We all have to deal with it - every Tuesday morning the Warcraft servers go offline for weekly maintenance.  If you've ever wondered why this is done or what is accomplished by it, community manager Tseric offers us some insight.  Why don't other MMO's do this - Tseric contends that they do, just in smaller bits and at different hours.

Update: Interestingly enough, the original thread seems to have been deleted.  A cut and paste of Tseric's comments are below.

Here's the thing. Weekly maintenance is to provide time to run backups, clear out logs and basically clean the slate for the realms. Processes are run which are to empty memory, because over the course of the week, player action fills up the databases with a lot of "stuff". Logs of actions, events, chat, etc. can essentially contribute to slower performance if they are not backed up and cleared out on a regular basis.

Due to the large number of realms, associated hardware and total data recorded from player interaction, this process takes time to complete for all of our realms.

Now, other performance issues have to be dealt with seperately, due to the fact they occur for various reasons at different times. If a blade fails, it will likely do so at an unscheduled time and is therefore dealt with when the situation arises.

While I understand the desire to have better performance and fixes for some realms, it is important not to jumble or confuse the tasks being performed. Weekly maintenance is not the time when "we attempt to solve any and all problems which may be associated with the network, servers, etc.". It is a time when we execute necessary functions of realm maintenance. Other functions or work may be done during that time, but in the past we have specified such and maintenance may be extended.

Tags: tuesday, weekly maintainence, WeeklyMaintainence

Filed under: Realm Status, Blizzard