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Scheduled Network Maintenance (May 30, 2013) [Complete!]

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    sirricwinsirricwin Member Posts: 63 Arc User
    edited May 2013
    That would be one pretty amazing server...


    Quite true. That one server should be used for STO and nothing else.

    I suspect people think they are all running from one server because they look at the IP address of, for example, a universal login server :P

    Either way, it seems that the server side hardware is not capable of handling an MMO.
    [SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
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    hoovergkmmchoovergkmmc Member Posts: 161 Arc User
    edited May 2013
    meimeitoo wrote: »
    Or a single 'not-so-amazing' server, consistent with its degradation after the introduction of Neverwinter.

    No - to run that many different games with that many users, all on one server? Even if it ran crappy, it would be a pretty amazing server...
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    wolfpacknzwolfpacknz Member Posts: 783 Arc User
    edited May 2013
    meimeitoo wrote: »
    Or a single 'not-so-amazing' server, consistent with its degradation after the introduction of Neverwinter.

    Actually Dstahl already said in his recent interview with either Massively or MMORPG NW is not on the same system/server as STO... Please do some homework before posting...
    [SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
    ***Disenchanted***
    Real Join Date: Monday, 17 May 2010
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    stargazer2169stargazer2169 Member Posts: 1 Arc User
    edited May 2013
    Question - Does the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few?

    Question - If the maintenance is not performed, for whatever reason, will the end result cause hardship in you STO life?

    Question - If the Dev's , and PR spokesman, countless other in their ships crew, given time and the least amount of impediment, to address critical issues. Will they be fixed?

    It would seem that your wants/needs are being address in as timely a manor as they can produce them.

    Is it possibly a perception problem? An emotional response from not receiving said stimuli? Is that not indicative of what called an ?Addict??

    Question ? Do you require professional help? I can have a medical team beamed down immediately.
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    sirricwinsirricwin Member Posts: 63 Arc User
    edited May 2013
    wolfpacknz wrote: »
    Actually Dstahl already said in his recent interview with either Massively or MMORPG NW is not on the same server as STO... Please do some homework before posting...


    Neverwinter may be in a different box, but might still be in the same location sharing the same bandwidth and hampering performance for all of Cryptics titles.
    [SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
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    killjack0killjack0 Member Posts: 89 Arc User
    edited May 2013
    I dont know if Cryptic knows about this yet but another bug would be that Liberatred Borg Romulans cant use the tailor unless they want to loose their Infected ears. As a result I have not been able to use the tailor since I made my Romulan Republic Uniform. The Infected ears are missing from the drop down menu for the ears.
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    wolfpacknzwolfpacknz Member Posts: 783 Arc User
    edited May 2013
    Question - Does the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few?

    Question - If the maintenance is not performed, for whatever reason, will the end result cause hardship in you STO life?

    Question - If the Dev's , and PR spokesman, countless other in their ships crew, given time and the least amount of impediment, to address critical issues. Will they be fixed?

    It would seem that your wants/needs are being address in as timely a manor as they can produce them.

    Is it possibly a perception problem? An emotional response from not receiving said stimuli? Is that not indicative of what called an ?Addict??

    Question ? Do you require professional help? I can have a medical team beamed down immediately.

    You are more drunk then I am...
    [SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
    ***Disenchanted***
    Real Join Date: Monday, 17 May 2010
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    aelfwin1aelfwin1 Member Posts: 2,896 Arc User
    edited May 2013
    I believe I know why there have been no patch notes ... .
    "Someone" put this together and then silently swore Never Again (!!!) to work on patch notes . :)

    p.s, love the second post there btw .
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    thumpyechothumpyecho Member Posts: 298 Arc User
    edited May 2013
    ...."working as intended".....

    ...."nothing to see here".....

    ...."move along".....
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    raventomoeraventomoe Member Posts: 723 Arc User
    edited May 2013
    That would be one pretty amazing server...

    I think that would have to be a Cray Supercomputer.

    As for me? I back up some of what these guys are saying about the fact that the Server team is different from the team assigned to track down and fix the bugs.

    Both are doing their best to insure we get what we came for here. With the heaviest amount of traffic I've seen in this game since I started playing in December...I'm glad they first thing they did was fix the login queue.

