Maintenance during prime evening time for NA servers

[wereotter]

So.
Did y'all survive this horrific experience that is time zones?
I hope none of you were traumatized for life.

Nope. Am now ghost writing this post. Experience too traumatic. Had to spend an entire night without game.

[Sotaris]

That's pretty much what I do now? I was really responding to the sentiment that this is an "entitled NA player issue." It's a more general issue than that.


Classy.


I don't know if you've ever worked at a software company before, but the developers don't typically do server maintenance. Large companies with a global presence have IT teams spread out across the globe (which is where the term "global" comes from) that handle stuff like server maintenance. As long as the initial deployment is scheduled in a manner that leaves the devs available for emergency hotfixes, bugs aren't an issue. If things go south for the initial deployment, the subsequent ones can be postponed pending the fix. It actually works out better from a "fix all the bugs" perspective.


Sure, but it's not rocket science to have the client defer the version check until the point where you try to connect to the data center. When it detects you're connecting to the patched datacenter, then it prompts you to update with the caveat that you will no longer be able to connect to unpatched datacenters. This isn't some revolutionary new paradigm. It's a problem that's been solved by many other companies.

You do realize what you're saying is not how SE run these things. No one said the devs are doing the work but they have most likely their infrastructure teams in japan as well.

They have this setup cause it they do it themselves in-house. Not via a partner/vendor/3rd party.
This is the process and it probably would be a huge undertaking to change it to something more agile.

Plus they might just prefer doing it themselves for quality assurance.

I work in IT in a development team, not as a software company but a service provider. We have business in 5 countries but all server maintenance happens in Sweden and Finland (that's where we have bulk of our maintenance and development teams) but we have data centers in all 5+ countries and the largest internet backbone network in the world. It wouldn't make sense to offshore that work in each data center location.

I can see why they run the things they do for various reasons.

[Ronduwil]

You do realize what you're saying is not how SE run these things.

I do realize that. Obviously it's not how they run things because if it was, they wouldn't have to bring all the servers worldwide down at the same time to roll out an update.

No one said the devs are doing the work but they have most likely their infrastructure teams in japan as well.

Except for this guy, who said it in all caps in as insulting a manner as possible:

Holy shoot hydaelyn send your servants some brain, please.

THE DEVELOPERS ARE JAPANESE. THEY HAVE TO BE AWAKE WHILE MAINTENANCE.

How SE chooses to run their company is how they choose to run it. My only dispute is with players claiming that it just can't be done. This argument you're putting forward is the equivalent of, "We just can't travel 8 miles in an hour without running, and since we've all decided to walk, it just can't be done." I realize that SE has their own way of doing things and that their way of doing things is causing all the servers to go down at the same time. I'm just saying that if they were to bring their procedures in line with industry standards, they wouldn't have to do this. It's not like this is a never-before-seen problem with no known solution.

They have this setup cause it they do it themselves in-house. Not via a partner/vendor/3rd party.

I work for a multi-national software development company that does all its IT in house, too, and they never bring down all of the company's servers worldwide at the same time. When they put out planned maintenance outages, they do so in staggered intervals. The APAC servers go down at one time, the NA servers go down at another time, and the European servers go down at a third time. Just because your IT is all in house doesn't mean you have to inconvenience all your clients all at once.

I work in IT in a development team, not as a software company but a service provider. We have business in 5 countries but all server maintenance happens in Sweden and Finland (that's where we have bulk of our maintenance and development teams) but we have data centers in all 5+ countries and the largest internet backbone network in the world. It wouldn't make sense to offshore that work in each data center location.

I can see why they run the things they do for various reasons.

And I 100% guarantee you that you're not bringing down all 5+ data centers at the exact same time on a monthly basis. I understand if SE decides that it's not worth their while to make things more convenient for their players, especially when it probably won't even impact their sales. I'm not demanding changes from SE. I'm only pointing out the difference between "They can't change it," and, "They won't change it."

[Zanarkand-Ronso]

So.
Did y'all survive this horrific experience that is time zones?
I hope none of you were traumatized for life.

Been here since HW, nothing I cant handle bby

[Vahlnir]

So.
Did y'all survive this horrific experience that is time zones?
I hope none of you were traumatized for life.

Somehow. I was told a moon was dropped on my head but I can't remember anything. Feels like this has happened before...

[Holystyle]

It's a Japanese game, so if important maintenance is to be conducted then that time is going to align with Japanese friendly hours...

