Kinda funny that in the software industry, only within gaming companies (especially of MMOs) is this kinda downtime and constant software failure considered by the/many customers not only as expected, but almost treated as "working as intended" and normal.
Good thing banks, and even government contracted software are held to higher standards than this, else we'd all be screwed.
MMOs also happen to be some of the most complex and traffic demanding software packages out there. I agree the standard shouldn't be set any lower than anything else, but the complexity has to be factored as well.
So basically... I agree with you. But, I have been on both sides of this coin and know what goes into making these projects. It really is unfortunate to see how these horrors happen.
Here are some of the usual culprits when it comes to these problems, in game project development:
- Lack of communication
- Feature creep
- Lack of a solid, maintained, and communicated vision
- Rogue coders
- Lack of a cohesive coding strategy. So coders basically doing things like they want or have always done. So you end up with 10 coders doing things completely different.
- Too much design indescision leading to half finished designs
- Marketing meddling
- Upper management meddling
- Finance meddling
- High number of ego driven people without strong leadership
- Bad or overly puppet mastered project management
- etc....etc....etc.... I have seen it all, but still love the games!
This is definitely not working as intended, but it is an unfortunate status quo.
Apparently Australians and EU's didn't pay anything to help develope the game so we don't get to say when the Maintenace happens.
So i guess the $279 life time membership and $99 i paid for the game didn't help pay for the cost of building the game and maintenance and support for the game!
i should of just mouched from the US economy like all the Americans do
Epic Fail.
Exactly this ignorant postings make pplz think what they think about u US guys sometimes.
I guess u are one of these ppl, when asked where Rom is, u will say it's in England.
I have no idea where Rom is. I know Rome is in Italy, and inside Rome is Vatican City. If you'd like a geography lesson, I'd be happy to educate you. For example, Australia is not part of Europe.... but that's irrelevant.
I really don't give a **** what you arrogant, self centered euros think about anything, let alone that a American company is cutting into your "peak time". Like I said, you don't like it, make your own games, otherwise **** off.
http://www.startrekonline.com/node/1120
Thank god they are fixing that... I locked up every time I went to Sol. I could see boxes poping up for a second that someone wanted ot invite me to a group or something but I'd be lookin at the loading screen untill it booted me off for being inactive.
Ya, interesting that their status says undergoing maintenance. Since it isn't scheduled for nearly 5 hours, and there was no other announcements.
It's called an 'automated script' - ie a script that runs when the server goes down, as the next expected downtime was the scheduled shutdown. The webserver handling that script has no way of knowing WHY the server went down (ie it crashed); it just saw that it did and posted the 'scheduled maintainence message. Do I thiink they shoul have it set up like this? No.But I'm not part of their Data Center crew; just a subscriber.
So, they're not supposed to do maintenance till 3AM PST right? Then why the F are they doing it now?! At like, 10:30PM PST! Makes me wanna stab little teddy bears lots and lots! >:O
People need to relax. It's a whole two hours of maint...big deal. I know most here have played WoW - enjoy the 6-8 hour maint? I think not. Go watch a movie or something.
It's downtime, it happens. It's a new game and runs damn good - far better than WoW did at launch. Give the folks at Cryptic some credit already.
Yea like Star Trek 1-10 or 11.
Hell some people need to go to YouTube and watch the entire 3 seasons of ST:TOS so they know it by heart. Thats what I do.
Hell I watched ST 2009 while I downloaded the client for the free trial my friend game me. Still love Simon Pegg as Scottie.....
Epic Fail.
Exactly this ignorant postings make pplz think what they think about u US guys sometimes.
I guess u are one of these ppl, when asked where Rom is, u will say it's in England.
lol, what's rom? DVD-ROM? CD-ROM?
Oh wait, you probably mean Rome? The capitol of Italy, the old boot. The only country that successfully switched sides in both world wars?
Anyhow, just wanted to point out your English fail.
MMOs also happen to be some of the most complex and traffic demanding software packages out there. I agree the standard shouldn't be set any lower than anything else, but the complexity has to be factored as well.
So basically... I agree with you. But, I have been on both sides of this coin and know what goes into making these projects. It really is unfortunate to see how these horrors happen.
Here are some of the usual culprits when it comes to these problems, in game project development:
- Lack of communication
- Feature creep
- Lack of a solid, maintained, and communicated vision
- Rogue coders
- Lack of a cohesive coding strategy. So coders basically doing things like they want or have always done. So you end up with 10 coders doing things completely different.
