Blizzard responds to extended maintenance and instance problems
by Adam Holisky 
Jul 27th 2009 at 3:33PM
Blizzard EU has released a long and detailed statement concerning the recent waves of extended maintenance and how it's connected to the problems associated with launching instances. For several months players have been plagued with the message "Additional instances cannot be launched." The message was being caused by overloaded instance servers, and for a long time there was seemingly nothing Blizzard could do about it.
Blizzard's statement today clearly informs us that all the extended maintenance we've been seeing is directly due Blizzard implementing fixes for the problems server-side. While the statement comes from an EU source, once can assume rather easily that it applies to the US as well.
While no timeframe is given as to exactly when this will be done for all realms, it is very good to know that stuff is getting done behind the scenes. And this look at exactly what Blizzard is doing to their servers represents a rare glimpse into their inner workings. Usually Blizzard is pretty tight lipped about what exactly is happening with their hardware.
The full statement after the break.
Blizzard's statement today clearly informs us that all the extended maintenance we've been seeing is directly due Blizzard implementing fixes for the problems server-side. While the statement comes from an EU source, once can assume rather easily that it applies to the US as well.
While no timeframe is given as to exactly when this will be done for all realms, it is very good to know that stuff is getting done behind the scenes. And this look at exactly what Blizzard is doing to their servers represents a rare glimpse into their inner workings. Usually Blizzard is pretty tight lipped about what exactly is happening with their hardware.
The full statement after the break.
The full post from Wryxian reads as follows:
Recently there has been a number of extended maintenance periods for certain realms. Some of these we informed you about in advance and some we were unable to until during the actual maintenance period. We want to take the time to explain the reasoning behind these extended maintenance periods, and also those that will need to occur in the future.
These extended maintenances are directly linked to the message we posted in early July (http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread.html?topicId=9941934722) about our investigations in regard to instance capacity and our plans to implement hardware modifications to achieve positive change for your play experience. As we said we would do in that message, we are now informing and updating you of our progress.
These modifications are typically a two stage process, requiring two lots of extended maintenance for each group of realms being worked on. For the realms listed below, the first stage was completed successfully on Wednesday the 15th of July during a pre-announced extended maintenance period.
On Wednesday the 22nd of July we also began to complete the second and final stage of this process on the affected realms. However, we encountered unforeseen difficulties in implementing the modifications. We were left with two options; either to further extend the maintenance period well into the evening and thus the busiest playing hours, or to take just a couple of extra hours to roll back the changes so that the realms could be back up and playable quickly. Since we did not want to disrupt your ability to play the game during the prime time, we decided on the latter option.
Since the final stage of these modifications did not complete successfully, we will need to do a further extended maintenance for the realms listed below. This is currently planned for the next maintenance period on Wednesday 29th of July. Because of this, we wish to inform you in advance that the realms listed below will again experience extended maintenance as we implement changes that we believe will bring positive change for your play experience, especially in regards to the ability to enter dungeon and raid instances.
After these modifications are implemented successfully, we aim to post up a feedback thread so that you can share with us your thoughts on how they have affected your play experience. At that stage, we will greatly appreciate it if you are able to help us with your feedback.
Filed under: Realm News, Realm Status, Blizzard, News items, Instances
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Cyanea Jul 27th 2009 3:39PM
Whatever keeps the too many instances error from popping up is fine with me.
Task Jul 27th 2009 3:43PM
At least they are very upfront with explaining the situation.
Walter Jul 27th 2009 3:44PM
Yeah, my guild is starting to wonder on raid nights if we'll even be able to raid or do heroics for that matter on any given night. This "too many instances" thing is ridiculous and has been ridiculous for a while now.
A couple of friends of mine wanted to get together and just run Heroic MgT to try and get the White Hawkstrider for once, but we sat outside for literally over an HOUR repeatedly trying to get in.
Muse Jul 27th 2009 11:47PM
Bribe the guy who's AFK in Dalaran all day anyway to zone into the instance before prime-time and snag an instance ID.
It's probably making the problem worse in the long run, but it works.
Bubsa Jul 27th 2009 3:51PM
I wouldn't be mad if they took an entire day just to get this right, because right now, with this, error, it's pointless me playing at all.
Bubsa Jul 27th 2009 3:52PM
Despite, the number, of, commas, I put in...for no reason.
