2 maintenances in one week plus an hour long downtime for most servers... why?

As the header states, today is the second day this week for another 3 hour maintenance on servers and website. Plus we had the server reboot (which am always curious why it takes an hour to make sure everything is stable) which affected more servers then what was listed.

Can I ask why this is happening? I can see one downtime for the week, but 3? On a Mon, Wed and Friday to boot?

I love this game to tears but this is just not a good proper business strategy. I can't think of one other game company or online service that has so much downtime per week.

It boggles the mind.

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Originally Posted by JustAmy

which am always curious why it takes an hour to make sure everything is stable

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you try walking around a room with thousands of computers and turn them on one by one in under an hour :p

My guess would be:

Monday - enabling final touches for festival, as expected.

Wednesday - correcting wrong data for Anniversary awards. There were problems, that had to be resolved.

Friday - i bet its correcting cheat with envelope quests (dont ask! If you don't know, you are safe, if you do, contuinue at your own peril).

Yes. It is annoying and disappointing, but it is also the lesser evil. Consider the alternative: carry on with it broken, regardless.

On the upside, I suppose these rants show that, at least, we care. Could be worse. If they had no customers, then they could keep the machines down as long as they liked :\

May be worth remembering that surprise maintenance isn't a problem. It is the symptom of a problem. The actual problem is that the testing isn't thorough enough, before things go live. But if they hire a team of semi-tame black hats to do their best to find exploits before unleashing changes upon the player base, then new developments get slowed down by however long it takes that team to do their work ( and even then, they wouldn't catch everything ).

Choose your poison.

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Originally Posted by Hatter_of_Bree

My guess would be:

Monday - enabling final touches for festival, as expected.

Wednesday - correcting wrong data for Anniversary awards. There were problems, that had to be resolved.

Friday - i bet its correcting cheat with envelope quests (dont ask! If you don't know, you are safe, if you do, contuinue at your own peril).

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Monday: regular maintenance, final touches ? Such as what they added a warhorse skin and a new tier of gift box and its automated turn on.

Wednesday: Except it wasnt on all servers and thats an account issue and the account server stayed online.

friday Well maybe, i dont know of one so yay I;m good.

Are you guys playing 24/7?? Or what the &&&& is wrong with you xD
Take a break...your life will not end

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Originally Posted by Grimrarlag

Are you guys playing 24/7?? Or what the &&&& is wrong with you xD
Take a break...your life will not end

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Constructive...

Anyway, I hope they extend the double EXP weekend then by 3-4 hours, or however long the down time is.

Sapience mentioned in the Official Discussions that U11 should be up on Bullroarer today after the maintenance. Wonder if that is part of it.

Not that it's specifically relevant to the topic being raised but are you guys even remotely aware that Boston is on a complete shutdown, right now? I would hope that you guys would be more concerned with their safety, considering the 1 of 2 individuals responsible for the Boston Marathon bombing is at large after shooting an officer at MIT, robbing a 7-11, firing shots and throwing grenades at Boston PD, hijacking a car and holing them hostage and setting off a suicide vest.

But you know, keep on whinging about an hour of maintenance.

Turbine is well known for unscheduled * scheduled * maintenance...It sux that it's on Friday, and it sux that it's the 3rd shutdown this week, but it sux the MOST because they decided to do it during the Double XP event...

...there are lots of well established games with SO many fewer problems going / already F2P.../shrug...

Monday - Scheduled maintenance. Exactly what it sounds like. Maintenance on our core systems. The same way you do maintenance (or should) on your PC from time to time to make sure everything is up to date and working as expected.

Wednesday - EU servers restart. We took the EU and only the EU servers off line to address an issue with a couple of switches that were acting up.


Today - Billing system maintenance and updates. This is a significant update to our billing system. It's the first half with the second half tentatively scheduled for Monday. I say tentatively because we aren't locked into that date as of this moment. Once we are, we'll post that announcement.

I gotta lean towards possiblities of goings-on in the Boston area, so a pass to them. Thats way more important than this silliness.

But the past exists and if it follows suit, Turbine will NEVER acknowledge things like this, they never do and never will cause they are like any other entity, they do not care. This isnt the first time, its proly not the last.
Its not scheduled, or as they have done in the past, never announced it. I would love their project coordinators job. Getting paid to fail half the time. so sad. The P.C. makes sure all the ducks are lined up, but theirs quite often never lines much up.

And it still cracks me up. Release an update and follow 10 mins later with list of bugs.
Well fix them before releasing, you obviously know they exist.
And instead of worrying about a spring festival, tackle the bugs first.

oh well......

