What. The. Fuck.

[Phred]

So apparently there was some sort of hardware failure which brought down the authentication servers last week and now they are just sort of limping along for whatever reason. Which begs the question, why the fuck are those servers not at least quadruplely redundant? Blizzard credited everybody one day last week which means VU Games just ate at least $500,000 for that infrastructure fuckup (>1 million NA subscribers * ~0.50/day, I'm assuming Europe has their own auth servers). If they had just spent a fraction of that money on some failover authentication servers they wouldn't be in this mess.

I have no idea if it's true but I keep hearing that they contracted out server supply and maintenance to their ISP. It's unfathomable why a company would do this but with the way things are going it's looking more and more possible that it's the case.

[Azazel]

Everything in this thread is why my wifes and my accounts have lapsed. Well add in because it's impossible to log in on Saturday and Sunday afternoons which is the main time we can play (whod'a thunk it?) and even if you manage to get on the game spends much of it's time shitting itself and being unplayable..

hooray.

[Glazius]

Everything in this thread is why my wifes and my accounts have lapsed. Well add in because it's impossible to log in on Saturday and Sunday afternoons which is the main time we can play (whod'a thunk it?) and even if you manage to get on the game spends much of it's time shitting itself and being unplayable..

hooray.

Nobody plays WoW anymore, it's too crowded.

--GF

[Morfiend]

I have no idea if it's true but I keep hearing that they contracted out server supply and maintenance to their ISP. It's unfathomable why a company would do this but with the way things are going it's looking more and more possible that it's the case.

Not true. Or at least not totally true. My friend works on the servers, and he has been at work like 12-14 hours a day for the last 2 weeks. You can blame a lot of the problems on the original server architechure, that was handled by some one who knew very little about servers.

[Xanthippe]

I have no idea if it's true but I keep hearing that they contracted out server supply and maintenance to their ISP. It's unfathomable why a company would do this but with the way things are going it's looking more and more possible that it's the case.

Not true. Or at least not totally true. My friend works on the servers, and he has been at work like 12-14 hours a day for the last 2 weeks. You can blame a lot of the problems on the original server architechure, that was handled by some one who knew very little about servers.

WoW has been having unanticipated server problems since launch.  How long would it take to completely redo the server side?  A year?

Sure would be nice if they did something about it, even if that doing something meant completely re-engineering that side of it.  A year and a half after launch and my server is still a miserable piece of shit that I cannot log into during primetime without spending at least 15 minutes working at it, and sometimes not even then.

(Yes, yes, I know, I can vote with my wallet, and I would if I only played primetime, but I'm usually about to log off then).

I wonder how many more subs they'd have if the servers were reliable?  A lot, I would wager.

[Strazos]

You have to spend mone to make money, it seems.

[bhodi]

WoW has been having unanticipated server problems since launch.  How long would it take to completely redo the server side?  A year?

Sure would be nice if they did something about it, even if that doing something meant completely re-engineering that side of it.  A year and a half after launch and my server is still a miserable piece of shit that I cannot log into during primetime without spending at least 15 minutes working at it, and sometimes not even then.

I don't remember having authentication issues until the past month or so. it's all been server issues for me. Queues, loot lag, server stability, things like that are all server side issues. See "blizzard does something right" thread for reference, but long story short they upgraded my server hardware (which was the oldest, being one of the launch servers) and it's smooth as silk now.

They've been saying they are designing a new authentication mechanism; my guess was they didn't make the auth servers scalable enough, and it was designed for a maximum of probably half the load they have now, back before they realized the money shower they were expecting turned into a full scale money monsoon. You can handle the extra users by throwing more realms at the problem, but *everyone* has to go through the auth servers, so with every new purchase it gets slightly slower.  Add to that the apparent hardware failure(s) that they have and should have planned for, and blizzard's myopic architecture planning shows through and begins to impact their cashflow.

Also, from what I can gather the new auth mechanism FAILED MISERABLY two weeks ago when they tried it and they were forced to go back to the old one... hopefully their new auth solution will come out soon and all these problems will go away.

[Xanthippe]

By now there is no reason why they could not have already upgraded every single one of the original launch servers.

Neither of the two I play on have been upgraded yet, at least not so I can tell by performance.  Crashes multiple times every night for the past week.  Mailbox and AH problems, loot lag, and so on, these problems have been better sometimes and worse sometimes, but they have always been present during primetime in some way or other.

I expect it to be bad at launch.  I don't expect it to be bad a year and a half after launch.

