Shutdown on the weekend ?

While the adjustments being made may be considered minor, our Realm Technicians felt as if a brief maintenance was necessary to ensure the quality of gameplay on these battlegroups. I've been notified that the technicians are on the final leg of the maintenance process and that they hope to bring these realms back online in just a few more minutes. Should any further details become available, I'll be sure to let you know.

Thank you all for your patience.

I'm terribly sorry for the extended delay, folks, but I'm happy to say that these realms are back online. Please feel free to log in at your leisure!

Please remember that several players will be attempting to log into these realms at this time and that the login process may be slightly delayed as a result. Should you experience any issues along the way, please be sure to let us know.

I am currently speaking with our Technicians regarding this issue and will be providing you information as it becomes available.

Please keep all discussion of this issue isolated within this thread to ensure I am able to keep you all up-to-date with the latest information:

Thank you.

I've been informed that the affected realms will be restarted and brought back online as soon as possible. It has been intimated to me this process may take several minutes to complete, but I have not been notified of any specific time frames.

I must request that you be considerate of one another and refrain from making posts in violation of our Code of Conduct. Please do not force me to spend time moderating this thread rather than seeking the updates you all desire.

Despite my persistence, I have still not acquired a solid ETA or any additional updates at this time. I'll continue to keep an eye on this issue and let you all know as soon as I hear more.


On the subject of compensation: The decision on whether or not compensation is given for extended downtime is outside the Game Master staff's purview. While I can notify the appropriate parties that compensation has been requested, I'm afraid it is not nearly as powerful as your own voices on the Suggestions Forum. I realize it may sound as I am simply diverting you to another forum, but this is truthfully the best way to request compensation.

Q u o t e:


Thank you for updating on this. Maybe you could go kick a few techies for us?

I'm all for doing whatever I can to help get you all back in the game as soon as possible, but I do have my limits. Besides, I think that may only cause further delay! :)

Q u o t e:


Compensation? No. An explanation would be good. My guess is that a patch that was rolled out either didn't take or was muffed so bad the whole thing went south and techs are currently doing a rollback or programmers are rapidly writing code for a workaround.

I hate being treated as an idiot. I hate the bland, generic, faceless responses. Something like "Okay guys, we still have no ETA on the time the servers will come back up, but the techs are in the process of rolling back the patches" would be nice. I am assuming that a rollback/backout procedure is de rigor in instances like this, of course.

I stay in frequent contact with our technicians regarding any updates which will affect how long you all are kept out of the game. In other words, I'm after ETAs and information regarding what players may experience as a result of the changes being made. I do not pursue technical information as it can take time away from them performing the necessary functions to bring the realms back online.

Based on the information I do have, however, our technicians identified an issue which they felt would negatively impact the ongoing stability of these realms. Our Technicians made the appropriate changes to correct this issue, but needed to bring the realms back offline after identifying another issue. They are still working to correct this, and hope to see this resolved as soon as possible.

My apologies that I am unable to offer more specific information.

Q u o t e:


I can't speak for anyone besides myself, but I'd personally appreciate it if you'd be sure to pass up the line that at least *I* think three hours (or more, since there's no ETA) of unscheduled maintenance during a weekend is not an acceptable practice unless it is specifically to correct a service outage that would have rendered that time (or more) unplayable anyhow.

We have scheduled maintenance periods for a reason. For one thing, it allows your customers to plan around that down time. Given that you have intentionally designed your game to require coordination of the player base I would think that supporting that coordination by actually following your maintenance schedule would be the least you could do.

To be honest, we've already begun relaying your feedback to the appropriate parties. I can assure you that this is not something we want to repeat.

As a few of you have noted, realms are in the process of being brought back onlline. You may notice World Server Down messages immediately after the realms come back online, but this should only be temporary.

Again, thank you all for your patience.

It looks as if each affected realm is currently online, folks.

Let me know if you experience any further difficulties.

Q u o t e:
Did anyone else lose all their auctions when the server restarted? All my auctions are gone! That SUCKS.

Auction and Mail information is typically one of the last services to come back online after a realm is brought online, Fivel. Accordingly, I encourage you to check back later to see if your auctions are available. If not, please feel free to contact the Game Master staff by opening an in-game petition so that they can investigate this further.

Q u o t e:


Yeppers.. they are all back. :)

Awesome. Thanks for following-up. :)

Thanks, Ani!

This is maintenance notification actually intended for 10/06/2009. We'll make sure to update that as soon as possible. :)