Downtime notices

[fathorsey]

Why is it we can know about everything a month in advance, but downtime notices are only posted the evening before? As someone who plays in the morning, it's always a disappointment that the servers are down (again) with no notice on my part since they only announced it at 5:00PM the previous day.

[Nymphonic]

Again- LOL last down time was the 6th & no they do not always post the notices the day before.

Jeez I dont know what you would do if there was weekly down times.

No matter when they do the down time, people are always gonna be affected.

Exactly. I work nights, so my play time is in the morning. It doesn't bother me, I just find something else to do. Speaking of, in Civ IV those pesky Americans from the North are threatening my British Empire in the South. Today is a good day to do something about it.....

[Oelle]

Again- LOL last down time was the 6th & no they do not always post the notices the day before.

Jeez I dont know what you would do if there was weekly down times.

No matter when they do the down time, people are always gonna be affected.

he does not have a problem with downtime, he has a problem with downtime thats been announced only one day before.
and this is what happens regularly. And I agree that it would be nice to know downtimes more than just one day before.

[Racyna]

If it's possible to notice the players in advance that'd be great, so we can make other plans instead of starting the computer looking forward to logging into LOTRO.
Always a dissapointment when servers are offline. Maybe the decisions for maintanance are made last minute and it's not possible to notify us and that's fine too.

[Happybudgy]

If it's possible to notice the players in advance that'd be great, so we can make other plans instead of starting the computer looking forward to logging into LOTRO.
Always a dissapointment when servers are offline. Maybe the decisions for maintanance are made last minute and it's not possible to notify us and that's fine too.

This was posted 10 minutes after the worlds went back online.... run..... let the logging in begin

[Nzin]

If the people running the game don't know at least 24 hrs in advance that the servers will be down, then it's an emergency. Any other reason should allow for an in-game notice or alert.

[Happybudgy]

If the people running the game don't know at least 24 hrs in advance that the servers will be down, then it's an emergency. Any other reason should allow for an in-game notice or alert.

Well, this one was for replacing the WB logo with the SSG logo. That's urgent enough

But really folks, is this a problem today? The game was offline for 1 hour and 40 minutes....

[Yula_the_Mighty]

If the people running the game don't know at least 24 hrs in advance that the servers will be down, then it's an emergency. Any other reason should allow for an in-game notice or alert.

I doubt they know more 24 hours in advance.

They probably use a system similar to what the companies I have worked for use for software updates. Each day the decision makers have a meeting. They decide whether to:

1) Not ready. We have another launch scheduling meeting tomorrow.
2) Ready. Deploy tomorrow. Announce down time.

What we don't want to do is waste valuable hours running an old stale obsolete version of the software. We want to get it out as quickly as possible.

We have more rigorous method. When we reach the point where you are close to deploying a new version of the software. We schedule a down time every day. For example:

It is Tuesday. There is scheduled down time on Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Monday. Have meeting on Tuesday.

1) No Go. Cancel Wednesday down time. Schedule Tuesday down time. Schedule Wednesday meeting.

2) Go. Announce update on Wednesday. Cancel Thursday, Friday and Monday down time.

In some cases, everybody is happy with once a week update. We schedule a clean the gerbil cages (maintenance) and a possible software update every week on a specific day. Such as Tuesday morning.

Back when I first started writing software. It all depended on how big the program was. I started working on small embedded systems. I might do two system updates in a single day. I burn the new firmware in the processor boards. Check to see when my buddy would be done using the system. These always on system. You change out the boards while the power on. It takes what 20 seconds for the system to go active.

The larger systems in the field. We did updates once a month. There always some annoyance because you might have to wait weeks for the next update. Updates were done while the customers were using the system. Done properly the customer never knew that the system was being updated. There was no scheduled down time. Goal was no more that 30 seconds of down time a year. Less than one second time for each incident. No knocking customers using the system off. Most people never noticed a one second outage because they would go - blasted lag. System appeared to locked for me.

There is no perfect solution for PC software because users are always disrupted by the update.

[warriorprayer]

Agreed!

[Wof]

Well sometimes you cannot get notified days in advance. Yes it sucks but that's life.

Well it's obviously life in this game, since they don't seem to have a clue what they are going to do next. After all any company that doesn't even know what they are going to be doing 24 hours in advance would have to be as bad as Turbine wouldn't it? Do they honestly not know enough to warn their staff in advance what they will be working on the next day? Because I seem to remember when we used to get at least a couple of days warning about PLANNED downtime! So who makes the decision and how far in advance is it really made?

[S_Alexa]

he does not have a problem with downtime, he has a problem with downtime thats been announced only one day before.
and this is what happens regularly. And I agree that it would be nice to know downtimes more than just one day before.

I guess they'd rather risk angering a few with short notice instead of angerin everyone with week-long scheduled downtimes that are pushed back a dozen times.

[Nzin]

The down time doesn't bother me too much, but I have to question just how huge the effort would need to be in order to provide some kind of in-game notice. I really am beginning to think they just don't care and are unwilling to lift even one tiny finger to improve any of the multitude of minor annoyances that pervade this game. I consider this disrespectful to me as a customer. If they want my money they need to do a much better job of providing a quality experience.

[ElanorFb]

Again- LOL last down time was the 6th & no they do not always post the notices the day before.

Jeez I dont know what you would do if there was weekly down times.