    Finding out what in the programming causes other bugs takes time, effort, and a controlled environment and they've probably been working on it since the Closed Beta or before. It takes tim, effort, and experimentation to find the roots of a programming bug and maybe some of these bugs are the result of hardware issues? Issues that could be fixed with Server Stability patches. It's possibly the 100MB patches we are getting are just interface codes for the server after it is reset, debugged, and whatever else they do to enhance server stability.

    If the bug is a software issue...well that is a WHOLE other can of worms. Ever heard of GIGO? If not, it stands for 'Garbage In Garbage Out' and in software programming, if you enter some that is complete garbage into a program and computer...it will spit out garbage at you.

    Also, with Programming...the adage about the difference between on paper and in reality can never be more clear cut. They might be in their lab doing patch test after patch test as they seek out different ways to fix the problem and getting nowhere.

    Meanwhile, some of you come on to the forums and complain away about how you will go play those other space games and how your getting ripped off. I'd say to be able to do what Branflakes and the rest of this team does despite how many of you are thankless, ungrateful, and dishonorable <insert Klingon Insult here> takes a level of dedication and enjoyment of their job in the face of that.

    So far, I am enjoying LoR and my Rommie even with the limited hardware I play it on (Toshiba NN550) and am working hard for a better laptop to use. Thank you Cryptic for what you do and put up with from us.
    "The Multiverse, the ultimate frontier..."
    Thus begins...Lyrical Trek
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    meimeitoomeimeitoo Member Posts: 12,594 Arc User
    edited May 2013
    sirricwin wrote: »
    Neverwinter may be in a different box, but might still be in the same location sharing the same bandwidth and hampering performance for all of Cryptics titles.

    Zactly! LOL. I was just going to post the same thing! :)

    Also, a 'server' for an MMO is never truly a single box (like our home PC's) to begin with. It's more like at least tens of servers, strung together, in total called 'the server.' The fact alone that you have like 30+ instances or so proves it.
    3lsZz0w.jpg
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    leroykingtvleroykingtv Member Posts: 2 Arc User
    edited May 2013
    so much fixing......must be hard
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    lonestar1017lonestar1017 Member Posts: 53 Arc User
    edited May 2013
    At LOR launch, there was a patch of 6+ gigs, since then we have been down virtually daily for alleged, server maintenance, with no patch. Yet almost everytime I log in after a unscheduled, scheduled maintenance of the network servers, there is a patch of 135MB. That is a lot of data to be stored on my computer without explanation. Are they using my computer as a data hub. If something is going into my computer, what and why would seem to go without saying.

    I love STO and the friends I have made here. I hope they never cancel it.

    FYI, if anyone didn't notice you can send email from rom side and delete them. But only mail sent from rom alts.

    Hope to see you all inside soon.
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    hoovergkmmchoovergkmmc Member Posts: 161 Arc User
    edited May 2013
    rob2485 wrote: »

    That being said I hope they compensate us in some way for all the downtime.

    They probably won't. I'm pretty sure buried away in the TOS (as is the case with most online services) that there is no guarantee of availability. Granted, it would be good - give us all a costume item T-shirt that says "I survived the LOR Launch" or something lol
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    rylanadionysisrylanadionysis Member Posts: 3,359 Arc User
    edited May 2013
    The Inner Workings of an MMO Server Farm
    by Spartikus3


    This discussions here is not about me but suffice to say I have had plenty of experience with MMO server clusters, infrastructure design and loadtesting to be able to provide some experienced insight on the subject to folks debating the release of LoTR release setup. I will caveat my post here with the tidbit that each MMO engine is a little (if not a lot) different than others and so although this informations pertains to MMO engines I have worked with it is in no way specific or directly relational to LoTR. Take it for what it is or leave it. :)

    MMOs require many many PC boxes to operate a single "server". These clusters of boxes are often called a server farm. In your server farm you can have as few as 3-4 servers right up to 20-30 (or in the case of WoW, 80+) servers. Truely the number is unlimited but for network management purposes going beyond these numbers in a cluster makes for a logistics and backbone nightmare.

    Inside your server farm there are usually 3-4 distinct tasks that are divided up aming the servers. Patching, authentication, database and world/zone servers are a pretty standard jobset. The patching servers are usually nothing more than a customized FTP/HTTP server that allow connections from a game client which is then updated as required using checksums to validate the necessary client files on the patch server. The authentication server is pretty much just that. A server that takes the user name and password from game clients and authenticates the account against the entries in the database, verifies the account is active and flags the clients account for access to their player data. Database servers are... well.. database servers.. duh :) They are customized to optimize the datastream between the database and the auth/world servers for player data parsing. The world/zone servers are the boxes that handle the actual player data for specific areas of the game world, including load blancing, as needed, for multiple boxes to handle a single area.