[Azazel]

I agree with everything that Xanthippe said in the above post.

a lot.

[Margalis]

By now there is no reason why they could not have already upgraded every single one of the original launch servers.

The reason is incompetence.

[Rasix]

By now there is no reason why they could not have already upgraded every single one of the original launch servers.

The reason is incompetence.

Mixed with a whole lot of complacence.  I mean really, the masses have shown they're willing to put up with this kind of crap and pay $15 a month. Why change, why try to do better? Trying costs money.

[Hawken]

I actually cancelled my account. Was an extremely heavy catass raider, made alot of friends in the game and enjoyed it quite a bit.
However being "older" now I am less willing to accept these login, lag (raiding aq was not enjoyable) after almost a year and a half of the game being online I was unwilling to deal with these issues.

So yeah I guess I took the advice of the forum fanboys and actually "quit" instead of ranting incessantly on the forums.

I just find it amazing how many people actually accept the 30-60 minute login ques, the lag, the authentication problems. I just didn't find it normal to mash the login button repeteadly when I could have been mashing potatoes, or something.

[bhodi]

If it's almost raid time (8ish mon,weds,fri,sat) and I can't get in, I go do something else. The game's still a casual enough part of my life that I'm not a heroin junkie slamming the keyboard for my fix. I just post on the guild forums about not being able to log in and wander off.

[Miasma]

Even quiting WoW is kind of fun, I saved the sad peon to my computer.

[MrHat]

Even quiting WoW is kind of fun, I saved the sad peon to my computer.

I was more impressed with the EQ2 cancelling procedure.

[angry.bob]

1:35 am and the authentication servers are fucked again. For Bnet this shit was okay, for a premium subscription fee it's not.

[Margalis]

It's pretty amazing that for all they've done right they are totally dropping the ball on simple technical issues.

[angry.bob]

It's pretty amazing that for all they've done right they are totally dropping the ball on simple technical issues.

They're used to BNet, and they don't seem to believe that WoW needs any higher a level of service. And it's only going to get worse. Very, very soon, the weekly maintenance is going to be a full, solid day. And keep  creeping. And it's not like maintenance is doing shit anymore either. By Wednesday night the game is chugging like a bitch. If Mythic can handle their maintenance on WAR half as well as they did with DAoC, they win. This shit is really starting to piss people off very badly.

[Flood]

I feel the same way.  I am so over the login problems and server downtimes. 

Due to hardware issues I wasn't even able to play any games on my computer for 3 weeks.  But my replacements came, and sure as shit the night I got my computer formatted, XP'd and updated I re-installed WoW to one of the nebulous server messages.  "We think something is wrong with the servers/login server/auth server.  We are working as fast as we blah blah blah, thanks for your understanding."  Balls.

I agree with Margalis.  WoW is a well made game overall, and Blizzard has marketted it successfully to a huge subscription-paying group of consumers.  But they can't make the servers run. 

My conspiracy theory is that Blizzard never expected to have to maintain server architechure for 5-6 million players.  Maybe some of the people helping to design the douchebag Blood Elves should have been replaced with network engineers.
 

[Hawken]

How many servers? 128?

5-6 million accounts = the possibility of 128 x 10 chars per server (hypothetical, but I am sure farmers use quite a few) = 1280 chars.

1280 chars x 6 million = 7,680,000,000 possible characters. Banks, useless lewt, certain holidays with even more useless lewt to store, duping, overcrowded servers.

I have seen some large company server farms, for example Geico's that handle 6 million or so Insurance policies, that are housed in a pretty spectacular building, and is huge. I can't imagine what the Blizz server farm looks like.

[Phred]

How many servers? 128?

5-6 million accounts = the possibility of 128 x 10 chars per server (hypothetical, but I am sure farmers use quite a few) = 1280 chars.

1280 chars x 6 million = 7,680,000,000 possible characters. Banks, useless lewt, certain holidays with even more useless lewt to store, duping, overcrowded servers.

I have seen some large company server farms, for example Geico's that handle 6 million or so Insurance policies, that are housed in a pretty spectacular building, and is huge. I can't imagine what the Blizz server farm looks like.

5-6 million is Worldwide and definately not all on the same server farm. At release there were 2 seperate locations for servers. One on the West coast and on in Maryland or somewhere around there that handled East coast and Central timezone servers.

That said, the log in problems and general lack of any solid, timely fixes are pissing me off as well. If I'd run the servers under my control at the ISP I worked at with that kind of competance I'd have been fired post-haste, and likely my manager and his manager would have been as well.

