Extended maintenance and you
by Mike Schramm 
Jan 29th 2008 at 2:00PM
So yes, as you may have heard, maintenance is extended today, and the official forums are abuzz with what you might expect: a few people complaining that their playtime is ruined, with most people saying that a few hours of maintenance every two weeks shouldn't be that much of an ordeal.Personally, I don't have a problem with longer maintenance today, as long as it fixes the stability problems we seem to have been having all weekend. Multiple realms and instance servers have been up and down over the past few days (maybe Blizzard wasn't really ready for 10 million), and so if the maintenance makes sure that we can have a full Kara run without a server crash tonight, it's all good.
That's the real issue here-- players want to see maintenance that's worth it. I don't think any of us have a problem with taking Tuesday mornings off, as long as when we log on again, things are better than they were before.
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Realm Status, Odds and ends, Blizzard
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Zhalseran Jan 29th 2008 2:06PM
Ironic, 6 minutes after this article is posted I am logged in
peaglemancer Jan 29th 2008 2:38PM
Coincidence, not irony.
blitzkrieg999 Jan 29th 2008 2:13PM
I'll be more than OK with extended maintenance if they fix Kilrogg's latest lag issues.
Alchemistmerlin Jan 29th 2008 2:13PM
Honestly, the people who are complaining about a few hours of downtime per week on Tuesday mornings need to be banned for their own good. Perhaps it'll get them to go outside and socialize.
LostOne Jan 29th 2008 2:20PM
Not everyone works an M-F 8am-5pm job. Some people work odd hours and so Tuesday mornings might be one of their few times to play, with the maintenance window being a problem for them.
Alchemistmerlin Jan 29th 2008 2:23PM
@Lostone
I highly doubt that there are many people who work jobs that only afford them time between 6 am and 2 pm on Tuesday mornings to play WoW.
Furthermore, I'm certain that almost none of those people are the frothy mouthed half-wits that invade the forums every time something doesn't go their way. The people who are causing lots of chaos on the forums because of maintenance and trying to demand a free month for a few hours of downtime are all the same people who flame new players and chase off CMs with their level 1 troll alts.
Aticus Jan 29th 2008 3:03PM
@Alchemistmerlin
Excuse me but I am one of those type of people who holds 2 jobs with freelancing work and has very little time to play. I get to play on Tuesday mornings from 7am-11am, Wednesday nights, and weekends. I take great offense to your statement.
There are more of us then you think who do not have 9-5 M-F jobs.
-Aticus, http://www.paladintales.blogspot.com
Ben Jan 29th 2008 9:50PM
And try to remember that your tuesday morning is Tuesday evening for many other players, completely wiping out one potential day of play/raiding.
To those who would suggest we get a life, save your strength typing it and get yourself one because we already have one (thus the specific times we are able to play).
Mr. Applebutter Jan 29th 2008 2:18PM
Seriously. They perform the maintenance when most people with normal schedules are sleeping and at work. Only the few people with real jobs that have off hours, and the jobless slobs are going to be complaining about this.
LostOne Jan 29th 2008 2:18PM
What I want to see is half the US servers have a Tuesday maintenance and half a Wednesday maintenance. Or even three days with 1/3 Tuesday 1/3 Wednesday 1/3 Thursday. That way there are always some servers to play on. The people that want cutting edge content can play on a server that has Tuesday maintenance, anyone else can be on the others, with Thursday having the potential benefit of stability if the Tuesday servers have problems and need hotfixes that don't happen until the next day.
johnthorpe Jan 29th 2008 4:48PM
The reason they do them all at once is precisely because they don't want everyone on a "down" server logging into one of the other servers and crashing those while they maintain the others.
We had an infestation this weekend of level 1s from another server when their realm went down for a few hours. Multiply that by 1/3 of the servers, as you propose, and you've got a problem.
Honestly, it's a few hours on a tuesday morning. Read a book or meet your kids.
SJPadbury Jan 29th 2008 2:28PM
I work odd days, so Tuesday is a day I would normally play. It's annoying, but I could live with it. Problem is, it's *not* every 2 weeks. They advertise the schedule of 1 week full downtime, 1 week rolling restarts, but they manage to get 1 week of rolling restarts in every 5 or 6. I just wish they'd be more honest about it.
Oneiroi Jan 29th 2008 2:41PM
I was just about to ask about this. I remember them announcing that alternating schedule and have felt like they've been down every Tuesday for a while now. Oh well.
I'm one of the people at work at the time, so it's no skin off of my back.
short_bus Jan 29th 2008 2:38PM
I find it hard to believe that for such a huge IT company. They cant build a 24/7/365 uptime environment. I mean i am sure they are building this on hardware that is 5 9's compliant. I just find it hard to believe that server instances are running on single non-failover servers. I mean there are companies out there that are 1/100th the size of blizzard and this business practice would be unacceptable.
nalthien Jan 29th 2008 3:07PM
I'm sure the environment is capable of near 24/7/365--assuming that there were no software updates to add and test. Any software deployment as large as the WoW server deployment requires periodical downtime to apply and test software patches--it's simply a fact of the business.
My guess is that most of the downtime is spent testing the applied software updates to ensure that they aren't breaking things all over the place. Occasionally, bugs will slip through the cracks. Any software developer will tell you--every piece of software has it's share of bugs--it's up to you to decide what level is acceptable.
Gessilea Jan 29th 2008 3:29PM
A company 1/100th the size has a much less complicated system to deal with, thus it makes sense that they probably wouldn't need down time. It seems pretty self-explanatory that the more complicated and larger the system, the more work required to keep it running smoothly.
Kryten Jan 29th 2008 2:36PM
Bear in mind that not everyone who plays on US based servers is in the US - maintenance usually kicks off at 10PM Australian Eastern Time, 12AM New Zealand and AFAIK Blizzard still don't allow for deferring maintenance for even the "Oceanic" servers.
Gessilea Jan 29th 2008 3:32PM
People outside of the US who play on US servers should expect to have time zone conflicts. No time Blizzard picks for downtime is going to work for everyone, the point is that it works for most people.
Calaana Jan 29th 2008 7:48PM
Because the oceanic servers are in the us list, right? Right now, thanks to dst, people in central australia have it go down on them around 7. No big deal right? Lets see how you guys like it over in America when you only get 6 parts of what you pay for, not the full seven.
Gimmlette Jan 29th 2008 2:36PM
I missed some of the huge chaos over the weekend when servers crashed with no warning. We got our UBRS run for Onyxia attunement in and everyone went off happy and then... uh oh. I know friends who were stuck in instances and couldn't get out or who couldn't get into instances. My Internet is very stable and I rarely have freeze issues but it was awful over the weekend. And, on Sunday evening, when I logged on, there was no notice the servers were going down for emergency maintenance until we got the 15:00 until shut down notice.
If an extended shut down on Tuesday fixes whatever ails the servers, I'm all for it, even if it inconveniences me for a bit. If the maintenance takes 4 hours, there's still 164 hours in the rest of the week to divide into gaming and real life.