    Where all this becomes important is when a company underestimates or overestimates their world's population numbers and is unprepared to deal with the fallout for that. As an example, in MMOs the authentication and patcher servers are generally the hardest hit. As MMOs have grown in size, it is not uncommon for a game client to see massive (even over 1 gig) patches at release to make adjustments (that probably should have been done in beta *sigh*) to the game. PErsonally I dont anticipate a "massive" patch for LoTR due to that fact that yes, eventhough they need some tweaks and adjustments, the game is in a very polished state and I don't forsee any sweeping changes. Even IF a game should reuire massive patches for hundreds of thousands of clients simultaneously though the great part is these patch servers dont have any effect on game server performance because they have zero interaction with the databases or the world servers. This means that players ingame arent having their datastream jammed up by 600k people trying to patch 500MB each into their game client.

    Authentication servers are the next lot of servers to get hammered. Every single player trying to connect to the game has to bounce through an Auth server in order for the game to verify their username and password and pass back the appropriate player selection info for their account. The great part about auth servers is they run a VERY simple process that is just a checksum of UID/PWD data against the account database and pass back a small stream to the client. Sure the auth servers can back up but when most database servers today can process thousands (if not tens of thousands) of reuests per second it's kind of hard to imagine a company having to deal with more than 50 thousand login attempts per second and causing authentication issues.

    World servers and Zone servers are the heart of every MMO. This is also the area that most people are very clueless about the workings of an MMO. World servers generally take up the lions share of the actual server farm. These are the boxes that share the duties of maintaining world object data for their specific area or landblock. The beauty of technology today is that load balancing server power with today's blade platforms means that as a servers load becomes unmanageable the MMO engine can "recruit" more servers dynamically, "on demand" so to speak, within seconds.

    Think of a cluster of world servers under "anticipated" traffic. Lets use an example of 10 servers slugging away happily with average load.. In the wings there are another 20 servers, configured and running just idling away with no traffic telling the master server they are there and waiting for instructions. Then it happens!!!! AMG a Gandalf sighting in section 13B!!!! All of the sudden hundreds of players swarm into section 13B to hail the mighty white wizard and the poor server(s) running that section begin to panic. They reach their predetermined "performance" threshhold and send a panic'd scream for help to the shard's master server. After some gentle reassurance to the beseiged world server the master server reaches into the overflow server pool and assigns backup servers A, B and C to alieviate some of the load from sector 13B. Thirty seconds into the great lagfest that was sector 13B the overflow servers step in and all of the sudden the lag becomes more bearable.. all of the sudden the 500 hobbits charging the brandywine bridge trying to head off Gandalf the Gray are actually able to move again and the world is a better place..

    Configuring servers the first time is tough. I've been there :) Optimizing the servers and software for maximum data throughput and performance levels takes time but once it is done, replication is accomplished in minutes / hours not in days or weeks. Having a server farm of TRIBBLE servers, a good network team can configure the appropriate database/world servers in hours. If release is a raging success and they STILL end up swamping their entire overflow pool of servers it's a matter of mere hours to load their software and configure NEW DB and world servers once they are made available from the service provider.

    Does all of this mean Turbine will have a flawless launch? Of course not :) Turbine isn't famous for making all the right decisions that I can certainly attest to. But is the fact they may have to deal with 500k to 1.5 million beta players any reason to scream Doom Doom! I highly doubt it. For me that fact that there is so much intrest in the game can only mean good things ahead for LoTR.

    If I had to call it I'd say that definitely open beta will be crowded. I am sure of that. I would rathe rit be crowded for the first 4 weeks and settle into medium player levels after that than have that fiasco of a launch that was DDO where after 4 weeks the servers are ghost towns and you cant find anyone to play with because they had too many servers at launch.

    Anyways this was just some insight on how MMO server farms are setup. Hope it was a fun read.

    Cheers
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    pel2pel2 Member Posts: 35 Arc User
    edited May 2013
    Hi Captains,

    We will be bringing down Star Trek Online tomorrow, Thursday, May 30th, for scheduled network maintenance. We are planning to conduct this maintenance at 6AM PDT (click here to view in your timezone) and expect it to last for 3.5 hours. The test server may also be unavailable during this time.

