Trion: Please just set aside an entire day to work on maintenence!!!!

[Sunbro]

I gotta say, I love this game so far. I'm enjoying it and having fun. PvP is great fun, especially with a large clan, and arkfall events are crazy fun as well. I like the story, and generally everything is rather enjoyable.

However, I despise randomly crashing. I understand it's an MMO at launch, I understand there are supposed to be problems. But you know what? These crashes are mighty inconvenient and deter from the experience. You know what would make it okay? If Trion set aside maybe a whole day to just work on the game's issues. Just let us know. I don't care if there's downtime, just let us know in advance. I'd be perfectly fine if Trion decided to close the server for a whole day to work on the game's glitches. This, IMO, is what needs to be done. Then after this day, hopefully the crashes would be done, and there wouldn't be as many complaints or problems.

So how about Trion, why not take a whole Saturday and fix the game?

[RelativeBlue]

A whole Saturday? Are you crazy?
Praise the sun!

[Taaltos]

If they shut down for a whole day, and fix things, then it'll just come up and be crashy again.

It's better to patch and maintain live with people playing and breaking things, than to take it down for a day, bring it up, and have the sheer numbers just break it more.

Servers don't work that way.

[gryphonv]

I gotta say, I love this game so far. I'm enjoying it and having fun. PvP is great fun, especially with a large clan, and arkfall events are crazy fun as well. I like the story, and generally everything is rather enjoyable.

However, I despise randomly crashing. I understand it's an MMO at launch, I understand there are supposed to be problems. But you know what? These crashes are mighty inconvenient and deter from the experience. You know what would make it okay? If Trion set aside maybe a whole day to just work on the game's issues. Just let us know. I don't care if there's downtime, just let us know in advance. I'd be perfectly fine if Trion decided to close the server for a whole day to work on the game's glitches. This, IMO, is what needs to be done. Then after this day, hopefully the crashes would be done, and there wouldn't be as many complaints or problems.

So how about Trion, why not take a whole Saturday and fix the game?

Your logic is flawed. Most likely they got a test server they can work on the game while the main server is up. Also there are always unforseeen issues that will only come up with people logging in from around the world.

[Jardian]

Just a heads up not haveing the servers up would be useless. Some code acts diffrent with 100k people online and not a 1k test thats just how it goes I know to some it dont make sense but thats how it goes. The only sure way to track some bugs and so forth is with the servers running full force to spot them and try something else.

[RyanEffinKirt]

yeah **** this idea sorry

[SicklyToast]

Just do tuesday maintenance day like bliz does.

[Landshark]

Having worked in the game industry (Xbox Live at Microsoft for 2 years as a release engineer) and seen the servers and process that run these AAA and other games, I can honestly say the following:

They don't 'create the fixes' during the server downtime. The server downtime is spent applying the fixes that were created in their test environments.

This is how it usually/generally happens, and yes this is going to be detailed:

1) A bug is reported and logged officially in the back-end DB.
2) A PM (project manager) for that project/game gets the bug report list and discusses the changes with their CM (change manager) or RM (release manager) (and often the Change/Release Engineer, which is the job I have) to be prioritized.
3) The bug reports are then sent to the dev/test teams to confirm the bug and create the fix in their test environment (which is usually a very closed off environment that does not touch any outside internet)
4) The fix for the bug is reported to the PM (who has been tracking the progress the whole time).
5) The PM takes the fix and reports back to the CM or RM to schedule a time for the fix to be applied to the 'other' test environment, which is connected to the internet, but only very specific people/computers can access this network.
6) The CM or RM works with the Change/Release engineer(s) (this is the job that I have) to implement that fix into the TEST environment.
7) The test/dev teams (or in many cases the Change/Release engineer themselves) then confirm the fixes applied work correctly. Assuming they do work correctly, the next step is......
8) The CM or RM (or both) have a meeting (depends on the company, ours were weekly, but I imagine Trion is having these daily right now) discussing ALL bug fixes that need to be applied to the LIVE environment (LIVE meaning the game servers that the public connects to) and figure out which ones have priority and how to schedule them.
9) The CM or RM works with the Change/Release engineer(s) (this is the job that I have) to schedule the implementation of the fixes into the LIVE environment.
10) The Change/Release Engineer implements the fixes into the LIVE environment.
--This last step (step 10) is where the game servers are often taken down by the Change/Release Engineer. Depending on the server setup, they will take down the servers in rotations (not all at once), apply the fix, then return the fixed server back into service before taking down the next set of servers.

Anyway, there's a small glimpse into how a game servers and fixes work.

[Mcdragon]

sounds like its your computers fault fix it pls

[Philote]

A whole Saturday? Are you crazy?
Praise the sun!

Please don't remind me I still haven't finished that game.