what takes so long

[Molly_Millions]

Why does a hot fix that takes 10 seconds to download and another 10 seconds to install take an hour on SE's end?

Maybe due to testing to make sure everything still works after the patch. Maybe the deployment includes a bunch of other code that's seemingly unrelated. Or maybe they have to deploy the whole back end every time they make a change. There's really no telling without some inside knowledge of SE's deployment process. (And yes, I have knowledge of these things, I test software for a living and am often involved in the deployment process at work.)

[Kiote]

Why does a hot fix that takes 10 seconds to download and another 10 seconds to install take an hour on SE's end?

When you patch an MMO, no matter how small, QA has to run a Basic Functionality test on every Live server to ensure that the patching process did not cause some massive failure that could not be seen on test servers. Sometimes removing the Debug software creates unforeseen problems.

[Wolfie]

Because every time you do any sort of change for a hosted service, you give yourself a lot of "oh s**t, it went wrong, abort it" time.

[syntaxlies]

Because every time you do any sort of change for a hosted service, you give yourself a lot of "oh s**t, it went wrong, abort it" time.

thats more what im thinking. I think it prob only takes about 10 mins to do and then they have some extra time set aside just in case.

[Skies]

Actually, according to a friend of mine "This maitenance is shorter than it takes for the servers I work with to restart".
Given that they don't have everything running in a single machine and instead a series of networked servers and that those servers need to be running in perfect synchrony, perhaps down to the clock cycle, they require a good amount of time to start up, 'warm up', perform operational diagnosis and fully synch up.
And then there is the safety time just in case something blows up.

[Noir]

Why does a hot fix that takes 10 seconds to download and another 10 seconds to install take an hour on SE's end?

why do we have another useless post?

[AtryxEtair]

why do we have another useless post?

Better question...why is this thread 5 pages long?

Stop posting!!! lol

[syntaxlies]

why do we have another useless post?

im not sure poster number 45

[Amherst]

well i was just curious, but now that you mention entitlement, i guess you could say we are entitled to be able to play and not watch a maintenance screen since, oh , you know, since we payed...

Welcome to every MMO ever.

[Aistaraina]

Welcome to every MMO ever.

inb4GuildWars2