- Too much design indescision leading to half finished designs
- Marketing meddling
- Upper management meddling
- Finance meddling
- High number of ego driven people without strong leadership
- Bad or overly puppet mastered project management
- etc....etc....etc.... I have seen it all, but still love the games!
This is definitely not working as intended, but it is an unfortunate status quo.
Early maintenance? If it's true it was going to take an hour or two to get the servers online and they could multi-task the maintenance then I suppose it's 'logical,' but it just sounds damn unprofessional to me.
I have no idea where Rom is. I know Rome is in Italy, and inside Rome is Vatican City. If you'd like a geography lesson, I'd be happy to educate you. For example, Australia is not part of Europe.... but that's irrelevant.
I really don't give a **** what you arrogant, self centered euros think about anything, let alone that a American company is cutting into your "peak time". Like I said, you don't like it, make your own games, otherwise **** off.
I have no idea where Rom is. I know Rome is in Italy, and inside Rome is Vatican City. If you'd like a geography lesson, I'd be happy to educate you. For example, Australia is not part of Europe.... but that's irrelevant.
I really don't give a **** what you arrogant, self centered euros think about anything, let alone that a American company is cutting into your "peak time". Like I said, you don't like it, make your own games, otherwise **** off.
Seriously, lurking in this thread is almost as fun as actually playing the game.
I agree.
I love to watch the criers, the whiners, the complainers... then my fellow americans bash on EU.. then EU bash on USA... and tbh my fellow americans are usually using HIGHLY inflamatory comments to people in EU.... but at the same time, people in EU and the rest of the world need to understand it IS a US based company and the BEST downtime comprimise is 3am-5am PT (GMT 11am-1pm) why?
1) Most of NA/US are sleeping
2) Most of EU are at work/school
3) the servers come back up before EU gets home from work/school and before NA/US wakes up
all in all it's a VERY good compromise... it won't make everyone happy, but it's the best I can see being done.
Now had the game had an EU and an NA server.. most of these wouldn't be an issue.
They WONT do rotating downtime as the company is USA based and it will not work with the lives of the people who work at that company. So the best they can do is COMPROMISE with the above time that works for MOST of the player base.
Now there will be unexpected crashes.. that's normal.. and is not targeted at any, specific time zone.
I agree with them doing the patch and maint NOW... normally during a crash it takes them 1-2 hrs to get the servers up... so why not keep then down for 2 hrs... fix the crash issues and apply the patch they would latter.... in either case, you probably wouldn't be playing anytime sooner.. and they way they won't go down later on...
so why are you all complaining? it doesn't make sense... at all
Ive only been playing this game for 2 days but having a heck of a lot of fun, anyway just a suggestion you need to mention in the login window if theres scheduled maintenance. Not everyone will check a forum for news !
Andrew this is a 'move forward' of a scheduled maintenance window due to a unexpected crash. It may be the patch set is going to help with whatever the issue is, or it may be that the 'startup'/'shutdown' times of the cluster to move it to maintenance mode are 'nontrivial' (like 10-20 minutes each). In either case, the right business unit call is 'heck with it, we'll make the OVERALL downtime (combined crash (whcih already happened) and the patch (which was scheduled)) lower by doing the 'staged' patch right now. It would mean a cut of whatever the startup time (recovering from the crash), shutdown time (to do the patch) and start up time (after the patch) into just startup time (after both patch and crash). The 'time' would be very similar so they removed 1 start and 1 stop time by doing it this way.
They ARE thinking of the users, what's the best way to minimize user impact given a unforseen crash?
Apparently Australians and EU's didn't pay anything to help develope the game so we don't get to say when the Maintenace happens.
So i guess the $279 life time membership and $99 i paid for the game didn't help pay for the cost of building the game and maintenance and support for the game!
i should of just mouched from the US economy like all the Americans do
I'm a mooch and proud of it....tho i'd never drop $279 for a lifetime membership. I'd more than likely spend it on making a portable dreamcast or gamecube than runs on camcorder batteries
After this I am turning off my computer and driving to Cryptic. Once there, I am going to time travel back in time before Cryptic existed. Once there, I am going to plant a sycamore tree deep below the surface, but not so far that it won't grow. It will have a packet of nutrients.
