Hotfixes all the time now

[Sotaris]

Yeahh... that's a pretty damn serious bug that needed to be addressed immediately.

yes, thank god they pulled the game for 4 hours during statics prog on the new raids

/s

[Hasrat]

yes, thank god they pulled the game for 4 hours during statics prog on the new raids

/s

It's also a new PvP season, which, with more limited time rewards, kinda trumps raids in terms of impact significance.

Raiders lost 4 hours of potential progression.

In theory, PvP teams affected just had more than a week of effort deleted.

[Xerkrosis]

Am I the only one who irks at the term "Hotfix", when the service is shut down for hours when the fix is being applied?

[Shibi]

Am I the only one who irks at the term "Hotfix", when the service is shut down for hours when the fix is being applied?

Heh, you're not the only one. The way we've done it, it's not a hotfix unless the system being patched is kept running. Hence the "Hot" part of the word. It's applied to a "Hot" live and running production system.

Otherwise it's just an emergency patch.

[Larirawiel]

Heh, you're not the only one. The way we've done it, it's not a hotfix unless the system being patched is kept running. Hence the "Hot" part of the word. It's applied to a "Hot" live and running production system.

Otherwise it's just an emergency patch.

There is no exact definition what "hotfix" means. But usually it means, that there is a bug in a software, which has to be fixed as soon as possible.


Cheers

[Iyrnthota]

There is no exact definition what "hotfix" means. But usually it means, that there is a bug in a software, which has to be fixed as soon as possible.


Cheers

Here something I can anecdotally support.
I support a software product at my work, and our hotfixes do require system downtime.
They're functionally the same as regular patches, except being for urgent fixes, they typically bypass a lot of the standard change release process, such as being put into Testing environments first.
This has been the case for several years now, so I wouldn't say it's a recent change in definition.

[TaleraRistain]

There is no exact definition what "hotfix" means. But usually it means, that there is a bug in a software, which has to be fixed as soon as possible.


Cheers

Exactly. It's something that bypasses the normal schedule. It's not really tied to a hot or cold system anymore. It's not always a bug, too. We have customer-facing features that go into place and the deadlines by which the customers need those features doesn't always allow us to do them on the normal release schedule. So they get applied in hotfixes between releases to keep up with customer demand. And sometimes those hotfixes require the system to be restarted or down for a small amount of time. The term has definitely morphed from its original meaning.

1 - if there's been an increase in the amount of hotfixes, then it doesn't matter that there's been hotfixes in the past, an increase in frequency means something's up

Not necessarily. If you increase the complexity of the system, you increase the corner cases that could go wrong. If you go from a self-contained system where you control those to changes recently like cloud computing, API calls, data transmitting between multiple systems, you open yourself up to potential for a lot more bugs. My company is going through this right now migrating from an older system to a more modular setup in the cloud. We went from two systems communicating with one system as the database of record to about four systems communicating and different systems being the database of record that all need to pass data to the other systems since those systems use that data. Our team isn't any less dedicated. They've just started making it harder to catch everything.

[Raoabolic]

Am I the only one who irks at the term "Hotfix", when the service is shut down for hours when the fix is being applied?

I don't even bother anymore. Speaking of which, are you telling me that none of the devs thought, "Hmm, what would happen if the leader of any crossworld anything were to delete their account or their account were to deactivate?" OP is right, QA is dead. WE are the QA, lmao.

[Deveryn]

I don't even bother anymore. Speaking of which, are you telling me that none of the devs thought, "Hmm, what would happen if the leader of any crossworld anything were to delete their account or their account were to deactivate?" OP is right, QA is dead. WE are the QA, lmao.

QA isn't dead. People are just living in a fantasy world when it comes to expectations. There's only so much that can be achieved in a bubble. The patch note is a perfect example of that. Past incidents are further proof. They don't know what the infrastructure can really handle until things like DC travel, IS and the housing lottery are properly unleashed on everyone. This stuff used to bother me, then I realized it's just the nature of MMOs. No amount of crying or complaining will ever bring about that perfect experience.