Patch 1.2.1a - Fixed an "item-related economic exploit"

Patch 1.2.0c - Looks like normal patch, whereas the one on that tuesday only fixed a codex entry & some item stats.

Patch 1.2.0a - Fixed an issue stopping characters being deleted. "Improved the ticketing system".

Patch 1.1.5d - Implemented changes to improve server stability

Patch 1.1.5b - Corrected the accidental extended free weekend pass

 

I'll give them the server stability patch & possibly the economic exploit as genuinely game breaking. The rest are stuff that could've waited for a normal scheduled maintenance. They will not cause the game to blow up. Heck, the accidental extended pass should even have helped get them more customers assuming the initial premise of the marketing scheme was actually sound.

 

If you honestly believe in nothing but quick patches, Bioware should implement a system where they run a quick 30-60 minute maintenance every day when the dev's finish work & push that day's updates immediately. It'd involve about the same total length of downtime as their current two-maintenances-per-week schedule, but provide for much more rapid updates.

 

I do not think that would be a good system personally. An MMO is an ongoing universe so the more frequently you shut it down & lock your players out, the more frequently your players will have the opportunity to go & find something else to do instead. Eventually they either find an activity that's more fun or just get so frustrated they give up on your MMO, but either way they don't come back.

 

Communities are living things. If you keep poking them with a stick & stuffing around with their environment, you just make life annoying & uncomfortable. It doesn't matter whether you mean well or not - it's like the mechanic whose car is always in pieces being 'improved', and so he virtually never gets to actually drive it.

 

Plus they're already having obvious issues with quality assurance at the speed they're updating. Slowing down enough to properly check their work is likely to improve quality, not going faster.

 

Regarding 30-60 minute downtimes. I don't think their servers are capable of rebooting in an hour. Consider they have to bring down more than one server for a realm. I imagine they have a server for a realm, another for the associated pvp instances, another for the ops, another for the fp's. Possibly yet another for some sort of server hub or even planets. The probably have a dependency list as well. Bring down server 1 and then you can bring down servers 2, 3 and 4. Consider how long it takes for you to simply shutdown your client and shutdown your pc. Now compound this by a server which has tons of client data. I would not be surprised if it takes an hour to bring a fully running server to a complete stop.