At this very moment in the future (well, present now, to be precise) that sycamore tree will finally start to sprout, breaking a small connection on a Cryptic server.
I have had my revenge.
'
Actually, nerds, it's FRIDAY NIGHT. And the Cryptic guys WHO NOW HAVE ALL YOUR MONEY are at parties WITH GIRLS.
Did you notice the message now says, "We will be bringing down Star Trek Online... from 10am PST to 12am PST..." That's 14 hours! LOL. I hope that's just a terrible typo.
Early maintenance? If it's true it was going to take an hour or two to get the servers online and they could multi-task the maintenance then I suppose it's 'logical,' but it just sounds damn unprofessional to me.
Then maybe people shouldn't have cried over when the maintenance is. It's not unprofessional - it's smart. Why waste time bring it back up only to take it down again. It happens, deal with it and get a life.
So you know all the people who say we should do rotating maintenance?
Well considering the server is down right now we have decided to do the maintenance while we fix the server.
So the scheduled up time is 12am PST (8am GMT).
Did a little world travel there joker. With the Army. Got me an Edumackateeon too with the army....PhD as a matter of fact. At least i didnt hide behind my mommy when it came time to do the job. So in closing....you are a Pu**y. luv ya.
I was in the United States Army once upon a time too. Your online demeanor is a discredit to the Army, the United States, and to yourself when you hurl insults anonymously.
You tossing around insults while dropping PhD and Army in a vein attempt for some soft of credibility is a sure sign of total lack of self respect.
LOL i love these GMs, they make crashes and updates so much fun xD that and the whole "shhh, we're hunting spammers" line is a classic. As for the crash *shrugs* SWG is 6 years old and they make crashes happen all the time...live with it.
Would you please stop crying? You level to fast anyway, what would you do if you finished? There is no pvp statistic to rule or anything yet. There isn't even balance for PvP. This game has no endgame, or else it would have been open in the beta with all the stuff you do when you are ready. Until then everything is nicely done, and Star Trek, which is why I bought it. It is a great small-group-co-op-PvE-game and we knew it. Nothing more is to expect in this year. Seriously, the best thing about Star Trek Online is in fact Nimroy reading two or three sentences when you enter a new sector block. That's all folks!
Now being done with it, just cancel the subscription until like ... new/endgame content is put in, or STO has become a MMo(rp)g. I just did it and wanted to log in once more to check if I was able to make up some more scam in the auction house, but the server just went down. You can use the time to check if there is something to buy in the c-store ... or a type 8-shuttle from shattered-crystal.
Oh, and don't forget to buy new character slots before they are sold out - if you plan to play all base-professions you won't have space for a klingon toon! Maybe you get the idea now.
I'ts nothing to do with location and everything to do with numbers. When your concurrent users are higher, maybe they'll consider changing it. It's not rocket science. It's business.
OR they just decided "Hey, the server is down unexpectedly and earlier than planned. Hell, why not take this time to fix the issue AND put out the patch.
I don't think it has to necessarily be a business plan, however in retrospect to whomever makes it the decision then *becomes* a "business decision."
At any rate hopefully this means the servers will be up earlier, although I'm a little ticked that the launcher wasn't updated and then the main post has a different time altogether than what is in the launcher.
Eventually, Cryptic will get most of the bugs out....then maintenance won't be as often....and we get to play more. I'm not seeing a downside to this....well other than the obvious NOT PLAYING RIGHT NOW!!!!
Totally agree, I will have issues if its a month from now and this is being seen.
BTW cryptic, you can hire me before Apple does if you're quick I can definately help with these large scaling issues as well as a 'flip' patch set where the servers only need to be down for a couple minutes max for patches/updates.
haha... funny. Not sure how big the server side software is or how many servers they have powering the game. But you'd be surprised at how long it could take. I used to be a software engineer and watched guys take software that was ready for implementation and start updating over 100 blade servers that were linked together for powering there system. Took awhile for them to get it all going. Then something would happen where one of the blade servers didn't sync up with the others and they'd have to work on getting it synchronized. I'm sure though Cryptic will eventually cut down small patch times and maintenance into one hour. I've seen big server farms of 500 servers crash and be back up and running in 15 minutes when no new software is being installed and no issues are involved in the farm booting back up.
