Thread Tools Display Modes
11-11-08, 10:59 PM   #41
Republic
Paladin
 
Republic's Avatar
Join Date: Jun 2007
Posts: 277
Originally Posted by Inactive View Post
Maintenance usually means restarting the servers to flush out the memory cache and give the systems some cooling time since they are usually stacked in a room set to about 58-64 F. Heat dissipates into other servers, and over time even the cold environment doesn't help the systems from overheating.



Resistance over a transistor (the funky little object that makes all computers work, FYI), will ultimately result in defects across the hardware, usually resulting in crashes.
Not for nothing, enterprise level data centers do NOT need to restart because of temperatures. Psst..buddy..redundancy is your friend..learn to use him.

If WOW has this problem, it isn't Blizzard's fault. They don't own jack that runs their game. AT&T is the bad guy if it's a hardware-related issue that affects our game.
  Reply With Quote
11-11-08, 11:02 PM   #42
fellon
A Defias Bandit
 
fellon's Avatar
Join Date: May 2007
Posts: 3
Smile

There are a few servers up now.
  Reply With Quote
11-11-08, 11:16 PM   #43
Inactive
A Deviate Faerie Dragon
AddOn Author - Click to view addons
Join Date: Nov 2007
Posts: 12
Originally Posted by Republic View Post
Not for nothing, enterprise level data centers do NOT need to restart because of temperatures. Psst..buddy..redundancy is your friend..learn to use him.

If WOW has this problem, it isn't Blizzard's fault. They don't own jack that runs their game. AT&T is the bad guy if it's a hardware-related issue that affects our game.
You know what, you're right. Because the companies invest tons of money into them, the information is super important, and a prayer can keep things safe, the wonderful engineers who provide hardware for top level data centers have found a way to completely negate heat. As a matter of fact, they also figured out cold fusion, and created an absolute zero environment as well!

Your redundancy comment is actually confusing, because it doesn't pertain to the first half of your post, nor to anything in my post. Oh well, the mind works in mysterious ways, some better than others.

Also, who's to say AT&T is who runs their servers? They probably just buy bandwidth from AT&T since that is usually the connection culprit.
__________________
Ha!
  Reply With Quote
11-11-08, 11:23 PM   #44
Republic
Paladin
 
Republic's Avatar
Join Date: Jun 2007
Posts: 277
Originally Posted by Inactive View Post
You know what, you're right. Because the companies invest tons of money into them, the information is super important, and a prayer can keep things safe, the wonderful engineers who provide hardware for top level data centers have found a way to completely negate heat. As a matter of fact, they also figured out cold fusion, and created an absolute zero environment as well!

Your redundancy comment is actually confusing, because it doesn't pertain to the first half of your post, nor to anything in my post. Oh well, the mind works in mysterious ways, some better than others.

Also, who's to say AT&T is who runs their servers? They probably just buy bandwidth from AT&T since that is usually the connection culprit.
My redundancy comment was more to the fact that a "restart" doesn't have to equal downtime, nor does maintenance have to equal downtime, etc. Anyway, sorry for throwing that in there.

AT&T provides more than simple bandwidth to this game, but I digress here
  Reply With Quote
11-12-08, 09:45 AM   #45
acapela
A Cobalt Mageweaver
AddOn Author - Click to view addons
Join Date: Feb 2007
Posts: 241
a multi-day outage, basically a day before a major release...

this does not look like infrastructure to me (or we would have a more limited/selective outage).

this seems more like application-wide functional defects... like certain stuff either didn't get tested, or for some reason certain stuff is behaving completely differently in production than it did in test (load/timing-driven defects or whatever, which equates to failure to do a different sort of testing).

and now it looks like we are having patches fail and require yet more patches, and then those patches fail... and each new domino requires yet more downtime to analyze/fix/"test"/deploy. pretty standard result when your QA is ineffective and you have to (choose to?) rely on paying customers in your production environment to system-test for you.