LostOne Jul 27th 2009 4:14PM
While this problem annoys me to no end, I have taken the opportunity to grind reps doing dailies and level alts. So while I'd rather be in a heroic or raid, I'm still doing stuff I want to do in the long term.
Linaa Jul 27th 2009 5:31PM
Shatner? Is that, you?
Bubsa Jul 27th 2009 8:25PM
I...cannot comply, to, your, question
Boszorkany Jul 27th 2009 3:55PM
So they're doing this on the EU servers.... what about the US instance servers?
julian Jul 27th 2009 4:07PM
The US servers are fine, working as intended.
Hasteur Jul 27th 2009 3:59PM
Bring on the pain Blizard. I want to be able to get into an Instance at any time I want (within reason). Possibly keeping a reserve of instances for those who have a full party (5,10,25) would be really nice and make my raiding life much easier. As long as we're informed early that we shouldn't count on being able to enter instances that night it would alleviate much of the pain that my guildies and I have had on this topic
Scritty Jul 27th 2009 4:07PM
Back in the day people did different instances. The level 80 population now so overwhelms most servers that only the level 80 instances are really being used. Even more. On my server you can try and get a group for just about any instance you like..even 5 man..and no-one is interested. Even Naxx is now unused as everyone instances Ulduar.
Those lower level chars you do see are almost invariably alts - and being levelled up as fast as possible by experienced players (who can't be bothered with instances along the way)
You get the best blues from earlier instances..and watch them rot away on the AH because no-one wants them. Level 60 blue Sword on Terrokar at the moment, A decent Warriors weapon, It's on sale for 3g. I mean even an enchanter doesn't want it !!
The instances are broken - perhaps it's because everyone wants to run the same one over and over again.
If that continues to be the case, then I reckon the game is broken as well. It's purely a level capped players instance game. Professions are a waste of time as you get the gear from this one instance.
Blizz need to come up with a reason to do other stuff other than endlessly farm whatever is the highest level instance. Back when the cap was 60 this was setriously tough, so casual players did other stuff. Now it's so damn easy to stroll through the top level that everyone and his dog are doing the same thing..over and over again.
No wonder the servers are crashing. This game has become very one dimensional
Sorcefire Jul 27th 2009 4:36PM
^ This
Most, if not all, of the 5-man instances became trivial once you had a group together that had Naxx-10 or higher gear. A freshly minted group of 80s will have a time completing many of the instances, but once they are geared and learn how to play at 80, only the most challenging instances require any effort and those are the ones people run less I've seen.
Something of a design flaw I think and one that someone should have seen coming. Give people content and they will devour it.
Just Me Jul 27th 2009 5:51PM
While I agree with your overall comment regarding people skipping everything in an ultimate race to Ulduar, it really doesn't have a thing to do with the servers. In levelling my current alt, whenever I've managed to get a group together for a low level instance or given/received a run, it's the non-Ulduar servers that take 45 mins. of bouncing against the instance portal to get into. Perhaps I'm fortunate on my server, but not being able to enter Naxx or Ulduar due to the "additional instances" door boss has only happened twice (we have various groups going to 10 and 25 man 6 nights a week) in the past several months while we haven't managed to launch anything below a heroic without this message, many times for hours. That includes all of the non-heroic Northrend content, all OL and, worst of all and taking the longest usually, anything from Vanilla.
Laynne Jul 27th 2009 4:24PM
I don't do a ton of raiding or instances, but I have to say I've never see this error.
Watch me go home and not be able to run anything all night...
Joshua Ochs Jul 27th 2009 4:28PM
"seemingly nothing Blizzard could do about it"
Of course there's something they can do about it - install more servers. Assuming they are just additional load balanced servers set up the same as current instance servers, it should be trivial to do in a standard maintenance window.
Of course, that would require Blizz to spend some of the $150M per month we're paying them...
Candina@WH Jul 27th 2009 4:55PM
You have no idea about computer networking, matrix computing, virtualization or any of that, do you?
Throw more hardware at it, it will get better.
Bull$hit
Syggy Jul 27th 2009 4:57PM
Installing more servers is not always an easy/quick thing to do, not when you're looking at a complex setup.
Jehosaphat Jul 27th 2009 5:22PM
@Candina: In most cases you're right, however this is a completely parallelizable operation. Each dungeon could (theoretically) be run on its own physical server without any scaling issues. There is no logical reason they couldn't throw more hardware at this particular problem.
That said, there might be an unnecessary bottleneck or scaling issue somewhere that the server-side updates are working towards removing.