Would you please stop crying? You level to fast anyway, what would you do if you finished? There is no pvp statistic to rule or anything yet. There isn't even balance for PvP. This game has no endgame, or else it would have been open in the beta with all the stuff you do when you are ready. Until then everything is nicely done, and Star Trek, which is why I bought it. It is a great small-group-co-op-PvE-game and we knew it. Nothing more is to expect in this year. Seriously, the best thing about Star Trek Online is in fact Nimroy reading two or three sentences when you enter a new sector block. That's all folks!
Now being done with it, just cancel the subscription until like ... new/endgame content is put in, or STO has become a MMo(rp)g. I just did it and wanted to log in once more to check if I was able to make up some more scam in the auction house, but the server just went down. You can use the time to check if there is something to buy in the c-store ... or a type 8-shuttle from shattered-crystal.
Oh, and don't forget to buy new character slots before they are sold out - if you plan to play all base-professions you won't have space for a klingon toon! Maybe you get the idea now.
We will be bringing down Star Trek Online on Saturday, 13, February from 3am PST to 5am PST (11am to 1pm GMT), in order to perform maintenance, and apply a new patch. We will update this thread once this maintenance has been completed.
UPDATE: At 10:07 STO has unexpectedly gone down. We are working to rectify this as soon as possible.
UPDATE 2: We have decided to push the patch during this unexpected downtime. Maintenance is scheduled to be over at 12am PST (8am GMT)
Thank you for giving us updates guys. While I know it is difficult to keep the masses advised during system mainenance from experience, I also know that the masses appreciate it.
Comments
MMOs also happen to be some of the most complex and traffic demanding software packages out there. I agree the standard shouldn't be set any lower than anything else, but the complexity has to be factored as well.
So basically... I agree with you. But, I have been on both sides of this coin and know what goes into making these projects. It really is unfortunate to see how these horrors happen.
Here are some of the usual culprits when it comes to these problems, in game project development:
- Lack of communication
- Feature creep
- Lack of a solid, maintained, and communicated vision
- Rogue coders
- Lack of a cohesive coding strategy. So coders basically doing things like they want or have always done. So you end up with 10 coders doing things completely different.
- Too much design indescision leading to half finished designs
- Marketing meddling
- Upper management meddling
- Finance meddling
- High number of ego driven people without strong leadership
- Bad or overly puppet mastered project management
- etc....etc....etc.... I have seen it all, but still love the games!
This is definitely not working as intended, but it is an unfortunate status quo.
So i guess the $279 life time membership and $99 i paid for the game didn't help pay for the cost of building the game and maintenance and support for the game!
i should of just mouched from the US economy like all the Americans do
I have no idea where Rom is. I know Rome is in Italy, and inside Rome is Vatican City. If you'd like a geography lesson, I'd be happy to educate you. For example, Australia is not part of Europe.... but that's irrelevant.
I really don't give a **** what you arrogant, self centered euros think about anything, let alone that a American company is cutting into your "peak time". Like I said, you don't like it, make your own games, otherwise **** off.
Thank god they are fixing that... I locked up every time I went to Sol. I could see boxes poping up for a second that someone wanted ot invite me to a group or something but I'd be lookin at the loading screen untill it booted me off for being inactive.
It's called an 'automated script' - ie a script that runs when the server goes down, as the next expected downtime was the scheduled shutdown. The webserver handling that script has no way of knowing WHY the server went down (ie it crashed); it just saw that it did and posted the 'scheduled maintainence message. Do I thiink they shoul have it set up like this? No.But I'm not part of their Data Center crew; just a subscriber.
Yea like Star Trek 1-10 or 11.
Hell some people need to go to YouTube and watch the entire 3 seasons of ST:TOS so they know it by heart. Thats what I do.
Hell I watched ST 2009 while I downloaded the client for the free trial my friend game me. Still love Simon Pegg as Scottie.....
Today is a good day for pie!
lol, what's rom? DVD-ROM? CD-ROM?
Oh wait, you probably mean Rome? The capitol of Italy, the old boot. The only country that successfully switched sides in both world wars?
Anyhow, just wanted to point out your English fail.
your a big fan of the dilbert comic strip right ?
you are completely correct
/sign
10char
I agree.
I love to watch the criers, the whiners, the complainers... then my fellow americans bash on EU.. then EU bash on USA... and tbh my fellow americans are usually using HIGHLY inflamatory comments to people in EU.... but at the same time, people in EU and the rest of the world need to understand it IS a US based company and the BEST downtime comprimise is 3am-5am PT (GMT 11am-1pm) why?