    As we're only conducting network maintenance, there are no patch notes.

    Thanks for your patience and understanding,

    - The Star Trek Online Team


    Can you manage to fix in game mail that has been broke for a week now!!!
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    eri42eri42 Member Posts: 9 Arc User
    edited May 2013
    Ok a few things People do not seem to realize:

    for the European players who are complaining this is running into their prime time: The STO game is being run out of California. They are starting Their maintenance at 6:00 AM. Putting this in perspective. most office businesses in the US normally have 9 AM to 5 PM working hours. So for me I have to wait til noonish -1 PM . Central Europe time if I recall is 6 hours ahead of me, that means you need to wait until 6-7 PM for them to get done. Unless you go to bed right after supper, you still have a few hours to play. In fact if Cryptic waited until 9 AM their time ie normal business hours then STO would have been down for you from 6 PM your time until about 9:30 PM that's just time zones and nothing you can do about it. The fact they are having them come in before 6 AM should say they are trying to give you some evening time to play in.

    As for the bugs. yes there are a lot of them, and yes they are annoying. And I do not know why they happen. they just do. Every MMO from WoW to Star Wars Old Republic, and in between are plagued with bugs particularly after a major expansion. These will eventually get fixed, and when Season 8 comes out, we will have new bugs and things that had been fixed may get broken again. That's a fact of life in playing MMOs. I want on to play as much as the rest of you. Besides, We're only inconvienenced a few hours. Quark's bar was down for days when O'Brien and Nog were trying to repair a power conduit that turned into needing a Plasma distribution Manifold replacement (DS9: Empok Nor)
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    yuki109yuki109 Member Posts: 92 Arc User
    edited May 2013
    so far the only problem i had was when i didn't get the romulan update and needed to re install the game after that i have not had anymore problems
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    antoniosalieriantoniosalieri Member Posts: 0 Arc User
    edited May 2013
    pel2 wrote: »
    Can you manage to fix in game mail that has been broke for a week now!!!

    I'm looking forward to the 3.5 hours of maintenance I will have to perform on my mail.

    10 Click Delete
    20 Click Ok
    30 goto 10
    [SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
    Dignity and an empty sack is worth the sack.
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    satanailofhwbgsatanailofhwbg Member Posts: 158 Arc User
    edited May 2013
    I'm looking forward to the 3.5 hours of maintenance I will have to perform on my mail.

    10 Click Delete
    20 Click Ok
    30 goto 10

    If there isn't a multiple selection, I won't even bother trying.
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    askrayaskray Member Posts: 3,329 Arc User
    edited May 2013
    eri42 wrote: »
    Ok a few things People do not seem to realize:

    for the European players who are complaining this is running into their prime time: The STO game is being run out of California. They are starting Their maintenance at 6:00 AM. Putting this in perspective. most office businesses in the US normally have 9 AM to 5 PM working hours. So for me I have to wait til noonish -1 PM . Central Europe time if I recall is 6 hours ahead of me, that means you need to wait until 6-7 PM for them to get done. Unless you go to bed right after supper, you still have a few hours to play. In fact if Cryptic waited until 9 AM their time ie normal business hours then STO would have been down for you from 6 PM your time until about 9:30 PM that's just time zones and nothing you can do about it. The fact they are having them come in before 6 AM should say they are trying to give you some evening time to play in.
    ...
    Not true. It has nothing to do when they're in the office. Hell, they used to do season and major patches at 2AM PDT! (Or was it 3am I can't remember). As a LOT of gold names have stated, and even I stated earlier in this thread, it has to do with the amount of people logged in. And this is the time when there is the least. As tacoboy said a few maintenance threads ago (hell could of been a month ago and it could of been Dan for all I remember at 8:30am lol), if the lowest amount of players was at 4am or 11:30pm they'd do it then. They want to effect the LEAST amount of people as possible. Not the most. Someone will always get the shaft with downtimes. That's the sad truth about mmo's. Plus the 6am time frame is just right when more dev's and so fourth are entering the office incase things go KABOOM. It saves having to call in people from their comfy beds hehe.
    Yes, I'm that Askray@Batbayer in game. Yes, I still play. No, I don't care.
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    Tiktok: @Askray Facebook: Askray113


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    vividhvividh Member Posts: 108 Arc User
    edited May 2013
    If there isn't a multiple selection, I won't even bother trying.

