Originally Posted by Syxx
If people had any real clue exactly how many machines are involved in running any MMO (Especially all the servers needed for WoW), they'd be surprised that the game servers runs to begin with.
I worked for a NOC of a game company for a while and it's a damn nightmare. Even the simplest of patches can break crap you didn't think had anything to do with the patch.
Yes it sucks but I'll bet you a days game cost that Blizzard will put 1 day credit on everyones account (I wonder what that is x 11 million?).
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Generic/ambiguous tech posts give you no credibility.
I work very closely with the UNIX shop for an Air Force installation, and they have less money to work with to keep afloat 36,000 sq feet of server space. And these are Sun Blades, nothing top of the line.
Even sweeping upgrades for software changes and code injection for their custom programs only equates to 120 minutes of down-time. Hell, the servers responsible for 90% of an operations field went through an upgrade recently, and it took 30 minutes.
Blizzard severely pads their times in order to profit off the non-bandwidth, because regardless of throughput they receive the same monthly payments.
I know 11 million users puts stress on a system, but they use a plethora of systems, and I highly doubt they work directly with their data centers. It is probably a dozen or so centers rented out and controlled remotely. The whole reason for this stupid amount of down-time is because: 1) they are cheap about how the put into effect these changes, 2) they don't work directly with the hardware, 3) and they probably have no back-up protocol since it is just a video game, right?