Patch 5.3 interview with Ghostcrawler
Mystery of the Unborn Val'kyr
The latest patch 5.3 news
All of the latest Mists of Pandaria newsBlizzard 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 2 of 2)
jbodar Jul 27th 2009 10:27PM
Ahh yes, the old "10 million players x $15/month = $150 million/month" myth...
Muse Jul 27th 2009 11:49PM
Hypothetical situation: the top-of-the-line computer you bought a year ago has begun slowing down and becoming sluggish. It takes longer to boot. It takes longer to turn off. Playing WoW is fine once it launches, but that takes longer than it used to.
Solution a: Install another hard drive.
Solution b: Clean the drive and reinstall the operating system.
Which one works best?
starbane Jul 27th 2009 4:40PM
@Joshua Ochs
"Assuming"
Quit that.
Gretbnor Jul 27th 2009 4:46PM
I've never thought of this before, but I reckon u'r right. I've got a 12 and wanted to do Deadmines. A couple of years ago the meeting stone in Westfall was full of people grouping, now it's empty, it's always empty, so is Gnomerigan and Stocks. I logged my 65 and went to BC, no one at any instance, chat channels empty, in northrend Naxx and Uld are teeming with pugs and giulds all queue iand waiting. it looks like half the server pop is crammed into one tint part of the game Blizz has zillions of hours of old content that is just sat doin nuthin. must be hundreds of groups in Uld at any given time on every server. maybe u'r right.maybe this game is goin to the dogs
Gimmlette Jul 27th 2009 4:52PM
While trying to get into yet another instance last night, someone in the guild suggested Blizzard implement a queue for instances. He said our realm is on one server, BC is on another and Wrath is on a third. All instances are held on a 4th. Not knowing if this is true, we just followed his logic for the sake of the argument.
When you wanted to run an instance, you went to the instance and tried to get in. If they weren't what Blizzard deems "full", you got in as usual. If they were "full", instead of the "Additional instances" message that we all hate, you got a message saying, "Instance servers are full at the moment. Your anticipated wait time to enter is X minutes." At the time you can enter, a box would pop up saying, "You are now able to enter this instance."
You would know, if the wait time was, say 25 minutes, if you could run dailies or go to the AH or maybe just go do laundry or take the dog for a walk.
I can sort of see the instance full comment for Wrath instances. With so many players at 80, a lot of people are in the endgame. My guild specializes in Classic and BC stuff along with Wrath so we find it particularly jarring to be trying to get into Onyxia and having to do the circle entry dance for 30 minutes. We've taken to having someone go to an instance 20-30 minutes before a guild event and hold our place. Yes, we have dubbed them "Captain Placeholder".
catharsis80 Jul 27th 2009 6:22PM
I agree. BGs are separate servers; they have queues because they're full. Instance servers are separate servers; they have.......no queues?
Almoderate Jul 27th 2009 4:53PM
I have to comment on that picture, even though I know it's off-topic... I don't think I've seen a queue for Terokkar since December. =D
catharsis80 Jul 27th 2009 4:58PM
"And this look at exactly what Blizzard is doing to their servers represents a rare glimpse into their inner workings."
Did I miss something? Where's the rare glimpse? All they talked about was hardware modifications going awry, and rolling back the changes.
Scritty Jul 28th 2009 10:39AM
Bottlenecking may indeed not be a pure server issue. It may not be a hardware issue at all.
In the old text M.U.D s I used to play, bottlenecks were often becuae of some totally random figure that was put into the game. Once it was a simple variable that was only given 4 bytes. Once the number got higher than 15, it could accept no more players. It took THREE YEARS for the designers to fix it. It took about 10 minutes to fix and half a day to test when they did.
I still think the demographics in-game have an impact on this. Anachronos at the moment is reporting 87% population in Northrend on the census add-on, and standing by Uld, i reckon most of those a queueing to get in one instance. This is mid afternoon on a working day. Have Blizzard catered for the fact that in a game with perhaps several thousand hours of content, everyone is queuing for the same fraction of one percent ?