I'm sure Turbine found the need for bringing the servers down each time. Maybe they are trying to fix some of the account issues that have been going on. Maybe they found something else that needed addressing. I can live with a hour downtime. I can live with a few hours downtime. I highly doubt they thought to themselves, "Hey lets bring the servers down just to screw with people!" People are always threatening to stop spend money on the game. Take a hour off from the game. Read a book, kiss the wife/husband/kids. Go to work. Do some yard work. Clean the house. Clean the car. I'm sure you can find something to do with your time while Turbine fixes what they need to. It's not the end of the world.

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Originally Posted by Tourmalina

Turbine is well known for unscheduled * scheduled * maintenance...It sux that it's on Friday, and it sux that it's the 3rd shutdown this week, but it sux the MOST because they decided to do it during the Double XP event...

...there are lots of well established games with SO many fewer problems going / already F2P.../shrug...

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For an online service, 3 shutdowns in one week is quite embarrassing and quite unprofessional. As you said, there are many, many other games to play that have very, very minimal shutdowns. Combined this with the stuttering, laggy, buggy raids or just trying to walk into bree and interact with other players and god forbid you turn your camera angle a bit and have to wait 2 seconds for everything to click back to normal, even on great pc's and net access.

Things like this just add up over time.

i wonder if that means we can now buy vip time again...

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Originally Posted by JustAmy

For an online service, 3 shutdowns in one week is quite embarrassing and quite unprofessional. As you said, there are many, many other games to play that have very, very minimal shutdowns. Combined this with the stuttering, laggy, buggy raids or just trying to walk into bree and interact with other players and god forbid you turn your camera angle a bit and have to wait 2 seconds for everything to click back to normal, even on great pc's and net access.

Things like this just add up over time.

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Dear lord... Gotta love the drama around here.

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Originally Posted by JustAmy

For an online service, 3 shutdowns in one week is quite embarrassing and quite unprofessional. As you said, there are many, many other games to play that have very, very minimal shutdowns. Combined this with the stuttering, laggy, buggy raids or just trying to walk into bree and interact with other players and god forbid you turn your camera angle a bit and have to wait 2 seconds for everything to click back to normal, even on great pc's and net access.

Things like this just add up over time.

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Actually you are wrong, once per week is the norm for most online games, twice a week is common, three time a week is not normal but hardly a rare occurrence within the MMO Industry.

In fact there's games out there that have daily shut downs, Eve Online being one, every day at 11am gm they do a 30 minut to 1hr shut down.

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Originally Posted by Hatter_of_Bree

Friday - i bet its correcting cheat with envelope quests (dont ask! If you don't know, you are safe, if you do, contuinue at your own peril).

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I doubt this situation. There was an exploit last years with these quests that Turbine never fixed during the event. I have not checked this year to see if the 2012 envelope exploit is fixed for 2013.

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Originally Posted by Sapience

Monday - Scheduled maintenance. Exactly what it sounds like. Maintenance on our core systems. The same way you do maintenance (or should) on your PC from time to time to make sure everything is up to date and working as expected.

Wednesday - EU servers restart. We took the EU and only the EU servers off line to address an issue with a couple of switches that were acting up.


Today - Billing system maintenance and updates. This is a significant update to our billing system. It's the first half with the second half tentatively scheduled for Monday. I say tentatively because we aren't locked into that date as of this moment. Once we are, we'll post that announcement.

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Given all this down time, I think the anniversary event should be extended a few days.

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Originally Posted by Grimrarlag

Are you guys playing 24/7?? Or what the &&&& is wrong with you xD
Take a break...your life will not end

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AMEN! Seriously....would you rather Turbine not try and fix any issues? Yes, it would be nice to know when every problem will show up so they could fix it before it happens. ;)

Relax....it's just a game.

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Originally Posted by Eartholloth

Given all this down time, I think the anniversary event should be extended a few days.

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Way ahead of you. :)

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Originally Posted by Sapience

Way ahead of you. :)

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Whoohooooo thanks :)

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Originally Posted by Burzdolion

Constructive...

Anyway, I hope they extend the double EXP weekend then by 3-4 hours, or however long the down time is.

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They should REMOVE double exp....leveling goes too fast already

Another thing people tend not to notice is that "maintenance" tends to affect ALL of Turbine's games, not just LOTRO. So, when people speculate that "X is being done to LOTRO" during a maintenance, they almost always wrong.

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Originally Posted by Edrogar

Actually you are wrong, once per week is the norm for most online games, twice a week is common, three time a week is not normal but hardly a rare occurrence within the MMO Industry.

In fact there's games out there that have daily shut downs, Eve Online being one, every day at 11am gm they do a 30 minut to 1hr shut down.

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And there's even one that has had one shut down that lasted maybe 3 hours in its so far 8-month lifespan and does all patches live. Has spoiled me I tell you and I hope all games move toward this superior model.