Helm's Deep DELAYED!!!

[kmcferrin]

LOTRO Twitter says that HD is delayed, no information regarding for how long, why,... VERY disappointing!!!

I'm pretty sure that the tweet said why, or linked to a Facebook post where they explained why. If not, it's still pretty obvious from their subsequent tweets that they're still working on issues related to the outage.

[Solarfox]

I have to second that, this is exactly why I didn't pre-order, cos I was pretty sure something like this would happen.

Even if you expected the Helms Deep expansion to be delayed... Why in the world would that stop you from pre-ordering it?

Sure it might be tomorrow or even latter this week before it goes live. But nothing is going to stop it from happening, and the changes are going to happen regardless of if you own it or not. So not pre-ordering it had exactly one effect, it prevented you from getting any of the pre-order goodies that won't be offered when you buy the pack.

Now if you have no intention of playing though the HD content, then it still doesn't matter. Because the release being delayed still wouldn't effect you.

Quite frankly this quote is one of the dumbest things I've seen in a while. Either you're going to buy HD or you won't... If you aren't going to, then not pre-ordering it harms pretty much no one but you.

[Darlgon]

for the record you cant tell from forum start date whether some1 is f2p or not. lots came from codemasters and as such have been playing this game since the start. ive been a lifer 4 5 yrs now but as my forum start date isn't 2008 u shudnt assume.

disappointed helms deep isn't out yet as im on hols as luck wud have it as it wasn't planned that waybut we can still get in2 game now and heres hoping turbine keeps us posted soon

Actually... Codemasters people all have the same join date as you do, May 2011, with very few exceptions. Its pretty easy. Thats the month their forums merged to the US ones.

[Belenwyn]

I hope the HD expansion is not destroyed irreparably. Otherwise the delay will be a little bit longer.

[Darlgon]

Yup. And as it's now beginning of European Primetime I hope they just wait till tomorrow 6AM EST and do it then. Then HD will be up in time again for both EU and US players. Delayed by just a day.

It would be pretty rude towards the European playerbase to take Down the servers right now and have them down during the entire evening EU time, just to please some vocal US players.

With a game played 24/7 around the world, it will always be down during someones evening. Thats not a reason for delay.

[PhotoRob]

At this moment I could care less about the expansion!

I am currently way more worried about possible progression loss due to the sudden outage!

Will we be facing rollbacks? And what will be the extend of these rollbacks?

I have seen rollbacks of up to several hours in cases like these!

Especially With teh 100% XP bonus this weekend, several hour rollback would mean a huge progression loss for me, not to mention the idea of redoing all those quests again.

It would definitely kill my desire to play LOTRO again for quite some time!

I obviously cannot make specific comments, but the Dungeons and Dragons Online servers came back up about 3am (EST). Someone in the forums reported very little progress lost - he estimated not more than 15 minutes. The character I checked had "lost" the progress of traveling halfway across the crafting hall.

I would imagine (well, hope rather) that, barring major data corruption (always a possibility in these cases), the LOTRO servers would show similar, minor, rollbacks.

Of course, I could end up being completely wrong, in which case just disregard everything I just stated.

[Ulgart]

Should add that it has been "temorarily" delayed! Which means it is not pushed weeks into the future........................ .............................. ............yet! Aaaaaaaand wemight have progress update in abit!

[Steihl]

Bottom Line.... Turbine can't release an Expansion on-time without issues... If they did, the laws of physics would fall in on one another and implode.

[Solarfox]

Though i do question their back-up strategy..

That's the part that gets me... How could the datacenters backup systems fail so completely?

[Jeffythequick]

I hope the HD expansion is not destroyed irreparably. Otherwise the delay will be a little bit longer.

This is why Al Lowe says, "Save. Save often."

In any money making enterprise, having a backup plan, and executing it will mitigate this.

They have:
1. Server backups, probably done hourly
2. Data backups, probably done hourly
3. Redundant servers

What they may want to do is:
1. Distribute the servers across several data centers. Apparently, in the last 3 months, they've had two major outages for over 2 days. 90% uptime is down for 1.2 months/year. 99% uptime means being down for 3.65 days/year. 99.9% uptime means being down for 8.76 hours/year.
2. Along with #1, Server mirroring. The issue will be with data propagation. An extremely reliable high speed connection between the disparate servers will help ensure closer to 100% uptime, but it can introduce other issues.
3. Discuss the power redundancy issues with their data center. Having all the servers in one place is putting all your eggs in one basket.
4. Look at putting different servers in different locations, like 9 in Boston, 9 in Texas, 9 in California, and 9 in Denver. Have separate schedules for updates, patches, and events. This would have several benefits, such as: On a patch day for group 1, if issues are found, groups 2-4 are not affected. Just a thought...

[Reximus]

At this moment I could care less about the expansion!

I am currently way more worried about possible progression loss due to the sudden outage!

Will we be facing rollbacks? And what will be the extend of these rollbacks?

I have seen rollbacks of up to several hours in cases like these!

Especially With teh 100% XP bonus this weekend, several hour rollback would mean a huge progression loss for me, not to mention the idea of redoing all those quests again.

It would definitely kill my desire to play LOTRO again for quite some time!

I crashed yesterday when the server went down and lost about 20-30 minutes of play based on where I logged in when Elendilmir came up last night.

[Gondalen_Drake]

so failbine did it again...ooops

[RachelSophia]

I think it's safe to say it won't be released on Snowbourn today as the server is still down
and the folks at Turbine NEED a break! they must have been working on getting everything in a working order for hours! How can we expect them to push out the release aswell, they aren't robots.

