What. The. Fuck.

[Strazos]

Money money everywhere, but not a drop of competance.

This is the second straight night I have not been able to log in because Blizzard cannot seem to keep the damn Authentication server alive.

Someone who works in IT or something, can you explain Blizzard's utter incompetance? I know this shit would not fly in somewhere like a Hospital or Bank.

[Tale]

I'm on Australian time, working a 6am-2pm shift, so it's now 3pm and I'm home trying to log in. So far this week, it's gone:

Sunday - Server missing from list for 45 minutes, unable to log in
Tuesday - Server missing from list for 1hr45, unable to log in
Thursday - Authentication server down for 6 hours, unable to log in
Friday - Authentication server not working, unable to log in

[Strazos]

Fuck this shit. I guess I'll play a little EVE, then go to sleep. I'll get to play for about 3 hours before work. YAY.


(fuckers)

[Calantus]

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.

[Trippy]

Someone who works in IT or something, can you explain Blizzard's utter incompetance? I know this shit would not fly in somewhere like a Hospital or Bank.

Blizzard doesn't care as much about the network and server side of things as they do the actual gameplay. As long as the network stuff is working "good enough" they are satisified. This has been their philosophy since at least the dawn of B.Net which is a PoS. You can also see it in their BitTorrent client which is also a PoS, as is the WoW server architecture design and of course their login procedure. Here's my original login rant from Beta:

http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=1460.msg38097#msg38097

[fatboy]

I thought it was funny and ironic last night.   When I went to login, the "Breaking News" section had some spiel about how they have seen drastic improvement in the Authentication Server, and login problems should go away.

I got to read an reread this message as I sat and waited nearly 15 minutes to Authenticate ........  nice .......

[Xanthippe]

Astounding to me that this is still going on.

Still.

[Kenrick]

Astounding to me that this is still going on.

Still.

I'm about a month young in this game, and I'm flabbergasted at the amount of downtime I've seen.  I've played just about every MMOG (except for the sci-fi ones, AO, SWG, EVE), and even thinking back to the early days of UO, I can't remember any bullshit of this magnitude.  Granted, NO game has ever had in-game lag the likes of the early days of UO, which can be just as unplayable as the server actually being down.

Yeah, Blizz has some serious server problems and some even more serious customer service incompetence... but their game is like crack and they know it.  Any other game, and I'd probably be cancelling tonight before my first monthly charge goes through.  Sadly, I can't say the same about WoW.   

[Kenrick]

Wow... apparently the login servers are down again... on a Friday night...

[bhodikhan]

I've given up. I'm tired of not being able to logon. I'm tired of getting disconnected in BWL. I'm tired of raiding. Add all this up and it's just not worth it anymore.

Not being able to login has given me time to re-evaluate my time and WOW isn't worth it anymore. If anything it makes my life more stressed. It's just a game. In five years the shiny won't matter. However, the time wasted playing WOW will be lost forever.

It's been fun (sort of)

[Rasix]

Wow... apparently the login servers are down again... on a Friday night...

Ahh well, good excuse to not go and rack up a 30 gold repair bill getting blenderized by the Twin Emps. I really dislike the precision this one particular encounter takes.  I don't think there's a single encounter in the game otherwise where you cannot recover at all from a main tank dying.  Once a tank bites it, WIPE.

Honestly, I hope they lose people over this crap.  Just not very cool.

[Zane0]

:(

I like emps!  When you can pull them off.

Yeah, seems a lot of servers have been having fairly bad lag.  Mine has actually been in relatively decent shape, though I can't tell which is the more common experience.  I don't think Blizz cares overmuch; they seem to have more than enough willing to take the place of those who've left, judging from the recent addition of.. more servers.

[Modern Angel]

After seeing what I thought was some gradual improvement it seems the bottom has completely fallen out the past two weeks. Tonight it looks like cascading disconnects across all realms and then anywhere between 10-45 minutes to authenticate.

What the fuck is going on over there? I can understand being a little overwhelmed with a game of this magnitude but this is completely out of hand.

[Trippy]

My guess is they actually tried to improve their login architecture and totally botched it (not surprising) but didn't keep the old working system around to rollback to in case of something like this happened (somebody should be fired for that).

[Modern Angel]

A guy posted that it's not the authentication server like they keep saying because it'll turn down a bad password in a hurry.

