How long is downtime for HD?

[fabfour300]

The Title pretty much says it all but i was just curious if any of the devs could give insight or an approximation to how long the downtime will be on wednesday the 20th? Usually it always says how long it will take and it does not at the moment. Thanks for your time can't wait for the update!

[Sapience]

The Title pretty much says it all but i was just curious if any of the devs could give insight or an approximation to how long the downtime will be on wednesday the 20th? Usually it always says how long it will take and it does not at the moment. Thanks for your time can't wait for the update!

Patches and updates usually give an estimated time the servers will come back online. Expansions do not. This is because an expansion is never late, it arrives exactly when it intends to.

[fabfour300]

Alright thanks Sapience! Also awesome twist on a gandalf quote i like!

[Taterstick]

Heck, even I expected that quote.

[Easca]

Patches and updates usually give an estimated time the servers will come back online. Expansions do not. This is because an expansion is never late, it arrives exactly when it intends to.

Aaaaaaaand yet another example of a classic Sapience.

But to get serious, for as far as I know there's never been an ETA for the servers being back up for an xpac. Basically you wait the entire day until you suddenly notice that it lives!, then you're bummed again because you're being put into a queue, then when you finally leave the queue and you're as giddy as a girly bunny, and then you get frustrated because you spend at least 15 minutes staring at "downloading file 286 of 27694" so you decide to click it away, requeuing you, so then you decide to patch it the next day.

It arrives exactly when it means to, but it takes f***ing ages to be of actual use.

[jmariner]

Can't wait to read the patch notes! How long will those be?...lol....

[Gunslinger53]

It will be soonish!

[Easca]

Can't wait to read the patch notes! How long will those be?...lol....

If the class changes summaries are any indication...

We should ask Sapience to rap the patch notes for his Extra Life goals.

[Glumposneak]

No sane person/business will ever give an idea of how long it will take and from experience, that is the right thing to (or not to ) do.

Major computer problems at work, we have to have one person just manning the phone to answer the non stop "how long will it be down for " calls.

We don't know is the honest answer, it could take 1 hr, it could take 5.

If we tell them hopefully it will be about an hour then in an hours time, again thousands of calls asking how long is it now. If we then say we're still having problems, hopefully another hour, ........

Lets say it took 5 hrs. There will be non stop complaints that had they all known it was going to be 5 hrs, they could have done something else, taken a half day or whatever, rather than waiting around to get some urgent work done.
On the other hand, if we said "oh it will be down about 5 hrs" and we managed to fix it all in 1 hr, many many people will be just as annoyed, we would get non stop complaints along the lines of "I went out for the afternoon as I was told it was going to be down, I've now got to spend the evening here away from my family, catching up my urgent stuff, all because you wrongly told me it would be 5hrs.

etc etc etc etc etc etc etc

IT departments simply cant win in these sorts of scenarios.

I could plan an update, test the upgrade out numerous times on non live systems and it could go smoothly every single time. Lets say 2 hrs.
But until I've tested it on the live system, I can only hope it will go as smooth, and one sure thing about computers is, more often than not, the unexpected does happen, hence I could find it taking 5 hrs.

Best course of action is to plan a day/night/weekend or whatever and simply say we are taking the system down at X time and providing all goes well, it will be up and running when you come back into work the next day

[djheydt]

No sane person/business will ever give an idea of how long it will take and from experience, that is the right thing to (or not to ) do.

Major computer problems at work, we have to have one person just manning the phone to answer the non stop "how long will it be down for " calls.

We don't know is the honest answer, it could take 1 hr, it could take 5.

If we tell them hopefully it will be about an hour then in an hours time, again thousands of calls asking how long is it now. If we then say we're still having problems, hopefully another hour, ........

Lets say it took 5 hrs. There will be non stop complaints that had they all known it was going to be 5 hrs, they could have done something else, taken a half day or whatever, rather than waiting around to get some urgent work done.
On the other hand, if we said "oh it will be down about 5 hrs" and we managed to fix it all in 1 hr, many many people will be just as annoyed, we would get non stop complaints along the lines of "I went out for the afternoon as I was told it was going to be down, I've now got to spend the evening here away from my family, catching up my urgent stuff, all because you wrongly told me it would be 5hrs.

etc etc etc etc etc etc etc

IT departments simply cant win in these sorts of scenarios.

