Maintenance extended [Updatedx6]
by Robin Torres 
Feb 9th 2010 at 2:45PM
We'll update this post with any changes to the realm status.
Update 8:14pm: All realms are up, theoretically. However, many are having severe latency issues and others can't get past the character loading screen. Blizzard says they are working on it.
Update 7:21pm: All realms are up, but expect some latency issues.
Update 6:24pm: Some realms are up. They will give us another update on the rest of the realms by 7pm EST. Bored? Come visit It came from the Blog, Zangarmarsh U.S. Horde side. Send a tell to Robiness or any Lurker for a guild invite.
Update 5:10pm: Even more issues have been found and they'll get back to us at 6pm EST.
Update 4:21pm: They are resolving more issues and have extended maintenance again to 5pm EST.
Update 3:26pm: Maintenance has been extended to 4pm EST.
Filed under: Realm Status
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 11)
kidjingo Feb 9th 2010 2:47PM
Boo hiss
Zalvi24 Feb 9th 2010 4:12PM
servers are coming back up
Brain Feb 10th 2010 6:21AM
Thunderhorn is Still down 7:40 EST can retrive toon list!
agentbuckwald187 Feb 9th 2010 2:47PM
I'm guessing there's no significance to the random 59 minutes added to the maintenance?
Robin Torres Feb 9th 2010 2:49PM
I think they are having fun with us.
Tsani Feb 9th 2010 3:04PM
It's to make absolutely sure that people who are not used to the AM/PM system understand that they mean 12 noon PST. You'd be surprised how many brains go completely on tilt when noon/midnight comes into play when trying to calculate their local time.
Jorges Feb 9th 2010 7:14PM
There's also people like me, who are used to the AM / PM system and doesn't know right away what 4pm EST means xD
Bigtender Feb 9th 2010 2:50PM
10min and we will see what happens.
doit Feb 9th 2010 2:51PM
9 minutes
Qot Feb 9th 2010 3:26PM
Got on, got a group for the weekly, got into Ulduar... *Server shutdown in 15 minutes*
Sonuva...
Tinwhisker Feb 9th 2010 2:52PM
Something tells me that someone at Blizzard made a small bet with someone else about finishing maintenance before noon PST and to get out of buying that person lunch (or whatever), they are skirting the rules of the bet.
dkimberlin1 Feb 9th 2010 2:54PM
ya know, if I ran the IT server room like they do with no redundancy I would be fired
we should not even notice these maintenance things... they should fail over to the second server while they do maintenance on the other servers. then once the maintenance is done roll us back onto the other server and then do server 2 .
Drakkenfyre Feb 9th 2010 3:24PM
You know, you have no idea how large their servers are. They have one of the largest server setups in the world. There is no way for them to "fall back" on a second set of servers without you noticing it.
Comments like that piss me off, because it shows you have obviously no idea what you are talking about.
onecentsmrt8563 Feb 9th 2010 3:03PM
If you ran servers like they do, you would be fired in a heartbeat for one of two reason. Either you would be unable to keep up with hundreds of servers spread throughout the world, or you would be adamant about buying a few hundred extra servers just for weekly maintenance.
TR Feb 9th 2010 3:57PM
I'll never understand why you and others how make factual, real world statements as you have get marked down. Anyone who as done any kind of network operations/system administration work knows what you're saying is absolutely true especially since cluster technology has been an industry standard for years. Regardless of the situation, the slightest delay with just an in-house ETA for system maintenance would have someone in management asking why the system wasn't back up yet. If it were contract with an outcourced vendor for co-location or datacenter there'd be some serious talks about not meeting the terms of the SLA in regards to system uptime.
In their defense, this probably has more to do with database maintenance and integrating some of the hotfixes made in the last couple of weeks. I've noticed several times that unexptected extended system maintenance has resulted in old in-game mail, and the AH glitching. Considering some the quest glitches that have shown up since 3.3 (one Outland quest in Forge Base: Gehenna tells you the item can only be used in Forge of Souls) sounds like they may have a bit of database corruption to weed out.
Boogs Feb 9th 2010 4:00PM
"When was the last time you saw Google, eBay, or Amazon go offline for maintenance? Never."
Google:
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2341704,00.asp
Ebay:
http://news.cnet.com/2100-1017-247479.html
Amazon:
http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2009/12/10/power-outage-for-amazon-data-center/
evantill Feb 9th 2010 4:01PM
@Devv take your own advice about Googling "How not to be general d-bag." Redundancy is an industry standard yes, but the difference between Google's traffic and Blizzard game traffic is that Google's is a one time connection to their servers to get your information, this is a constant stream of data going back and forth. The bandwidth required to do the redundancy that dkim is talking about would be immense along with all the techs needed to make sure that switches alone all worked with that much traffic going through at once. It's also much easier in general to just update one set of servers in one shot than trying to update both sets of servers in different time frames all while trying to make sure that there are no problems with the redundant backups and basically, it's just not worth it for Blizzard to do it.
Might want to Google "How not to be an ass" as well...just a thought.
evantill Feb 9th 2010 4:04PM
@TR does Blizz even have an SLA for WoW? I'll admit i haven't read any of the ToS or anything...but I really can't imagine they do. Or are you talking about if they outsource their data centers? I mighta just misread, no sleep and cancer treatments make me a little hazy lol
Jae Feb 9th 2010 9:17PM
I like internet arguments
Drakkenfyre Feb 9th 2010 4:22PM
Devv, from what I have heard, from someone who has seen the Blizzard datacenters, their servers rival some government server "setups". You harp on the term "server setup", it's a perfectly valid short term for people not used to "server farm", "server infrastructure", or "datacenter". If someone reads my post and wonders what the hell a "datacenter" is, they will understand "server setup".
The amount of redundancy they have is ridiculous. The amount of data they process is enormous. Do you propose they dump TB's of data from each datacenter from the main servers into a "backup" server, then dump it back after the first set has maintainence? There is no way in hell you could do that without noticing it. The poster thinks they can do that without anyone noticing it. They can't. You don't notice some hotfixes because that doesn't concern dumping the entire database from one server to the next. Even if you run them so the info is mirrored, it would still require a dump from one to the next as people's stats get updated while they play on the "backup" servers. Shut up, and stop being an ass.
Do you know what Google's server farm is? A shitload of off-the-shelf servers stuffed into cargo containers, with battery backups. Think I am kidding?
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1001_3-10209580-92.html