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All of the latest Mists of Pandaria newsBreakfast Topic: The trouble with instance servers
by Robin Torres 
Sep 2nd 2009 at 8:00AM
My server rarely encounters the Door Boss, but many of you have to deal with the above error on a constant basis. The error originated as a fix for high population realms that had issues with instance lag and crashes. Rather than have you frustrated with problems while in the dungeon, Blizzard decided to put a virtual bouncer at the "door" to keep the load down on the instance servers. While I do think that this was a good idea on Blizzard's part, I think that they erred greatly by not putting a queue at the "entrance" so that you can do other things while you wait -- much like the way Battlegrounds are handled.
My friend Joe has to deal with the problem with on his realm and therefore made sure to ask his designated Blizzard representative when he attended the Laguna Art Museum benefit dinner. Producer Carlos Guerrero replied that they needed to upgrade the hardware on the affected realms in order to allow more instances to be launched at the same time. Presumably, that is what the extremely extended downtime was for on Tuesday.
So my question to you is, did it work? Are you meeting the Door Boss with the same regularity, or are you able to enter instances more frequently now that your realm has been upgraded?
My friend Joe has to deal with the problem with on his realm and therefore made sure to ask his designated Blizzard representative when he attended the Laguna Art Museum benefit dinner. Producer Carlos Guerrero replied that they needed to upgrade the hardware on the affected realms in order to allow more instances to be launched at the same time. Presumably, that is what the extremely extended downtime was for on Tuesday.
So my question to you is, did it work? Are you meeting the Door Boss with the same regularity, or are you able to enter instances more frequently now that your realm has been upgraded?
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Realm Status, Blizzard, Breakfast Topics, Instances
Reader Comments (Page 5 of 7)
Guapa Sep 2nd 2009 10:19AM
Really good raiders do not complain about these "downhill changes" anymore as they got hard mode achievements and their assortment of 310% mounts to show off their status.
The ones still complaining are the weaklings who have the time/lust to raid but who are too slow to excel at it.
rSabin Sep 2nd 2009 10:22AM
On Warsong-US, WotLK instances the Door Boss keeep killing my party.
Pré-WotLK instances are just impraticable.
Evi Sep 2nd 2009 10:24AM
The extended maintenance did not help my realm, according to the lamentations of my guildies last night. I play on Argent Dawn US.
Deadlock Sep 2nd 2009 10:26AM
My main issue with this bug is that blizzard should have rolled back everything to before it became a problem, fixed the hardware issues, then rolled us forwards again. Instead they've just left everything broken. Regardless, I'm canceling for a few months until it is fixed because I've not really been having any fun because of it.
Myria Sep 2nd 2009 10:33AM
No, really good raiders don't complain about these changes anymore because they left the game, most of them a long time ago. For all casuals whine endlessly about the "hardcore" WoW hasn't had much of any playerbase worth calling "hardcore" since mid-BC. At best now there's "competent" and "casual" -- the later being a code word for "No, I never have heard of hit cap and I don't care, now shut up and drag my keyboard turning all points in one tree arse through this heroic".
And for god's sake, get a clue, no one gives a rat crap in hell about Hard "It's the same fight, but with lasers!" Mode, it's a bad joke of a gimmick.
Rocklaw Sep 2nd 2009 10:36AM
Ran into the Door Boss a few times on Ony last night, even though we were part of the major maintenance on my server, Malfurion. Not as bad as it used to be, but having been through the upgrade, it was disappointing to see it return.
Bill Mills Sep 2nd 2009 10:37AM
On staghelm, door boss still causing wipes. Frustrating as hell.
sprout_daddy Sep 2nd 2009 10:42AM
The changes didn't seem to make any difference on Aggramar, and we're down again for four hours of emergency maintenance today. I understand this isn't an overnight fix, but you would think with 11 million people paying somewhere between $10 and $15 a month to play WoW, they would have enough money sitting around to upgrade the server hardware on servers where this is a regular problem (read: high-pop realms like Aggramar where this is happening on a minute-by-minute basis).
Alternatively, if they'd like to hear less QQ about it, perhaps open up free transfers to get those populations down. I'm happy to migrate to somewhere where the problem doesn't persist, but I'm not moving seven 80s because Blizzard is too stingy to upgrade the hardware. :-(
Telaria Sep 2nd 2009 10:46AM
I'm on Kirin Tor-US primarily. For us, and we're not that high pop, this has been insane for weeks. For Northrend instances, there's usually about a 50-50 chance of getting in in under 20 minutes if it's past 4 pm eastern. For the old world... Well, my guild has been trying to do Onyxia the past week for a few leveling characters who hadn't had a chance at the achievement.
We've spent, collectively, somewhere in the neighborhood of an hour a day, for over a week, dancing at her door until we made it in after last night's extended maintenance... with a mere 10 minutes of dancing. I've seen dozens of heroics and raids canceled because people can't get into instances at all, and sometimes spent an hour or more trying to get into one. The problem isn't just peak hours either; it's worse then, but I've seen it start as early as lunch time and still be happening well into the post-midnight hours.
Since upgrade, we got into the Heroics we tried last night without issue, but there's still a lot of paranoia about it and having one person head into the instance before everyone gets there to 'hold' a spot.
