Regular maintenance for US realms this week

by Elizabeth Harper Oct 9th 2007 at 6:28AM

Ah, I'm fondly remembering the days that we used to get quick rolling restarts instead of the 8-hour standard maintenance cycle. The past two Tuesdays have been patch days on US realms, and we're coming off of extended-patch downtime with a regular maintenance schedule this week. What does all this fancy talk mean to you? It means that all US realms are going to be down from 3:00 AM PST to 11:00 AM PST (or 6:00 AM EST to 2:00 PM EST) today for what Blizzard considers to be regular maintenance. Perhaps we'll get lucky next week with 15 minute downtimes for rolling restarts.

Tags: maintenance, regular-maintenance, tuesday, world-of-warcraft, wow

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)

ShuManFu Oct 9th 2007 7:35AM

woo hoo 1st post..
yeah.. 8 hour maintenance is absolute bull... doesnt Blizzard understand how to manage servers?.. Only computer that gives me more downtime is probably.. ummm.. actually no.. this is the worst server uptime i've ever experienced.. and i've worked in the computing industry for almost 20 years.

Chains Oct 9th 2007 6:43AM

BS. 3 weeks in a row and Tuesday nights are our night to snag Vashj kills for attunment. GG Blizz - pity the poor Oceanic raider.

Beefmonger Oct 9th 2007 6:51AM

Heh, about a month ago, me and some buddies had a LAN party.

We spent most of the day playing C&C, Unreal, and some other shooters (FEAR, Counterstrike, etc)

We decided to wrap up the night with some casual WoW-time.

Imagine our surprise, upon logging in, to discover we had 10 minutes before an 8 hour shutdown.

We had to make a late-night run for redbull to get us through and old school starcraft marathon instead ^_^

Andelorn Oct 9th 2007 7:00AM

Remember the days? The rolling restarts are incredibly new to WoW, actually. How about the days back when there were floods of people complaining on the WoW forums about the tuesday downtimes causing them to lose precious playtime that they paid their hard earned $15 for and threatening to cancel their accounts over, shortly after WoW became retail? (How dare they stop me from playing WoW 24/7!) These 15 minute rolling restarts are a blessing that you should be grateful for when they happen, imo.

In summary, 8 hour maintenance should be expected, but 15 minute restarts should be a pleasantly surprising bonus.

I guess this is what getting old feels like.

BillDoor Oct 9th 2007 7:09AM

Ordinarily not a big deal, but the downtime means that I'll only be able to do ram riding once today :(

I wonder if 2.2.3 will make it's appearance today?

Chains Oct 9th 2007 7:18AM

It's not a big deal if you are in the US. It IS a big deal if you are on an Oceanic server. The 3AM shutdown makes it 8pm local time. Worse if you are in WA - then it's 6pm.

Andelorn Oct 9th 2007 7:56AM

@7
You've worked in the computing industry doing maintenance on a server farm like the ones Blizzard has that processes and stores data for hundreds of thousands of accounts worth of character data, and the world and instance data for them to interact with, and that is required to be perfectly synced with all other server farms and central authentication systems? How many people can say they have?

By the way, their servers are infinitely better now than they were at the start of WoW's life. So I say bravo Blizzard for doing a good job over the life of WoW so far.

Also read #4.

Andelorn Oct 9th 2007 8:03AM

Oh, as an addendum to #4: Get some sleep FFS.

This suggestion even works for those in 'Oceanic' timezones.

nekkiddo Oct 9th 2007 8:04AM

I welcome the maintenance time. Chance for the developers to clean up their mess.

We better wake up to cleaner, less laggier realms tomorrow.

Duncan Oct 9th 2007 8:19AM

@6 Tuesaday's have always been maintenance days. Don't plan things for Tuesday's and you don't have a problem.

@3 agree with you 100%

Todd Oct 9th 2007 8:30AM

"Perhaps we'll get lucky next week with 15 minute downtimes for rolling restarts."

Perhaps we'll get lucky next week with Patch 2.2.3 which should get 2.3 up on the PTRs. I'd much rather have patches than rolling restarts if they're ready to go, as Tigerclaw has already said in a blue post: "PTR testing on 2.2.3 is complete." Or miracle of miracles, they'll roll it out today.

meringue Oct 9th 2007 8:47AM

I just patched 2.2.3.

C.A. Oct 9th 2007 8:48AM

My problem is the fact that I HAVE a job and my ONE day off has been on Tuesday for the past 2 weeks. I would really like to unwind by playing some WoW but no luck there.

Todd Oct 9th 2007 8:51AM

Seems I was a few minutes premature on my comments, heh. Glad to see this patch hitting today and explains the longer than normal maintenance window.

jacksonibanezpeavey Oct 9th 2007 10:33AM

@Andelorn: I understand your point, but seriously dude, get a freaking clue. Just like post 14, I have a job and go to college full time. One of my main play days is Tuesday because I don't have class until later in the day. Don't stereotype all players who are inconvenienced as no-life, unemployed addicts who stay up all night long playing. You just make yourself come off as arrogant and ignorant. And BTW, for as much as you sit there and put yourself on a pedestal, you're paying every month for the game like everyone else. AND you're spending your free time reading the same WoW blog we are. Sounds like you have a certain amount of yourself invested in your hobby too, lest you'd do something other than invest your time here. Humble yourself, bub, and you'll make your points better.

That being said, the downtime doesn't bother me a whole lot because it's just a game. Blizzard has to do (and will do) maintenance to make our game playable. One lost day isn't a big deal really.

jacksonibanezpeavey Oct 9th 2007 10:35AM

One other comment, as Andelorn chastises other players, have a look at his profile here. It appears he has devoted a lot of time to developing his knowledge base. And he looks down his nose on others. Hah!

Cheese Oct 9th 2007 11:09AM

Boohoo hoo sniff someone change my diaper. Boohoo hoo I can't play WOW for 8 hours a week every week for the rest of my life. Boohoo hoo I can't raid today because Blizzard deliberately setup maint. days on our raiding days.

a lot of you players make me want to vomit

Kahja Oct 9th 2007 11:21AM

It messed up my brewfest ticket gathering! 630AM and 630PM were my times to get this done! Now I'll be two sets of tickets (72 tickets or so)behind (The additional set was because I had to skip one to get the times set up like that in the first place due to lack of initial planning on my part).

Apocpwns (Skullcrusher-US) Oct 9th 2007 11:37AM

You know, most companies that host servers on the web have a minimum 99% uptime guarantee. And that still gives them more than enough time to apply all the patches they need to keep thee system secure and running smooth, and do the occasional reboot.

I understand with servers used as much as these, there is bound to be plenty of garbage building up on the systems that needs to be cleaned, and we all know patches and reboots are important... but 8 hours? What kind of staff does this? In 8 hours I could patch, clean, and reboot every single server Blizzard has. What takes these people so long?

If Blizzard had 99% uptime the servers would be down no longer than 1.7 hours per week.

We're experiencing a 4.8% downtime every week, making for a 95.2% uptime, which is terrible by I.T. standards.

What about the people who can only play during these hours on tuesdays? Is blizz saying "you can't play our game but give us our money anyway for providing a service to you that we're not providing"?

Or what about when they took all realms offline for DAYS? We didn't even get playtime credit. Now THAT is BS.

Kuipo Oct 9th 2007 1:15PM

Summed up: QQ

I'll take 8hrs when we're getting a patch. It's not that they are just restarting the systems, they are patching. If you've ever played on a game that does frequent rollbacks due to bad patches... then you would appreciate the slightly longer downtimes to make sure that sort of thing doesn't happen.

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