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Shocking news: World of Warcraft downtime extended

C

Craig234

Lifer
I have never seen an IT operation do as badly as Blizzard's World of Warcraft.

Every major update I've seen them do for years I can recall has predictably extended downtime - probably multiple times.

These are planned scheduled updates they can test in advance.

With 4.0 last month, I expected it and think there might have been four extensions.

As I type, they are in another extension. "It's taking longer than expected..."

For a game with something like 12 million subscribers times whatever the monthly fee is globally - US is $15, which would be over $2 billion a year...

I'm just surprised at the consistent 'unexpected' delays.
 
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That's typical with a lot of MMOs, to be honest. Age of Conan's major updates nearly always resulted in extended downtime, as did SWG's updates. Are they starting to add the back-end components for Cataclysm?
 
IndyColtsFan said:
That's typical with a lot of MMOs, to be honest. Age of Conan's major updates nearly always resulted in extended downtime, as did SWG's updates. Are they starting to add the back-end components for Cataclysm?
Click to expand...

the shattering happens today, which is basically cataclysm without the new content. so yeah, all of the 4.x patches have been adding in cata stuff.

they didn't even bother with a short extension, they added 3 hours right off the bat. things must not be going so well.
 
IndyColtsFan said:
That's typical with a lot of MMOs, to be honest. Age of Conan's major updates nearly always resulted in extended downtime, as did SWG's updates. Are they starting to add the back-end components for Cataclysm?
Click to expand...

To clarify: by extended, I don't mean 'longer than normal'.

I mean, unexpectedly extended, as in, "we will be down 8 hours", and as the end of the 8 hours approaches, they add another two, and another two, and another two.

It's no problem for them to schedule 'extended' downtime for upgrades, like the first 8 hours in that example.
 
When rolling out an MMO expansion, all delays are unexpected. When you consider that changes are being applied to various datacenters containing hundreds if not thousands of servers in total at various geographic locations throughout the country as well as other parts of the world its extraordinary that they can do it in the time they do. Changes like this in other industries take days or weeks to impliment and debug.

Instead of getting antsy about wow, try doing something else today. A day off can only help most players 😛
 
Craig234 said:
I have never seen an IT operation do as badly as Blizzard's World of Warcraft.

Every major update I've seen them do for years I can recall has predictably extended downtime - probably multiple times.

These are planned scheduled updates they can test in advance.

With 4.0 last month, I expected it and think there might have been four extensions.

As I type, they are in another extension. "It's taking longer than expected..."

For a game with something like 12 million subscribers times whatever the monthly fee is globally - US is $15, which would be over $2 billion a year...

I'm just surprised at the consistent 'unexpected' delays.
Click to expand...


Man I was so annoyed when I heard about this and then I patched the game and watched the CG....all was forgiven. Blizzard makes products that are usually worth the wait and this will be no exception. Just relax.
 
Craig234 said:
To clarify: by extended, I don't mean 'longer than normal'.

I mean, unexpectedly extended, as in, "we will be down 8 hours", and as the end of the 8 hours approaches, they add another two, and another two, and another two.
Click to expand...

Yeah, that's what I was referring to. In AoC, for example, the servers would be scheduled to be down for 12 hours. Near the end, they'd post and say "We're having issues and will need another 12 hours."

In the case of SWG, it was REALLY bad on a couple of updates -- like a day of added, unanticipated downtime. They compensated everyone, but it was REALLY annoying.
 
Now they are saying 5pm PST? So probably more like 10pm PST. 😛

And yeah, Blizzard's extended downtime is the most predictable thing ever. I said last night on vent that downtime would probably be at least 10 hours longer than Blizzard claimed.
 
I was hoping that this downtime would be extended indefinitely. It would do the MMO industry good to see WoW erased.
 
Elcs said:
I was hoping that this downtime would be extended indefinitely. It would do the MMO industry good to see WoW erased.
Click to expand...

If WoW would suddenly cease to exist, that wouldn't translate to an increase in quality of other MMOs. While many would try to find a home with another game, most of the players would more likely quit playing altogether than to play any of the copy cat alternatives.

A truly innovative well designed game can easily displace WoW, but unfortunately we haven't seen one yet. Well, maybe Eve Online, but anyone who has played that game knows that it couldn't handle a large surge of new players without major technical problems.
 
Balt said:
Now they are saying 5pm PST? So probably more like 10pm PST. 😛

And yeah, Blizzard's extended downtime is the most predictable thing ever. I said last night on vent that downtime would probably be at least 10 hours longer than Blizzard claimed.
Click to expand...

Yup, when I posted it had been delayed from the scheduled 11AM to 1PM, and now they delayed it again to 5PM.
 
Get a job? LOL. When I get home, usually things are up and running, but I typically don't bother for the entire day if it's a huuge change like this.
 
Dr. Acid Avatar said:
Man I was so annoyed when I heard about this and then I patched the game and watched the CG....all was forgiven. Blizzard makes products that are usually worth the wait and this will be no exception. Just relax.
Click to expand...

I watched the CG this morning before I went to work. Although the quality of it was amazing, it was seriously boring. Usually, Blizzard CG is epic to me, but for some reason, the destruction of the old world wasn't captivating.

just my opinion
 
I remember these downtimes when I was addicted to WoW. I'd go crazy and keep trying to log in, even though it was buggy and unstable after the shit down. No one in my faction was on, but I just ahd to get on.

Thank god I now have alcohol...
 
Blizzard is probably the one company with the money to make downtime go away.

1. Replicate all servers.
2. Patch offline servers.
3. Switch which servers are live.

But they'd rather built orc statues in their parking lot.
 
Anteaus said:
If WoW would suddenly cease to exist, that wouldn't translate to an increase in quality of other MMOs. While many would try to find a home with another game, most of the players would more likely quit playing altogether than to play any of the copy cat alternatives.

A truly innovative well designed game can easily displace WoW, but unfortunately we haven't seen one yet. Well, maybe Eve Online, but anyone who has played that game knows that it couldn't handle a large surge of new players without major technical problems.
Click to expand...

I'd think that 98% of the truly dedicated WoW addicts would have zero interest in Eve Online.
 
I sure don't miss the updates... glad I quit that addiction years ago. You'd think patches/updates would be flawless - but for some reason, gremlins tend appear on update/patch day.
 
People need to expand their game library or simply go outside more. Maybe play with the dog, or go play with the wife or kids. It's pretty sad to see so many people angry they can't get their fix. Hell, go do lines of coke instead or shoot some heroin. They both are less addicting.
 
shocking news, there is already a WoW thread.
more shocking news, this isn't the first time this has happened.
even more shocking news, this isn't even the second time this has happened.
 
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