[Trippy]

A guy posted that it's not the authentication server like they keep saying because it'll turn down a bad password in a hurry.

Well there's at least 6 distinct steps during the login process (at least there were during Beta) so even if you pass the "Authenticating" step you still have 4 more to go.

[Modern Angel]

Yeah but Blizzard said it was the authentication server. Or the authenticating process. Or something. The whole fucking past week of playtime has been one big jumble of technical issues that's blending together.

[Xanthippe]

I think I'm going to go buy Oblivion today to see what all the fuss is about.

I refuse to stare at screens waiting for a connection.

Last evening, after not being able to connect, I went and connected with my husband instead.  Far more fun.  (And no, you pervs, not in the way you are thinking at all - the kids were still up).

[heck]

A guy posted that it's not the authentication server like they keep saying because it'll turn down a bad password in a hurry.

Well there's at least 6 distinct steps during the login process (at least there were during Beta) so even if you pass the "Authenticating" step you still have 4 more to go.

There's a new step that appeared last week.  I can't read it because it flips by too fast.

[bhodi]

A guy posted that it's not the authentication server like they keep saying because it'll turn down a bad password in a hurry.

Well there's at least 6 distinct steps during the login process (at least there were during Beta) so even if you pass the "Authenticating" step you still have 4 more to go.

There's a new step that appeared last week.  I can't read it because it flips by too fast.

I believe it says "Sending non-specific system information", I read fast but I only catch a glimpse of it.

[Xanthippe]

Experiencing same problems this evening as last and the one before and the one before.  Starting to just not care about any of my WoW toons.  Coincidence?  I think not.

Bought Oblivion but found out my Nvidia 5200 won't cut it.  Oh boy! New video card time!  .Newegg ftw; Nvidia 6800 GT better be good for the next year to 18 months.  So Oblivion will sit on the shelf for another 3-5 days.

Maybe I'll dig out Diablo2 again.  Or try to play Civ4 again.

[schild]

Mmmmmm. Diablo 2.

[Trippy]

There's a new step that appeared last week.  I can't read it because it flips by too fast.

I believe it says "Sending non-specific system information", I read fast but I only catch a glimpse of it.

So they have been tinkering with the login procedure -- no wonder it's all screwed up now.

[Strazos]

If it ain't broken, don't fix it?

I guess they never heard that one.

[Surlyboi]

The new step checks which third party plugins you're running to see if you've got OMG H@X!!111!!1eleven

[HaemishM]

Almost two years later, and the same kind of shit is still going on?

[heck]

for the record:

3:22 pst, small patch today, still can't log in.

[Modern Angel]

I don't know what the fuck's been going on the past month but it's as bad or worse than it has ever been. I mean it... I remember lots of crashes back in The Day but some realms are talking upwards of 48 hours of downtime over the past week.

[Rasix]

I don't know what the fuck's been going on the past month but it's as bad or worse than it has ever been. I mean it... I remember lots of crashes back in The Day but some realms are talking upwards of 48 hours of downtime over the past week.

They're combining a major server move with their normal patch day (even small patch) performance.  Resulting server stability is a well..  predictably shitty.

[Modern Angel]

My server's not been moved. And it doesn't take a month, either.

Mt wife just started playing, the first game she's played since the original Legend of Zelda.  Her quote? "We pay for this?"

[Rasix]

My server's not been moved. And it doesn't take a month, either.

Mt wife just started playing, the first game she's played since the original Legend of Zelda.  Her quote? "We pay for this?"

Well yah, I was just speaking for today.  I'm not sure if a major server move would effect non-participating realms, but hey.. this is Blizzard. Hey, at least the login servers were working last night.. that's progress.. right?  :-D

My wife tried to play EQ once.  She tried talking to a bunch of NPCs and then logged off in frustration in 5 minutes.

[Modern Angel]

Yeah, my wife has her own account and is hooked. Even making me build a second computer. Maybe we'll talk or, I dunno... have sex or something since WoW is down.

[Bstaz]

Yeah, my wife has her own account and is hooked. Even making me build a second computer. Maybe we'll talk or, I dunno... have sex or something since WoW is down.

She is probably too busy looking up quests on thottbot to be bothered.

[Modern Angel]

She's eagerly anticipating training Soulstone.

[Trippy]

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.