Killer maintenance ?

[Monika T'Sarn]

Is this the only game where 'server maintenance' actually means making things worse ? It's been the same week after week: Things go fine for 6 days, then on tuesday they have 4 hours downtime to do maintenance, and after that things break down horribly.
What kind of process is it where the character servers are not reliably connected to the game servers anymore after a reboot ? It's just weird ...
Btw, anybody know the reason why they share database servers between 4 realms, in the same weird way that SWG did ? From a technical standpoint it seems counter productive - 4 small databases should be easier to manage then one huge. Is it a licensing cost problem or something else ?

[Soukyan]

Look on the bright side. I canceled my account and it kept having free days added on to it because of downtime. So I attempt to login last night to make sure the account is fully expired (it was due to expire the 28th). Well, they either auto-activate your account when you login to the game or they had reset their account & billing information without telling players because I was charged yet another monthly fee and I don't wish to play the game. So now I've got to make a call to their customer support and bitch about it and get my money back. Pain in the ass game companies.

[Dren]

You can check out any time you want, but you can never leave.

[Mesozoic]

Well shit.  Do I log in to make sure they haven't re-upped me, or do I stay out of the game to keep from getting re-upped?

Yessiree, account billing by Joseph Heller.

I guess that there's actually a pretty slim chance that logging in re-ups.

[Jayce]

You can always just not worry about it until the charge appears on your credit card, then dispute it.

Especially if you have some documentation, like a screencap of the cancel account screen, you're on pretty strong ground.

[Toast]

Or, you could just call and cancel like most subscription services require.

[Mesozoic]

Or, you could just call and cancel like most subscription services require.

Most? Require?  

You mean unlike EQ, DAoC, AO, Planetside, AC or WoW?

[Alkiera]

Or, you could just call and cancel like most subscription services require.

Most? Require?  

You mean unlike EQ, DAoC, AO, Planetside, AC or WoW?

I think he was refering to mostly non-MMO subscription services.  8)

Alkiera

[Rasix]

From a technical standpoint it seems counter productive - 4 small databases should be easier to manage then one huge. Is it a licensing cost problem or something else ?

I remember something like this being mentioned with SWG.  A lot of problems they encountered were due to the licensing structure with Oracle.

It's times like this I love my podunk server.  No problems. No maintenance downtime. Little lag (Andorhal is a different story, TOO MANY MOBS).

[Soukyan]

Or, you could just call and cancel like most subscription services require.

Or they could honor the fact that they provide a cancellation of service option online, and I ALREADY CANCELLED ONCE. ;)  And I do have screen caps of the cancellation screen.

It sounds like their database problems extend beyond the game servers to the web servers and accounts and billing. Frightening thought. I figured only AE and Horizons could fuck up that bad.

[Rasix]

Haven't seen a big fuss on the boards about this. You know, perhaps it's just you.  Call your credit card company and dispute the charges.  Easy.

[Toast]

Or they could honor the fact that they provide a cancellation of service option online, and I ALREADY CANCELLED ONCE. ;) And I do have screen caps of the cancellation screen.

This looks like divine providence. You should probably just start playing again and forget all of this ever happened.

[Soukyan]

Or they could honor the fact that they provide a cancellation of service option online, and I ALREADY CANCELLED ONCE. ;) And I do have screen caps of the cancellation screen.

This looks like divine provenance. You should probably just start playing again and forget all of this ever happened.

Good point. If only I had the time...

And yes, Rasix, I haven't heard any murmurings of this problem either, but I don't go near "official" boards for any MMOGs so I'm often in the dark about these things. No harm done. It's an isolated incident and I'll just call Blizzard customer support and get it squared away. If they can't help me, then it's dispute the charge time. ;)

Back to your regularly scheduled database discussion. Sorry for the early de-rail there, Monika.

[Toast]

I didn't have any problems yesterday playing. In fact, I have avoided almost all of the server problems. I assume that, because i have limited play time, my exposure to issues is proportionally lower.

[Rasix]

I didn't have any problems yesterday playing. In fact, I have avoided almost all of the server problems. I assume that, because i have limited play time, my exposure to issues is proportionally lower.

My friend that works from home has a lot of free time during the day.  He's usually got a gripe or two to share when we all log in at night.  He sees a lot of stuff I just don't get to experience. But lately he's been somewhat silent on server issues. Either they're becoming less frequent or he's accepted it more.