this is odd to begin with, given the size of the WoW revenue stream (they should be able to manage production-scale QA at this point, with the tools to similate as large a load of whatever nature they want), and i have to believe at this point (4 years after rollout) that if continuous availability really was Blizzard's top priority, this would be mitigated by now (in a variety of ways: by better methodology, better architecture, over-engineered infrastructure, etc; maybe they think they are already doing all of these things?).

at least it is rare these days... probably just a matter of a few shortcuts taken at a critical (and bad) time.
  Reply With Quote
11-12-08, 10:01 AM   #46
Archania
A Deviate Faerie Dragon
Join Date: Jul 2008
Posts: 10
Give them the time to correct whats wrong.
Better now to get things straight then to have this on the release and cause a lot of stress and angered paying customers.
Do something with this time - WORK, CLEAN, etc and later everything will be back online and ready.

This is from the official forums:

"We will be performing an urgent maintenance on all realms beginning at 4:00 AM PST. We anticipate no more than three hours of downtime. This maintenance is designed to correct a very recent issue where players were able to obtain certain PvP items without paying the intended price.

Once the maintenance concludes, players who obtained such items will notice them removed from their inventory. However. any tokens or arena/honor points spent on said gear will be appropriately refunded.

Thank you for your patience and understanding."

And I noticed this this morning when I was able to log in. There where items you could get for free! So they are working on it.

Last edited by Archania : 11-12-08 at 10:03 AM.
  Reply With Quote
11-12-08, 10:17 AM   #47
MerDer
A Defias Bandit
 
MerDer's Avatar
Join Date: Oct 2008
Posts: 2
It may be that this downtime is a "larger" issue that Blizz is afraid to tell us about, and that the servers will not be up in time for the launch.

It's all a consipiracy...the Aliens are involved somehow.
  Reply With Quote
11-12-08, 10:37 AM   #48
Jesamyn
<This Space for Rent>
 
Jesamyn's Avatar
Join Date: Feb 2007
Posts: 141
The Aliens kidnapped the servers. Too much latency during long hauls, so they just took the servers with them.
__________________
I'm not an idiot. I'm just harmlessly psychotic.
  Reply With Quote
11-12-08, 10:50 AM   #49
Doomborne
A Murloc Raider
Join Date: Apr 2007
Posts: 7
Originally Posted by MerDer View Post
It may be that this downtime is a "larger" issue that Blizz is afraid to tell us about, and that the servers will not be up in time for the launch.

It's all a consipiracy...the Aliens are involved somehow.
Did you read the login message?

Basically, after they brought the servers back up last night, someone noticed that, when viewed by a Priest or Warlock, the S2 vendor was giving those classes' gear away. For free. No charge. As well as some odds 'n ends, like a ring or a necklace was free from one of the other vendors. I think there was an issue with an offhand Arena item having a much lower price than it should have had. So everyone and their mother was rushing in and gobbling the stuff up...even rolling alts for the aforementioned classes to scoop up free loot.

Now, rather than people realizing that this gear will be irrelevant and nullified by Northrend greens in a matter of days, some threw a hissy fit. Because gosh, they had to "work" for their welfare epics, it took weeks of AFK'ing in BGs to accumulate that gear, so why should others just have irrelevant gear handed to them! The travesty of it all!

So, Blizzard did what they had to do to placate the whining masses; drop the servers again, probably ruining the last pre-exp. day before LK, and systematically go through and delete every single ill-begotten piece of loot from the inventory of those characters...or do a complete server roll-back of a few hours, screwing everyone that actually did anything during that time out of their accomplishments. Now, all we can hope is that they don't further **** anything up and get everything in a workable condition before midnight tonight when all hell breaks loose.

Personally, I reactivated my Warhammer account until all this insanity sorts itself out. Blizzard seems to be getting too big for it's own britches when it comes to technical issues such as this.
  Reply With Quote
11-12-08, 12:01 PM   #50
Petrah
A Pyroguard Emberseer
 
Petrah's Avatar
AddOn Author - Click to view addons
Join Date: Jan 2008
Posts: 2,988
Originally Posted by Doomborne View Post
Did you read the login message?