I could plan an update, test the upgrade out numerous times on non live systems and it could go smoothly every single time. Lets say 2 hrs.
But until I've tested it on the live system, I can only hope it will go as smooth, and one sure thing about computers is, more often than not, the unexpected does happen, hence I could find it taking 5 hrs.

Best course of action is to plan a day/night/weekend or whatever and simply say we are taking the system down at X time and providing all goes well, it will be up and running when you come back into work the next day

I read your post off to whh, who is busy killing mobs in Wildermore right now, and he said, "You better believe it. That's why it's better NOT to give any estimate of time."

[Michaleo]

Are things so chaotic that you have no idea how long it should take? It is one thing to have to respond to unexpected events, but is there no best-case scenario for something you've been planning to do for months? Even for the contingencies, there must be some plans based on experience, if only to budget enough for pizza.

If you don't give people a clue, you invite them to be unrealistic. Watching how some people responded to the recent outage and recovery, it is clear many have no idea what is needed to implement LOTRO, nor the pragmatic considerations and tradeoffs necessary to provide this service with the cost and quality you do.

I assume the gag order is a policy that isn't going to be changed today, but it ought to be reconsidered.

Why not manage the community's expectations? When do you want us to try to download the update? Or when do you want us to start checking the twitter feed for status and projections?

Perhaps, as some suggest, treating us like bratty children is the best approach. Nonetheless, it is dishonest. I have been in that position, and know the frustration and embarrassment when things are delayed and expectations not met. I tried not to mistreat the loyal and understanding just to protect myself from the annoying and demanding.

[Stephen1981]

um their expansions have never had eta its been like this since mines of moria when it was sub only to play

[robbie1435]

In Sapience speak, soon.

[robbie1435]

If the class changes summaries are any indication...

We should ask Sapience to rap the patch notes for his Extra Life goals.

LOL! That would be awesome! *throws money at screen*

[JasonEvan]

So it gets delayed 2 days and we don't get a hard time for release? By Noon PST? 6PM PST? Anyone?

[whheydt]

Are things so chaotic that you have no idea how long it should take? It is one thing to have to respond to unexpected events, but is there no best-case scenario for something you've been planning to do for months?

Just to give one simple example of why it is hard to estimate... This update is going to be making changes to every single character that exists in the database(s). Active, inactive, brand new or nearly 7 years old. All of them.

You could select a sample of the characters and run a conversion on them. That would give an estimate. But does the live run scale linearly? Or will the live run be longer or shorter? The journals for the live run will be a lot bigger than the test run, but the live run is probably on bigger/faster systems. How things interact during the live run could slow things down tremendously, or there could be "economies of scale". How well tuned are the conversion scripts? How does the tuning of the database engine (which is normally pulling out one character at a time as people log them in) compare to a tuning for sweeping through the entire contents of multiple tables? To what degree can you multithread the process without having the database engine choke on it all? Will you run the database engine out of working space?

Do you still wonder why estimating how long the update will take is so hard to do?

[YesMaam]

I hate to be the downer but exactly isn't exactly the quote and quotes are called quotes for a reason. Saying precisely is Gandalf style!


“A wizard is never late, nor is he early, he arrives precisely when he means to.”

--J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

Sorry, trolling in boredome before an update is needed to survive the night

[whheydt]

So it gets delayed 2 days and we don't get a hard time for release? By Noon PST? 6PM PST? Anyone?

It's like a recipe from a Medieval cook book..."when it is enow".

Bring up a tab in your browser and point it to the LotRO Twitter feed. Whenever you have the urge to find out if the servers are up, refresh. I wouldn't bother even looking before about 2 PM (EST).

[Otringal]

It's like a recipe from a Medieval cook book..."when it is enow".

Bring up a tab in your browser and point it to the LotRO Twitter feed. Whenever you have the urge to find out if the servers are up, refresh. I wouldn't bother even looking before about 2 PM (EST).