[Trippy]

5-6 million is Worldwide and definately not all on the same server farm. At release there were 2 seperate locations for servers. One on the West coast and on in Maryland or somewhere around there that handled East coast and Central timezone servers.

LA and Washington DC were the two AT&T data centers used for the launch servers.

[Trippy]

My conspiracy theory is that Blizzard never expected to have to maintain server architechure for 5-6 million players.  Maybe some of the people helping to design the douchebag Blood Elves should have been replaced with network engineers.

Their server architecture couldn't handle the 500K players during beta and it was obvious from the launch that the servers would continue to struggle until somebody over there got a clue (which they still haven't yet).

[angry.bob]

That said, the log in problems and general lack of any solid, timely fixes are pissing me off as well. If I'd run the servers under my control at the ISP I worked at with that kind of competance I'd have been fired post-haste, and likely my manager and his manager would have been as well.

We track the exact location of every single piece of freight our company ships via GPS transmitters on our trucks, boxcars, and planes minute by minute. We handle 70% of the LTL freight in North America. Anyway, I had a big post thought out but changed my mind because I'm too lazy to type it. But I just have to ask, what the fuck are they doing that just jabbing the power button won't fix. Even when we have problems with one of the shitty blades in one of our shitty blade centers, it's a 20 minute fix. And there's no fucking way you can tell me that validating a username and password is more complicated or involved than the near real-time tracking via satelite of millions of packages.

General note to all - IBM high speed printers suck. Buy Oce if the decision ever comes up and you're involved in it.

[bhodi]

I'll bet what happened and it's happened in countless other offices and corporations. They designed it to get it to work under a deadline, maybe not with enough scalability in mind. Then the guy quit and left behind three boxes of documentation and a ton of question marks and management was unwilling to bring in another architect and elected for a normal administrator.

They hired some people to take his place, but 'maintainers' don't get paid nor are  as skilled as 'creators'  (administrators and architects in this case) and because half of their stuff is custom, it's a nightmare to devlop on anyway. The guys come in and do the best they can to hold the crap together, AND develop a new solution in their spare time. Invariably the upper-management money-hats catch all the falling greenbacks and nothing trickles downward until it really starts affecting the bottom line.

Maybe last month someone threw a numbers sheet in front of a guy with enough power and he saw a lot of people were begining to leave, so he demanded they come up with something better and actually threw some money at the problem. Well, it takes more than a month to get something like that created, so maybe this shit will be actually fixed by fall.

[Jayce]

Then the guy quit and left behind three boxes of documentation

Some people get documentation?  That must be nice....

[bhodi]

Some people get documentation?  That must be nice....

Mostly manuals and install guides of products they may or may not be using...

[Trippy]

Authentication Platform Update

From the boards:

We wanted take a moment to update you on the situation concerning the improved authentication platform we mentioned in the post linked to below.

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.aspx?fn=blizzard-archive&t=51&p=1&tmp=1#post51

For several months now we've researched potential authentication upgrades and evaluated how those system changes could be implemented with minimal impact on our service. We recently decided on a specific authentication solution and are currently taking the necessary steps to implement the associated hardware and software. The new platform should help alleviate the login issues that players have experienced, including both forum- and game-login processes.

Additional information on our new authentication platform, as well as an ETA on when the installation of the platform will be finalized, will be provided next week.

[ post edited by Eyonix ]

[SurfD]

My guild is learning Nef. We only just got a bunch of ony scales which will allow us to reasonably attempt him (new server, ony scales are actually a cockblock for us, fun shit). Too bad we haven't even hit razorgore this reset since we can't fricken log in enough people.

Very annoying.

DERAIL:

Small tip.  Start killing Ony every chance you get, and skin the bitch every chance you can.  If you are actually doing neff, and makeing serious attempts at it, EVERYONE in your raid MUST have an ony cloak equipped.  Anyone not wearing an ony cloak has a 95% chance to die when he goes dragon on your ass in phase 2.  He shadowflames the entire raid, and unless you are getting dedicated heals, you probably wont be able to pot through enough healing to live through the shadowflame dot.

If you are still working through starter bwl mobs, disregard the above

[Xanthippe]

I haven't been playing, other than a little bit of auction house, for a month or more, which means I log on in the mornings.  Usually have no problems.

Sunday evening, trying to log in, and the log-in server is down.

This is still going on?  Unbelievable.