Synaptik Sep 2nd 2009 10:51AM
as a player on gorefiend, were a low pop server. at its worst, even my server we couldnt get into any instances, waiting approximately 45 minutes just to do the heroic daily. lower level instances were not an option...
i cant see if its fixed yet because weve has downtime since tuesday morning.
Alia Sep 2nd 2009 10:52AM
I'm on a EU server that had the extended maintenance weeks ago. That same evening we still had "additional instances cannot be launched"-problems. The next day we had a shorter maintenance and since then there have been no problems launching instances. Hopefully the same thing will happen on the servers that had extended maintenance yesterday.
Jon Do Sep 2nd 2009 10:57AM
"Blizzcon introduced a new Blizz phrase to us, “gated, not grindy.” "
I LOLed.
The Portal Boss is wiping parties at the 'gate' with the "Additional instances cannot be launched" special attack.
So you can't 'grind' the emblems in 9-month-old instance content.
Is that it?
PS - Like a lot of other people, I have two questions:
1) Why did Blizz release 3.2 with emblem changes that were sure to INCREASE the number of instance runs without a fix already in place?
2) If they are conceding now that it is just a matter of a hardware upgrade, why wasn't this done a long time ago given that they have ~11 million paying customers, more than any other MMO?
I have to say that this whole episode harmed Blizzard's reputation in my eyes, and makes me more inclined to believe that Activi$ion is milking Blizzard for $$$ -- their actions speak louder than their words.
RetPallyJil Sep 2nd 2009 10:58AM
A BG-style queue for a problem that rarely, if ever, lasts more than five minutes? Spoiled, aren't we!
Egrep Sep 2nd 2009 11:16AM
On my server at least, it's a problem that last 5 minutes to indefinitely. Last weekend we spent an hour trying to get into Kara, then gave up. Same story the weekend before, except for BT. So yes, a BG-style queue would be well-warranted.
Vogue Sep 2nd 2009 11:19AM
RetPally,
GET A CLUE!!!! 5 minutes? Rarely happening? QQ'ing? Are you insane???? Maybe on your server.
I "rejoined" WoW after a few years four months ago. It has been an problem since then on my server "Kargath". The problem has also gotten worse every month. I spent hours and hours of wasted precious time doing the portal dance thinking ("I'm paying for this?"). Many groups I was in (that were difficult to form to begin with) disbanded after about 20-40 minutes of doing the same (about the time that people say "Forget it"). I canceled my subscription (but it still has two months left). I may come back - I'm not sure.
It's a HUGE issue. I mostly PVE and quest. When I do decide to do a 5-man, almost EVERY time it was a hassle unless I entered the dungeon in the morning or early afternoon, and of course, at that time, it's harder to find a group.
I have never complained about a computer game company, a game, etc; in my decades of gaming. This particular instance (pun intended), especially when there's a $15/month subscription is inexcusable. In addition, Blizzard is most certainly revealing as little information as possible regarding the issue (are some instances given a better chance to get in, when will fixes be made, how much of the problem will be alleviated, why are some low population servers having more problems than the high population servers, etc;).
Don't speak about an issue you obviously aren't aware of. There's a reason that hundreds of pages of threads have been devoted to this on the WoW forums.
catharsis80 Sep 2nd 2009 11:42AM
"This particular instance (pun intended), especially when there's a $15/month subscription is inexcusable."
And yet you are excusing them all the time by still paying $15/month rather than quitting. It's something we all tolerate, because we enjoy the game.
Vogue Sep 2nd 2009 11:47AM
Hey, catharsis80, please read my post before naively commenting on it.
I wrote, in paragraph #2:
"I canceled my subscription (but it still has two months left). I may come back - I'm not sure."
What part about that sentence wasn't clear?
catharsis80 Sep 2nd 2009 12:18PM
Oh, my mistake, sorry.
Usually, when I just see rage, my mind goes numb and I don't read the rest of a long post.
Thanks for the "naive" part. You are a nice person.
catharsis80 Sep 2nd 2009 11:04AM
@WoW.com
This is really weird. I feel like there's only a few people that have drawn the most logical conclusions from what's going on. I would encourage everyone to read the last several pages of this thread...
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=19109959718&sid=1&pageNo=1
...to understand what's going on. In particular, pay attention to posts by "Capabull" (no, that's not me).
To sum it up, the servers listed in the extended maintenance are all in the Dallas datacenter. This information can be found here:
http://www.wowwiki.com/US_realm_list_by_datacenter
It seems to be the precursor upgrade to the hardware at the data center to prepare for the future cross-realm instancing coming in Cataclysm, but is also meant to greatly help the problem we currently have. (Btw, I'm on Arthas, which is in the Dallas datacenter.)
Now there's a lot of people raging in there as well, and not believing this information, but these conclusions come from the previous THREE times this has already been done to the other datacenters (Boston, Seattle, and Los Angeles).
To answer the question in this article -- no, we don't always notice a difference yet, but that's because they were still working on it today. Until they are done working on it, I don't think any report of how well instances are launching should be taken seriously.
catharsis80 Sep 2nd 2009 11:05AM
And therefore, I believe the question this article is asking is a bit premature.