Why always unexpected complications?

#0 - Oct. 12, 2010, 6:38 p.m.

I understand stuff happens when you are undergoing massive changes to a game. My question is why are these complications not at least somewhat accounted for in foretold realm downtime?

After 6 years of watching patches go through, it seems that the law of probability would suggest occassionally we would get a patch completed before it's suggested time. As a favor to a long time devoted fan, could we not account for complications during patches when we estimate server downtimes?

I'm not angry in the slightest, just some musings from a bored person on his off day. It just seems that if you had assumed some delays to take place, occasionally you could finish patch/maintenance days sooner than expected. Instead we have people taking bets last night among my friends as to what time the servers would really come up, and nobody guessed it would be the time suggested by blizz. To be honest, nobody guessed it would be as soon as the 2pm PST that it is currently set for either.

Nethaera

#18 - Oct. 12, 2010, 6:47 p.m.

This is the largest patch we've ever released to date. There's a lot of new data being pushed and a lot of system changes as well. We do what we can to anticipate the time it takes, but sometimes additional work needs done to ensure that everything will be working as smoothly as possible once it's all brought live. We would much rather try to err on the side of caution when it comes to taking extra time to make it all work.