    Keep the enter key pressed and keep clicking at delete, its much faster
    In game: @vividh
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    sirricwinsirricwin Member Posts: 63 Arc User
    edited May 2013
    I'm well aware that a game server isnt a single box, but when using a forum with such a broad scale of users, I tend to 'dumb down' my language. Undoubtedly theres plenty of people on here who know the difference between static and dynamic addresses, how packets communicate and such like; but theres many more who dont :rolleyes:
    [SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
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    thumpyechothumpyecho Member Posts: 298 Arc User
    edited May 2013
    revlot wrote: »
    http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/perfect-world-announces-first-quarter-2013-unaudited-financial-results-209237311.html

    BEIJING, May 28, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Perfect World Co., Ltd. (NASDAQ: PWRD) ("Perfect World" or the "Company"), a leading online game developer and operator based in China, today announced its unaudited financial results for the first quarter ended March 31, 2013.
    (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20090416/CNTH023LOGO)
    First Quarter 2013 Highlights[1]
    Total revenues were RMB624.5 million (USD100.6 million), as compared to RMB679.9 million in 4Q12 and RMB718.5 million in 1Q12.
    Gross profit was RMB477.9 million (USD77.0 million), as compared to RMB522.6 million in 4Q12 and RMB591.4 million in 1Q12.
    Operating profit was RMB133.1 million (USD21.4 million), as compared to RMB12.4 million in 4Q12 and RMB234.8 million in 1Q12. Excluding the share-based compensation charge and the goodwill impairment, non-GAAP operating profit[2] was RMB149.8 million (USD24.1 million), as compared to RMB67.1 million in 4Q12 and RMB256.6 million in 1Q12. <snip>

    No offense meant with the snip, just didn't want a big wall 'o text.....

    ...soooo their revenue and gross profit came down a little, but their operating profit went up?......If I am reading this correctly that smells like they "trimmed fat"......unless someone cares to correct me....
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    baldemort41baldemort41 Member Posts: 21 Arc User
    edited May 2013
    The major issue, aside from the obvious lack of playability, is the increasing lack of transparency about the issues from the dev team. It's honestly becoming quite condescending, not to mention unacceptable, to hear, "No notes."

    The majority of posters on these threads are lifetime subscription holders, and honestly those that also frequent the Z Store; translation--we generate the real-world income. If I pay for something and it's not working correctly, I don't want to hear, "we're working on it" as a response; as a consumer I and all the other paying players have an inherent right to know more information.

    This is a game, designed for enjoyment and recreation; that purpose cannot be achieved when the game becomes unplayable. We didn't pay for a 20-hour per day game experience that works some of the time...we paid for an on-demand experience that's reliable. Routine maintenance of once, maybe twice a week is understandable, but to market a product that's so obviously not ready for use demonstrates disrespect to your paying consumers.

    CBS is the top US network, and they pride themselves on that fact. They deliver some the top programming in most everything but, arguably, news. I begin to wonder how aware they are at how their licensed product is being presented to paying customers, and what their direction/response to PWE would be after over a week of inconsistencies, errors, and problems.

    Brandon and dev team, please stop shutting your customers out of the loop on information; tell us what's really going on so that we at least have the satisfaction of being respected customers rather than the "because I said so" mentality that's becoming more and more prevalent. We've been loyal players/customers, and we deserve the same level of loyalty in return.
    Baldemort, K'Bald E Mort, D'Baldemort
    Twelve toons, one mission...enjoy STO
    House of DILLIGAF (KDF)
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    jehob1jehob1 Member Posts: 0 Arc User
    edited May 2013
    I'm here for the nerd bitchfest.

    Fix the mail or at least one of the many other bugs.
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    djezc#0623 djezc Member Posts: 81 Arc User
    edited May 2013
    they extended the down time didnt they? i swear it said 9:00 now it says 9:30
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    irwin109irwin109 Member Posts: 518 Arc User
    edited May 2013
    they extended the down time didnt they? i swear it said 9:00 now it says 9:30

    Nope, hasn't changed.
    IrwinSig-1.jpg

    "If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe." - Carl Sagan
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    daemonhelddaemonheld Member Posts: 286 Arc User
    edited May 2013
    they extended the down time didnt they? i swear it said 9:00 now it says 9:30

    Nope, was always 3.5 hours, starting at 6 Pacific.

    Jolan'tru
This discussion has been closed.