It has always been Thursday, November 21. It was predicted here many, many times by all the oldsters.

Thursday.

Thursday.

Thursday.

Resign yourselves already.

[Linnier]

Patches and updates usually give an estimated time the servers will come back online. Expansions do not. This is because an expansion is never late, it arrives exactly when it intends to.

Can't wait for all the great changes coming tomorrow, looking forward to it! Thanks for another killer expansion and see you guys when its up and running.

[Garethporlest18]

Problem free x-pacs usually finish about 10 am, you can install at this time. Servers are usually up between 12-1 pm CST. Sometimes it takes till 2. This is from past experiences. Problem x-pacs can keep us waiting until 7 or 8 pm CST. There's about a 50/50 if I can recall correctly between problem free and problem xpacs lol.

I was playing Rise of Isengard by the 1-2 pm hour. But if I recall there was one that had problems and we weren't playing till 6 or 7 if not a bit later.

[Lashmore]

Like any good wizard, it'll be done precisely when it means to be done.

[Darlgon]

Ladies and gentlemen, we have an answer to this question:

8 PM (Pacific Standard Time) Wednesday

https://www.lotro.com/forums/showthr...08#post7004808\

Join Chris, Cari, and Layanor as we venture into Western Rohan this Wednesday for the release of Helm’s Deep.

Sapience will be our special guest, and we will be giving away three Helm's Deep pre-purchase bundle codes.

We’ll be livestreaming our first steps starting at 8:00pm PST at twitch.tv/mmoreporter. Come check it out live!

I'm Special! I always knew someone would notice!

Looking forward to it guys. Should be a lot of fun.

[Darlgon]

No sane person/business will ever give an idea of how long it will take and from experience, that is the right thing to (or not to ) do.

Major computer problems at work, we have to have one person just manning the phone to answer the non stop "how long will it be down for " calls.

We don't know is the honest answer, it could take 1 hr, it could take 5.

If we tell them hopefully it will be about an hour then in an hours time, again thousands of calls asking how long is it now. If we then say we're still having problems, hopefully another hour, ........

Lets say it took 5 hrs. There will be non stop complaints that had they all known it was going to be 5 hrs, they could have done something else, taken a half day or whatever, rather than waiting around to get some urgent work done.
On the other hand, if we said "oh it will be down about 5 hrs" and we managed to fix it all in 1 hr, many many people will be just as annoyed, we would get non stop complaints along the lines of "I went out for the afternoon as I was told it was going to be down, I've now got to spend the evening here away from my family, catching up my urgent stuff, all because you wrongly told me it would be 5hrs.

etc etc etc etc etc etc etc

IT departments simply cant win in these sorts of scenarios.

I could plan an update, test the upgrade out numerous times on non live systems and it could go smoothly every single time. Lets say 2 hrs.
But until I've tested it on the live system, I can only hope it will go as smooth, and one sure thing about computers is, more often than not, the unexpected does happen, hence I could find it taking 5 hrs.

Best course of action is to plan a day/night/weekend or whatever and simply say we are taking the system down at X time and providing all goes well, it will be up and running when you come back into work the next day

You DO know why the Scotty Principle is used by most of IT people, right?

You know:

1. Scotty Principle
(n.) The defacto gold star standard for delivering products and/or services within a projected timeframe. Derived from the original Star Trek series wherein Lt. Cmdr. Montgomery 'Scotty' Scott consistently made the seemingly impossible happen just in time to save the crew of the Enterprise from disaster.


The premise is simple:


1) Caluculate average required time for completion of given task.


2) Depending on importance of task, add 25-50% additional time to original estimate.


3) Report and commit to inflated time estimate with superiors, clients, etc.


4) Under optimal conditions the task is completed closer to the original time estimate vs. the inflated delivery time expected by those waiting.

(Bummer, I cant find the original text. Oh well. .this will have to do.)

[spikethe3rd]

Patches and updates usually give an estimated time the servers will come back online. Expansions do not. This is because an expansion is never late, it arrives exactly when it intends to.

What you did there, I see it.