No matter when they do the down time, people are always gonna be affected.

we have weekly downtime on thursday every week in STO. This makes it very easy to plan. You know you won't be playing that day or sometimes I can finish before it starts.

[Vilan]

I would normally say to just suck it up since sometimes things happen and you need to pull the servers down with short notice. But given that the update was just to fiddle some logos around, this was not remotely urgent and could easily have been rolled into the next planned update. What's the thinking, SSG?

[Cordovan]

I would normally say to just suck it up since sometimes things happen and you need to pull the servers down with short notice. But given that the update was just to fiddle some logos around, this was not remotely urgent and could easily have been rolled into the next planned update. What's the thinking, SSG?

It's part of a series of adjustments being made on a timeline as part of the transition. Generally we will do this work along with other work, as you've seen previously, but this one had to be done prior to U19.3, sorry.

[Oelle]

It's part of a series of adjustments being made on a timeline as part of the transition. Generally we will do this work along with other work, as you've seen previously, but this one had to be done prior to U19.3, sorry.

When you get points for deeds, it still says you get Turbine-Points in the announcements
I guess, the update today was to delete all mentioning of Turbine and WB in the game. if it was, you forgot at least one.

[peachykins]

When you get points for deeds, it still says you get Turbine-Points in the announcements
I guess, the update today was to delete all mentioning of Turbine and WB in the game. if it was, you forgot at least one.

I just did a deed & it showed LOTRO points for me.

[Blunte]

Good Day Everyone!

I realize many of the folks doing the updates may work a relatively normal morning schedule. I also remember doing a mostly normal schedule, but having to come in hours earlier some days because of inventory (or some such thing). I have always thought that, in the interests of the majority of players, downtime should be when the servers are at their least used time. While I understand there are servers for Europe (heh, but not in them *smacks hand*), what is the least used servertime for all the servers? I cannot believe it it always at 8am or so in the morning (Eastern Time, United States, during a weekday), but could be mistaken, as I do not have that information. I honestly have thought the updates should be when the servers as a whole are at their lightest. Is that truly 8am(ish)? If it is, I understand. Otherwise, I always figured the fine people who have to do the upgrades would have to come in at a different time every week or three.

Just a thought and there is no disrespect intended in any way, shape or form. Just curious, I suppose, and I thank you for the forum to ask...

Blunte

[Hallandil]

It's part of a series of adjustments being made on a timeline as part of the transition. Generally we will do this work along with other work, as you've seen previously, but this one had to be done prior to U19.3, sorry.

Just to clarify, is this in reference to that 30 day period you were given to remove all of the logos? Was mentioned during your live-streams and 18th of January is roughly that time since update 19.2 went live.

[Schmidster]

Just want to add notices are hardly 24 hours notice regularly, recently there was advanced notice for an update. And patch notes have also been posted in advance, in spite of the tired complaint that they are always during the down time. I don't recall any thank you's or acknowledgements.

So they can't win or lose. We just complain when it suits us? Where are the "it's always a Monday" complaints?

Personally I think the Game could be down weekly for a couple of hours, life goes on and you feel the game is being improved.

Complaining sounds trivial, to me.

...plink plink.

[Wof]

Just want to add notices are hardly 24 hours notice regularly, recently there was advanced notice for an update. And patch notes have also been posted in advance, in spite of the tired complaint that they are always during the down time. I don't recall any thank you's or acknowledgements.

So they can't win or lose. We just complain when it suits us? Where are the "it's always a Monday" complaints?

Personally I think the Game could be down weekly for a couple of hours, life goes on and you feel the game is being improved.

Complaining sounds trivial, to me.

...plink plink.

Remember that the next time you pay for something and you and your friends turn up to it as arranged, only to find it has been canceled with insufficient notice!

[Oelle]

I just did a deed & it showed LOTRO points for me.

maybe its just an issue in german client. dunno.
The chatlog just says points (Ihr habt 5 Punkte erhalten)
in the announcements, there it says Turbine-Points
If one clicks on that announcement, in the new window it says lotro-points for me.
In the end, i dont care how my points are called :P

[NickSlaughter]

When you get points for deeds, it still says you get Turbine-Points in the announcements
I guess, the update today was to delete all mentioning of Turbine and WB in the game. if it was, you forgot at least one.

kek, well u know, turbine cant do update without follow up hotfix... here we go again

i dont mind the name, ssg or turbine... but except mess up with logos, its still poor as usual in last 2years i am playing... its still turbine for me and informing us about more flowers in u20... is just confirming it - still same ignorance to player base and feedback... and still expecting kudos, lmao

[Wickedbrew]

Why is it we can know about everything a month in advance, but downtime notices are only posted the evening before? As someone who plays in the morning, it's always a disappointment that the servers are down (again) with no notice on my part since they only announced it at 5:00PM the previous day.

From what you said, and I quote "no notice on my part" even though you also say "posted the evening before," did you not read the notice from the night before the announcement of the downtime?

I found it plenty of notice that the game would be down. Sorry they don't cater to you. I'm sure if they gave a weeks notice, people would still complain it wasn't enough time, or that it is always during their play time that the game was down for some kind of maintenance.

[thinx]

I'm sure if they gave a weeks notice, people would still complain it wasn't enough time, or that it is always during their play time that the game was down for some kind of maintenance.

And if they gave announcements one second in advance, it would still give people that try to legitimate this as "enough time".
IMO something like 24-36 hours would give all players that log in daily the chance to see the announcement beforehand. Currently 15-17 hours.