Turn on the patch server already

[Anarnee]

Doesn't is say they're also doing an infrastructure maintenance? :/ Be patient there's over half a day till servers are supposed to go live....

[Chessala]

Hm.....I work in an MMO company and a patch maintenance usually works like this:

- servers go down
- patch gets applied on the server
- patch gets tested by the QA/GM Team
- Possible issues get resolved (patch didn't get applied properly etc)
- Patch is made available for people

Not saying it is like this for everyone. I have a slow connection myself and don't look forward to patching but they will not make an untested patch available to people. What good would it be to apply the patch and make it available with issues? You never know what happens to the patch while it is being applied to the Live servers, there is so much that can go wrong. Be patient, I rather have them do it properly than end up with a broken patch that I have to download a 2nd time.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

Yeah, but it's fully PvP with no respawns, the characters are boring, and it's incredibly grindy. You also have to micromanage clothing to deal with your temperature variable and there's those annoying hunger/thirst CDs.

... the hilarity is you kind of described my Skyrim file after I've modded it to all hell. >.>

[Airget]

Ya, infrastructure is definitely gonna cause patch to come later.

This is my guess as to what they need to do.

"work on Infrastructure"

"Implement patch"

"Test Island Exploration with 9 groups entering at different times"

"If there is an issue tweak with Infrastructure to figure out issue"

"Implement Patch again"

"Try Exploration again"

"Rinse and repeat til they are certain there are no issues"

The reason I'm assuming Island exploration is because this content is one that treats instances differently from all other content that has been released. All content so far has had instances with a global timer, the moment of first entry and the exit time never change. Enter dungeon halfway, then you have the same amount of time left as the first person who entered. With Island exploration however you have 9 groups, 3 groups could share the same time but it's assumed that at most there will be 9 groups on 9 separate timers from entry meaning that if they want to make sure it's done right they have to be certain that they don't run into an issue where groups that enter after the first don't have the same timer as those who enter later on.

You wouldn't want to be group 5 entering 40 minutes since the instance opened and being given only 50 minutes to explore, that would suck and that's the part they need to adjust for the servers to handle the variables of different people having different timers on their instance duration.

The other thing to handle is how the dungeons refresh, these open instance will most likely have triggers to reveal bosses but see if three groups are in alrdy they might of beat a boss already and they have to make sure it's setup where the triggers for these bosses reappear right away/enemies respawn but since this does go across multiple servers and it's done through an instance, they are most likely deciding whether these instances will be open indefinitely or if they close after time and new ones are created as time progresses.

[AnaviAnael]

There is an outside, or is that part of the patch?

Actually, it was a part of the original game. Most of us went through it once, didn't care for it, then stayed all day in our Duty Finder basements.

[Catwho]

Well, they'll have done a lot of the testing already on their sandbox servers, in regards to merging alliances in zones and such. The time to fix major problems with that was weeks ago.

Ideally, they'll fire it up and it'll work as intended. If it doesn't work as intended, it means they forgot to load another component from the merged build or someone dropped the ball horribly during alpha testing last month and would likely get fired.

[Chessala]

Well, they'll have done a lot of the testing already on their sandbox servers, in regards to merging alliances in zones and such. The time to fix major problems with that was weeks ago.

Ideally, they'll fire it up and it'll work as intended. If it doesn't work as intended, it means they forgot to load another component from the merged build or someone dropped the ball horribly during alpha testing last month and would likely get fired.

Yes, the main testing should definitely done and they should know everything is working on the test/sandbox server.

However, patches are unpredictable. Believe me when I say, a part of the patch not applying properly can literally mean hours of lost time. Ideally, it should work. Realistically, something will always go wrong.

[Ashkendor]

Yeah, but it's fully PvP with no respawns, the characters are boring, and it's incredibly grindy. You also have to micromanage clothing to deal with your temperature variable and there's those annoying hunger/thirst CDs.

The NPC AI leaves much to be desired and most creatures don't drop any loot.

Every time I try to PvP the GM's show up. :c

[Moonleg]

It's been 11 hours since game servers went down.

If SE is not 100% certain that the patch they're about to deploy works like a charm (internal testlive server tests for the past week to make sure no errors happen), why would they even take the servers down in the first place? I swear, if they're running their "Does this work?" tests on the live servers they are REALLY doing things wrong.

[Wade]

Ah but every patch is incremental - so let everyone download GB's of data then if there's a bug download MB's (or KB's) of data to fix it. As people say - zero excuse to not put the patch up early: servers are down.