[Mi_Tes]

I didn't have any problems yesterday playing. In fact, I have avoided almost all of the server problems. I assume that, because i have limited play time, my exposure to issues is proportionally lower.

Was a bit surprised, I didn't have any issues at all yesterday either.  Usually I get booted out at least a few times.  Fingers crossed this continues!

[Jayce]

Or they could honor the fact that they provide a cancellation of service option online, and I ALREADY CANCELLED ONCE. ;) And I do have screen caps of the cancellation screen.

This looks like divine provenance. You should probably just start playing again and forget all of this ever happened.

Good point. If only I had the time...

And yes, Rasix, I haven't heard any murmurings of this problem either, but I don't go near "official" boards for any MMOGs so I'm often in the dark about these things. No harm done. It's an isolated incident and I'll just call Blizzard customer support and get it squared away. If they can't help me, then it's dispute the charge time. ;)

Back to your regularly scheduled database discussion. Sorry for the early de-rail there, Monika.

How could you miss that one Souk?

Provenance: proof of authenticity or place of origin.
Providence: care or foresight exercised usually by a deity.

OMG Blizzard's billing just proved the existence of God???????!

[Toast]

Provenance: proof of authenticity or place of origin.
Providence: care or foresight exercised usually by a deity.

I am embarassed. I know better than that.

[Signe]

I played on Icecrown a bit yesterday and, for the first time in ages, had no problems other than a wee bit of lag.  On the other hand, Earthen Ring, which had previously given me no problems, had me dropping through invisible rifts in the world 4 times.  All in different areas near Razor Hill and in the Barrens.  I can't figure it out... maybe it's cosmic.

[WayAbvPar]

That is what you get for abandoning us for an Alliance character. For shame.

[Dren]

Sorry, but Mi_Tes's new avatar just owned me for a few minutes.  I was just staring at it giggling.

Or, it is just that I'm tired.  Yeah, probably that.

[Sky]

It's times like this I love my podunk server.

Lvl 51 uberguild catass! :p

Had a couple lag spikes last night, about 5 minutes all told, probably even less than that. Just had to pull back from hunting and chill out for a few. Came back and it was fine. Earthen Ring has been a good server, thanks for suggesting it and then (for the most part) abandoning it, heh.

It's kinda funny...I played on the Bat Country CoH server, too, and wasn't in BC. *sniff*

[Rasix]

It's times like this I love my podunk server.

Lvl 51 uberguild catass! :p

Actually, 58 now. :) And I'm not Irth. And not guilded.  

I actually gave someone the full and completely truthful explanation on why I was not interested in joining their guild today.  Being 55+ and unguilded is just a magnet to get about 5 tells a day of  "hi" from someone you don't know (BTW, if I ignore anyone here, just tell me who you are. I don't respond to anonymous "hi"s anymore).  They were pretty much stunned when I gave them the full and honest spiel, and they were one of the more eloquent inviters of late.  I guess hearing "look, I'll be the worst member you have. My friends and I will always come first, never you".

At least they didn't invite me from across 10 zones while I was in the middle of a fight that could have ended up in a wipe.  That kind of crap is starting to get annoying.

/ramble (this is the kind of crap I should blog, damnit)

[Sky]

Ahh, shit. I was thinking of Righ. Woops.

Yeah, I'm thinking I'll be getting those tells soon enough as an unguilded lvl 40 hunter. Slowed down a lot around lvl 38, so by the end of february I might make 50 the way I've been playing.

Hell, I would be the worst guildie ever. Last night, in the middle of hunting in the Badlands, I got a nice song idea (that is a bit to close to "meantime" by helmet in it's current form, the main riff anyway), so I feigned death (a required skill for me in EQ, too) and spent an hour jamming on it and then recording a rough version so I'd remember some variations....then realized I was still logged in (damn FD timer, tho, got lucky I was in a good spot). Woops.

But if it happened on a guild raid....the guitar ideas come WAY before any game crap.

You know....with the way you can cross-talk on teamspeak...I wonder if you set the TS input to the line-in the guitar is plugged into...could be a cool way to jam online with people, though the drummer'd probably need to line-out of a mixer so he could mic up the drums properly...hmm...

What? I'm bald, too! And Watching!

[Calantus]

Actually, 58 now. :) And I'm not Irth. And not guilded.  