Why would it need to not inconvenience North American players, specifically? The game also has a sizeable portion of European players...so no matter what time of day or night the maintenance happens to be, a portion of the game's population is going to 'lose out'. Even then, though, they can just do something else for a few hours.

Maintenance during prime evening time for NA servers what and how did you missed this ?


Are you saying they have 0 NA empoyees and all servers are controlled from Japan only ?

North American players, specifically? BECAUSE IT IS NA SERVERS?


Only makes sense when they have literally 0 employees in US and all is controlled only and around Japan working hours quite strange for global company.

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

I do realize that. Obviously it's not how they run things because if it was, they wouldn't have to bring all the servers worldwide down at the same time to roll out an update.


Except for this guy, who said it in all caps in as insulting a manner as possible:


How SE chooses to run their company is how they choose to run it. My only dispute is with players claiming that it just can't be done. This argument you're putting forward is the equivalent of, "We just can't travel 8 miles in an hour without running, and since we've all decided to walk, it just can't be done." I realize that SE has their own way of doing things and that their way of doing things is causing all the servers to go down at the same time. I'm just saying that if they were to bring their procedures in line with industry standards, they wouldn't have to do this. It's not like this is a never-before-seen problem with no known solution.


I work for a multi-national software development company that does all its IT in house, too, and they never bring down all of the company's servers worldwide at the same time. When they put out planned maintenance outages, they do so in staggered intervals. The APAC servers go down at one time, the NA servers go down at another time, and the European servers go down at a third time. Just because your IT is all in house doesn't mean you have to inconvenience all your clients all at once.


And I 100% guarantee you that you're not bringing down all 5+ data centers at the exact same time on a monthly basis. I understand if SE decides that it's not worth their while to make things more convenient for their players, especially when it probably won't even impact their sales. I'm not demanding changes from SE. I'm only pointing out the difference between "They can't change it," and, "They won't change it."

We don't care because it's 1 night every few weeks, and sometimes every few months.

The game has lots of spoilers, and story is a focus, so of course we don't care since maint happens at the same time for everyone, so no one can access the content before the rest.

You'd have people transferring their chars to the jp datacenters before patch day, to play early.

This is just simpler.

[Kes13a]

imagine the screaming if...

SE decides to implement a better regional maint schedule to baby the poor north americans who feel put out, so they stagger the maint schedule, starting in Japan and moving east to Europe, then finally NA. Imagine the frustration when patches get implemented a day later than than in Japan, the people whining about spoilers etc because things released in Japan and Europe a day earlier than NA.

there is no pleasing people. just grow up and accept that there are things in life outside your control. outside your schedule that may inconvenience you a bit. Unless you can produce a contract that was signed by you and life at birth, saying everything would be done at your convenience, then you have no grounds for complaining. life is happier if you just accept that and move on. many, if not most reasonable adult types understand the universe does not revolve around them, just because you game, doesnt make you immature.

[Ronduwil]

imagine the screaming if...

SE decides to implement a better regional maint schedule to baby the poor north americans who feel put out, so they stagger the maint schedule, starting in Japan and moving east to Europe, then finally NA. Imagine the frustration when patches get implemented a day later than than in Japan, the people whining about spoilers etc because things released in Japan and Europe a day earlier than NA.

As opposed to now when the patch is made available sometime between 2 and 5 am depending on which side of NA you're living in? Now I really feel like you guys are reaching for excuses on behalf of SE for not implementing a better patch release process. Like anyone will care that the patch isn't available until 5 pm the next day. I know it's hard to understand if you're in college or unemployed, but most players wouldn't even notice the servers being down for maintenance for 18 hours a day, even if it was every day. It's silly that SE picks the one window where NA players actually do notice to perform their maintenance. Honestly, I don't feel all that strongly about this issue, but it's kind of disheartening to see you guys pile on players just for suggesting that this could be done better.

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

As opposed to now when the patch is made available sometime between 2 and 5 am depending on which side of NA you're living in? Now I really feel like you guys are reaching for excuses on behalf of SE for not implementing a better patch release process. Like anyone will care that the patch isn't available until 5 pm the next day. I know it's hard to understand if you're in college or unemployed, but most players wouldn't even notice the servers being down for maintenance for 18 hours a day, even if it was every day. It's silly that SE picks the one window where NA players actually do notice to perform their maintenance. Honestly, I don't feel all that strongly about this issue, but it's kind of disheartening to see you guys pile on players just for suggesting that this could be done better.

It may surprise you, but people do take time off for patches. And the game coming up in the AM means they can wake up early and immediately hop into the new content, instead of waiting until, in your example, 5pm.