What's most annoying is when you check to see how it's going and they say all servers are up... and then they aren't.
Or
I should actually do something productive and worth while now that i have no excuse not to. Ergh annoying.

[furtim]

I payed $60 for a release date. This is really not good.

Weird. What are you gonna do with a release date if you didn't pay for the expansion?

[Gandie2]

At this moment I could care less about the expansion!

I am currently way more worried about possible progression loss due to the sudden outage!

Will we be facing rollbacks? And what will be the extend of these rollbacks?

I have seen rollbacks of up to several hours in cases like these!

Especially With teh 100% XP bonus this weekend, several hour rollback would mean a huge progression loss for me, not to mention the idea of redoing all those quests again.

It would definitely kill my desire to play LOTRO again for quite some time!

my guys ( 4 accounts ) were all logged on when things went down yesterday. This morning they had all lost about 1 min. I'd gone in to train them all, trained them and left the training hall and was running down the road when the power went out. This morning they were all back in the training hall and 2 of them had not trained yet and the other 2 had not moved their new skills (all level 10) to where I wanted them yet.

So not pre-ordering it had exactly one effect, it prevented you from getting any of the pre-order goodies that won't be offered when you buy the pack.

.

Actually - unless turbine changes things you can get the pre order 'goodies' months after release. Both RoR and ToO had the exact same packages available months after release. I got the ToO pre order package at half price on one account and it was the same package as my account that preordered it.

[Mysterion]

Lol yeah I'm trash. I'm not crying about a severe storm knocking out power and delaying hd. I'm not claiming I knew this was going to happen. I'm not claiming I paid $100 and deserve and am entitled to have hd today. No my friend I'm not trash, I've seen one of the best communities suffer because of f2p (not all but it does bring in the trash). I've also seen it happen in Swtor, rift, and age of Conan . F2p may "save" games but it comes at a cost.

FYI in swtor F2P/Premium can't post in forums. The community was always toxic but F2P didn't have a single thing to do with that. No idea on rift or AoC, but maybe you shouldn't call people trash...just a thought.

[Solarfox]

There was no severe storm in Boston, where he data center is.

Why the datacenter lost power doesn't really matter. The fact is that it did and they're dealing with the fallout of that.

[Dittany]

because you like cookies ? *munches on a cookie while she is listening to kraftwerk* http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VXa9tXcMhXQ

[furtim]

Why do I read these threads???

No comment on the rest of your post, but this is definitely a question I find myself asking a lot.

[Faitha81]

They might as well wait till next Monday now to be honest .

[catofnine]

They might as well wait till next Monday now to be honest .

My money is on Wed. No reason just a hunch.

[Namesse]

How did you spend over $100 on the expansion? The most expensive version is $60. Any thing you added on, like the quad quest pack isn't actually part of the expansion.

However HD will be released, just perhaps a day latter then they had planned.

To the people talking about "well the guys need to get some sleep and food and see their families..." clearly you've never worked in IT.

First off, they have more then one shift that work in the datacenters, so the people up all night are not the same ones doing the install. Plus, if you work at a DC like that, part of the paycheck is you working until what ever is broken gets fixed. That's just part of the deal.

I have worked IT, a small department in a Fortune 500 company, and I was on call 24/7, but luckily there were few events that had me working in to the night, but lots of money flowed back and forth so I didn't have the option to not get things running. Also, the distinction needs to be made between the Data Center vendor that hosts the servers and who may or may not maintain server level software to any extent, and Turbine employees who know the particulars about how their servers are set up.

Turbine may or may not have a network or server person watching things 24/7, they might as people play from all over the world, but something of this magnitude is beyond 1 or 2 people to manage, it's all hands on deck.

I'm not one to cut Turbine much slack recently on their business decisions, but they have 3 games they need to stabilize on Live before they can realistically think about introducing more change into the environment, and if 90% of your IT staff has been working thru the night and many are still at it, what's your call? Do you require 12 more hours from them to get the expac out? These decisions aren't made lightly, if for no other reason that Paiz's bonus probably rides on deploying HD on November 18, but the reality is your staff is scrambling to get things stabilized.

[Darlgon]

Just an update from Facebook.

The Landroval and Gladden servers will be brought down for maintenance at 1:00PM Eastern time (-5 GMT). This maintenance will last approximately 1 hour.

Looks like it will be a while before anything HD happens.

(Edit: What is it with these stupid forums? Every time I cut and paste from anything, the post turns almost invisible.)

[bofurson]

Even if you expected the Helms Deep expansion to be delayed... Why in the world would that stop you from pre-ordering it?
...

Quite frankly this quote is one of the dumbest things I've seen in a while. Either you're going to buy HD or you won't... If you aren't going to, then not pre-ordering it harms pretty much no one but you.

100% sign!

bt servers down:
1) i worked long time at it-services for commercial customers (b2b) and of course we had a backup server center, but simply as a cold standby, not mirrored. a hot-standby-center is a very expensive thing, imho too expensive for gaming purposes.
2) as someone posted here the downtimes of lotro aren´t this heavy, to give a reason for all that whipe here.
3) again as someone posted: i´ve been preordering and waiting for the expansion for month. therefor some days of delay don´t really touch me.

[Nenuiale]

Didn't read all these long posts in all these doomsday threads today, but my question is nice and simple: How come their professional, expensive servers don't have something to keep them powered in case of power outages? Keep them on enough to save data and shut down without any problems whatsoever.