I actually gave someone the full and completely truthful explanation on why I was not interested in joining their guild today.  Being 55+ and unguilded is just a magnet to get about 5 tells a day of  "hi" from someone you don't know (BTW, if I ignore anyone here, just tell me who you are. I don't respond to anonymous "hi"s anymore).  They were pretty much stunned when I gave them the full and honest spiel, and they were one of the more eloquent inviters of late.  I guess hearing "look, I'll be the worst member you have. My friends and I will always come first, never you".

That is why my brother and I already made our own guild of 2 (and will invite others if they are cool and only want to join the guild so they don't get invites and want to talk to us without tells all the time). I figure a priest and warrior duo are gonna get so many guild invites it's not even funny. It also wouldn't be helped by me being incredibly helpful to random (non-dickhead) strangers when I'm not busy. I figure that it will be 10g well-spent to save all the annoyance. I don't want a guild, I just want people I know and can hitup for help, and my friends list does that just fine.

[Toast]

I'm a pretty horrible guild member too. My playtime is already limited, so I am generally restricted with my time.

And, when the girlfriend comes over, I usually have to hit /camp within seconds.

[Soukyan]

Or they could honor the fact that they provide a cancellation of service option online, and I ALREADY CANCELLED ONCE. ;) And I do have screen caps of the cancellation screen.

This looks like divine provenance. You should probably just start playing again and forget all of this ever happened.

Good point. If only I had the time...

And yes, Rasix, I haven't heard any murmurings of this problem either, but I don't go near "official" boards for any MMOGs so I'm often in the dark about these things. No harm done. It's an isolated incident and I'll just call Blizzard customer support and get it squared away. If they can't help me, then it's dispute the charge time. ;)

Back to your regularly scheduled database discussion. Sorry for the early de-rail there, Monika.

How could you miss that one Souk?

Provenance: proof of authenticity or place of origin.
Providence: care or foresight exercised usually by a deity.

OMG Blizzard's billing just proved the existence of God???????!

I hang my head in shame. I was so upset over 15 bucks that I let one slide. If Blizzard thought I was pissed before...

[Trippy]

Is this the only game where 'server maintenance' actually means making things worse ? It's been the same week after week: Things go fine for 6 days, then on tuesday they have 4 hours downtime to do maintenance, and after that things break down horribly.

Though I've been critical of Blizzard's WoW infrastructure I will say in their defense that their first extended maintenance where a group of like 18 servers were down for 16+ hours did help, at least on those servers. I no longer get AH or Mail lag like I was getting before they upgraded the hardware in that "cluster". So sometimes their maintenance does help, other times it doesn't.

What kind of process is it where the character servers are not reliably connected to the game servers anymore after a reboot ? It's just weird ...

Yeah I saw that in the General forum and I'm like WTF does that mean that somebody "forgot" to hook the character database back up? It sounds like they don't have a background process that checks to make sure everything that should be running is, and pages somebody if something isn't. That's like Mission Critical Sysadmin 101. Or maybe they do but somebody turned it off during extended maintenance so they wouldn't constantly get bothered by alert messages.

[Nija]

Transfer to Archi, Rasix.

[Righ]

Lvl 51 uberguild catass! :p

Yep, now level 55. Level 60 is going to come a long long time before I'm ready for an elite mount. Misery isn't really an uberguild, though a fair number of them are college catasses. Other than a rule about teen-rated guild chat, they're pretty laid back. They've just decided to join some RP alliance, so although guild chat is OOC, there will be an optional RP channel which a susbstantal proportion of them intend to take part in. Closed "friends and family" recruiting policy, so drop me a tell if you're interested in joining.

Lucid Dream would be the ER horde uberguild, complete with acrimonious accusations of headhunting of other guilds' high level members. Black Tooth Grin Clan would be the zerg guild, trying to build a large enough guild to do raids from its own membership.

[Gimmick Acct Sky]

Heh, I probably should join a guild someday. Not much of a joiner, though.

BTG just split, btw. I always had a soft spot for them, even though a lot of folks didn't like Khodo, and, after all, they were an open recruitment guild...but they used a great pantera reference imo. I know one splinter guild is Vile Smile, not sure what the other was.

[Signe]

Has the new site broken you, Sky?  You should complain to management.  You might get a coupon or sommat.

[Gimmick Acct Sky]

Has the new site broken you, Sky?  You should complain to management.  You might get a coupon or sommat.

Yes. Done. Doubtful.