Basically, after they brought the servers back up last night, someone noticed that, when viewed by a Priest or Warlock, the S2 vendor was giving those classes' gear away. For free. No charge. As well as some odds 'n ends, like a ring or a necklace was free from one of the other vendors. I think there was an issue with an offhand Arena item having a much lower price than it should have had. So everyone and their mother was rushing in and gobbling the stuff up...even rolling alts for the aforementioned classes to scoop up free loot.

Now, rather than people realizing that this gear will be irrelevant and nullified by Northrend greens in a matter of days, some threw a hissy fit. Because gosh, they had to "work" for their welfare epics, it took weeks of AFK'ing in BGs to accumulate that gear, so why should others just have irrelevant gear handed to them! The travesty of it all!

So, Blizzard did what they had to do to placate the whining masses; drop the servers again, probably ruining the last pre-exp. day before LK, and systematically go through and delete every single ill-begotten piece of loot from the inventory of those characters...or do a complete server roll-back of a few hours, screwing everyone that actually did anything during that time out of their accomplishments. Now, all we can hope is that they don't further **** anything up and get everything in a workable condition before midnight tonight when all hell breaks loose.

Personally, I reactivated my Warhammer account until all this insanity sorts itself out. Blizzard seems to be getting too big for it's own britches when it comes to technical issues such as this.
The gear was not intended to be free. They took the servers down to fix that. It had nothing to do with placating anyone.
  Reply With Quote
11-12-08, 01:02 PM   #51
Doomborne
A Murloc Raider
Join Date: Apr 2007
Posts: 7
Originally Posted by Silenia View Post
The gear was not intended to be free. They took the servers down to fix that. It had nothing to do with placating anyone.
Gee, ya think? My point is, that rather than just dealing with their mistake and letting people get on with playing, they drop everything down again to take back some scrub gear.
  Reply With Quote
11-12-08, 01:15 PM   #52
Cairenn
Credendo Vides
 
Cairenn's Avatar
Premium Member
WoWInterface Admin
Join Date: Mar 2004
Posts: 7,134
Alright boys and girls, how many times do we have to tell you? Keep it civil, keep it polite. If you want to flame anyone (individual or company) take it somewhere else.
__________________
“Do what you feel in your heart to be right — for you’ll be criticized anyway.” ~ Eleanor Roosevelt
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Co-Founder & Admin: MMOUI
FaceBook Profile, Page, Group
Avatar Image by RaffaeleMarinetti
  Reply With Quote
11-12-08, 04:45 PM   #53
Dreadlorde
A Pyroguard Emberseer
 
Dreadlorde's Avatar
AddOn Author - Click to view addons
Join Date: Dec 2006
Posts: 2,302
There's some new expansion out, called 'Wrath of the' something-or-other. I guess everyone got it and is trying to log on. I think that has something to do with the realms being down; but don't quote me on that.
__________________

Funtoo - Plan 9 - Windows 7
  Reply With Quote
11-12-08, 04:49 PM   #54
Cairenn
Credendo Vides
 
Cairenn's Avatar
Premium Member
WoWInterface Admin
Join Date: Mar 2004
Posts: 7,134
Dread, this was after the maintenace on Tuesday, has nothing to do with the expansion ....
  Reply With Quote
11-12-08, 05:22 PM   #55
Dreadlorde
A Pyroguard Emberseer
 
Dreadlorde's Avatar
AddOn Author - Click to view addons
Join Date: Dec 2006
Posts: 2,302
Originally Posted by Cairenn View Post
Dread, this was after the maintenace on Tuesday, has nothing to do with the expansion ....
You're right. I thought it was Thursday.
__________________

Funtoo - Plan 9 - Windows 7
  Reply With Quote

WoWInterface » General Discussion » Chit-Chat » anyone know whats going on with the servers?

Thread Tools
Display Modes

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

vB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off