1) Most of NA/US are sleeping
2) Most of EU are at work/school
3) the servers come back up before EU gets home from work/school and before NA/US wakes up
all in all it's a VERY good compromise... it won't make everyone happy, but it's the best I can see being done.
Now had the game had an EU and an NA server.. most of these wouldn't be an issue.
They WONT do rotating downtime as the company is USA based and it will not work with the lives of the people who work at that company. So the best they can do is COMPROMISE with the above time that works for MOST of the player base.
Now there will be unexpected crashes.. that's normal.. and is not targeted at any, specific time zone.
I agree with them doing the patch and maint NOW... normally during a crash it takes them 1-2 hrs to get the servers up... so why not keep then down for 2 hrs... fix the crash issues and apply the patch they would latter.... in either case, you probably wouldn't be playing anytime sooner.. and they way they won't go down later on...
so why are you all complaining? it doesn't make sense... at all
Andrew this is a 'move forward' of a scheduled maintenance window due to a unexpected crash. It may be the patch set is going to help with whatever the issue is, or it may be that the 'startup'/'shutdown' times of the cluster to move it to maintenance mode are 'nontrivial' (like 10-20 minutes each). In either case, the right business unit call is 'heck with it, we'll make the OVERALL downtime (combined crash (whcih already happened) and the patch (which was scheduled)) lower by doing the 'staged' patch right now. It would mean a cut of whatever the startup time (recovering from the crash), shutdown time (to do the patch) and start up time (after the patch) into just startup time (after both patch and crash). The 'time' would be very similar so they removed 1 start and 1 stop time by doing it this way.
They ARE thinking of the users, what's the best way to minimize user impact given a unforseen crash?
I'm a mooch and proud of it....tho i'd never drop $279 for a lifetime membership. I'd more than likely spend it on making a portable dreamcast or gamecube than runs on camcorder batteries
At this very moment in the future (well, present now, to be precise) that sycamore tree will finally start to sprout, breaking a small connection on a Cryptic server.
I have had my revenge.
'
Actually, nerds, it's FRIDAY NIGHT. And the Cryptic guys WHO NOW HAVE ALL YOUR MONEY are at parties WITH GIRLS.
Then maybe people shouldn't have cried over when the maintenance is. It's not unprofessional - it's smart. Why waste time bring it back up only to take it down again. It happens, deal with it and get a life.
Thank you!!
I was in the United States Army once upon a time too. Your online demeanor is a discredit to the Army, the United States, and to yourself when you hurl insults anonymously.
You tossing around insults while dropping PhD and Army in a vein attempt for some soft of credibility is a sure sign of total lack of self respect.
Now being done with it, just cancel the subscription until like ... new/endgame content is put in, or STO has become a MMo(rp)g. I just did it and wanted to log in once more to check if I was able to make up some more scam in the auction house, but the server just went down. You can use the time to check if there is something to buy in the c-store ... or a type 8-shuttle from shattered-crystal.
Oh, and don't forget to buy new character slots before they are sold out - if you plan to play all base-professions you won't have space for a klingon toon! Maybe you get the idea now.
OR they just decided "Hey, the server is down unexpectedly and earlier than planned. Hell, why not take this time to fix the issue AND put out the patch.
I don't think it has to necessarily be a business plan, however in retrospect to whomever makes it the decision then *becomes* a "business decision."
At any rate hopefully this means the servers will be up earlier, although I'm a little ticked that the launcher wasn't updated and then the main post has a different time altogether than what is in the launcher.
haha... funny. Not sure how big the server side software is or how many servers they have powering the game. But you'd be surprised at how long it could take. I used to be a software engineer and watched guys take software that was ready for implementation and start updating over 100 blade servers that were linked together for powering there system. Took awhile for them to get it all going. Then something would happen where one of the blade servers didn't sync up with the others and they'd have to work on getting it synchronized. I'm sure though Cryptic will eventually cut down small patch times and maintenance into one hour. I've seen big server farms of 500 servers crash and be back up and running in 15 minutes when no new software is being installed and no issues are involved in the farm booting back up.
wot...i couldn't hear you
Thank you for giving us updates guys. While I know it is difficult to keep the masses advised during system mainenance from experience, I also know that the masses appreciate it.
Sidenote: We getting more Klingon content soon?