Downtime Notice: Wednesday, April 27th 9:00 AM - 1:00 PM Eastern (-4 GMT)

[Cordovan]

UPDATE: The game worlds have reopened. We will have more information about tomorrow's planned game patch once we know more.

The DDO game worlds will be unavailable on Wednesday, April 27th from 9:00 AM - 1:00 PM Eastern (-4 GMT) to release Update 54. Find the release notes on DDO.com (https://www.ddo.com/update-notes/ddo-update-54-release-notes).

[mikarddo]

Not posting the details in advance is a bit annoying.

One might think you didnt want the negative debate about the parts included before the most impulsive buyers make the purchase. Can't say I blame you if so.
Hopefully we will be seeing alot more value than in the Saltmarsh pack - the first one ever I didnt purchase the top version of.

[GoldyGopher]

The formatting of the new website makes reading the release notes more difficult than previous. The text is TOO big and takes up too much space.

[Pandjed]

Yay, I made a difference! :P

[TheMaxpower]

Looking forward to the new content! Disappointed that the update does not include a fix to the know bug where players must un-equip and reequip their minor artifact and weapon EVERY time they log into the game in order to get the benefit of all filigree. :( Also disappointed that the cost of reaper crafting has not yet been reduced.

[Pandjed]

Disappointed that the update does not include a fix to the know bug where players must un-equip and reequip their minor artifact and weapon EVERY time they log into the game in order to get the benefit of all filigree.

You know, that the actual bug is, that the same kind of filli stacks as long as they're in different items? So getting rid of it would mean that there won't be any more doubles on raid fillis even after unequipping and re-equipping. ;)

[Lynnabel]

Looking forward to the new content! Disappointed that the update does not include a fix to the know bug where players must un-equip and reequip their minor artifact and weapon EVERY time they log into the game in order to get the benefit of all filigree. :( Also disappointed that the cost of reaper crafting has not yet been reduced.

Never fear, this bugfix is in the patch! I'll try to get it added to the release notes.

[TheMaxpower]

You know, that the actual bug is, that the same kind of filli stacks as long as they're in different items? So getting rid of it would mean that there won't be any more doubles on raid fillis even after unequipping and re-equipping. ;)

They fixed this bug once before, and the raid filigree still stacked. Working as intended, one must presume. If this is changed at this point, one could argue that players should be refunded the mats they used to craft the extra raid filigree.

[FixBows]

Will Tabaxi race be required for racial completionist starting tomorrow or when the rest of the content goes live?

[Nickodeamous]

Will Tabaxi race be required for racial completionist starting tomorrow or when the rest of the content goes live?

I would assume you will lose the feat tomorrow. We get the race before the expansion, which is actually a good move by the devs. Its allows us to go back and do the lives we need to get completionist back before Isle of Dread expansion, which I assume is a month or so out.

[Sirea]

Will a Wish for Tabaxi Memories be in the DDO Store tomorrow?

[fatherpirate]

ok the notes state the Tabaxi race is a base race.
some elaboration please?

(just Tabaxi not the iconic) Will this new race only be available with the purchase of the $80+
or so middle bundle?
or will it be available with the cheaper bundle ?
or will it be on sale as a stand alone upgrade ?
or is it free like the other base races? (doubt it but worth an ask anyways)

Just curious

[HedgeHogShadow]

Will a Wish for Tabaxi Memories be in the DDO Store tomorrow?

Who knows? There is so much we can't even plan for because no info has been given.

I didn't miss however that the Tabaxi racial speed has been nerfed by 20%. So, it feels like this is another Shifter in the making; 3 lives and out.

EDIT: I would even say that this is DDO's first cosmetic race, but Half-elf seems to have beat it.

[drathdragon]

The DDO game worlds will be unavailable on Wednesday, April 27th from 9:00 AM - 1:00 PM Eastern (-4 GMT) to release Update 54. Find the release notes on DDO.com (https://www.ddo.com/update-notes/ddo-update-54-release-notes).

i dont understand.

in the release notes page there is the image of 'isle of dread' expansion.
but this is not the expansion, right ?

[Pandjed]

i dont understand.

in the release notes page there is the image of 'isle of dread' expansion.
but this is not the expansion, right ?

Only the pre-purchase with the Tabaxi race and the raptor hirelings, possibly some other items. For the quests and such:

The Isle of Dread is currently scheduled to be released on June 8th, 2022.

[MJtheKing]

ok the notes state the Tabaxi race is a base race.
some elaboration please?

(just Tabaxi not the iconic) Will this new race only be available with the purchase of the $80+
or so middle bundle?
or will it be available with the cheaper bundle ?
or will it be on sale as a stand alone upgrade ?
or is it free like the other base races? (doubt it but worth an ask anyways)

Just curious


Base means not Iconic. Going by past expansions, Tabaxi will likely be in all 3 bundles and the Iconic will likely only be in the most expensive one. Feywild, Sharn, and Ravenloft were like this.

[ranthrock]

"There is a new Gameplay option: Force Heals to Self when Targeting Undead (default: false). While true, when you have an enemy Undead targeted, any positive healing actions will be cast on you instead of the undead."

Can we get the same for when a warforged casts repair spells and has a non-warforged targeted?

[Urklore]

Anyone see a pre-order link yet?

[Raiztlin75]

Question 1 is tabaxi available as of today ive seen spotty information on this
question 2 when will we see the pre order link
question 3 is lvl cap increasing today or with the drop of dread this wasnt mentioned and how will it affect the tr if this is effective today

[Volumptuous]

Anyone see a pre-order link yet?

The prepurchase notes state that the new expansion top tier will be $246, 2nd tier will be $179, and 3rd tier $99.

[Raiztlin75]

The prepurchase notes state that the new expansion top tier will be $246, 2nd tier will be $179, and 3rd tier $99.
is that in peso's the actual duck over

[Urklore]

The prepurchase notes state that the new expansion top tier will be $246, 2nd tier will be $179, and 3rd tier $99.

$246 for a race, pet, cosmetic, and like 5-10 dungeons! Are these people high! I hope this is not the case, for even $99 for the base expansion would be way off base.

[Loromir]

The prepurchase notes state that the new expansion top tier will be $246, 2nd tier will be $179, and 3rd tier $99.

I hope your kidding....I was prepared to spend money on the top tier....but not at that price.

[thwart]

The prepurchase notes state that the new expansion top tier will be $246, 2nd tier will be $179, and 3rd tier $99.

I haven't been able to find this link. That would certainly be a very silly price point but I haven't seen what the packages include. This is why they should release the information in advance to prevent this type of speculation. I certainly understand why they haven't released any information ... the forums would be replete with the complaints from the masses. I support this game and continue to do so ... no whackadoodle price points though!

[C-Dog]

is that in pesos
That is SO far from previous pricing that it has to be some sort of typo. (I'm hoping it has to be. :cool:)

Saltmarsh (https://ddowiki.com/page/Sinister_Secret_of_Saltmarsh#Price.2FBundle) was $100/60/20, and roughly comparable in content (enhancement tree + Frogo vs. race, etc etc).

[Raiztlin75]

That is SO far from previous pricing that it has to be some sort of typo. (I'm hoping it has to be. :cool:)

Saltmarsh (https://ddowiki.com/page/Sinister_Secret_of_Saltmarsh#Price.2FBundle) was $100/60/20, and roughly comparable in content (enhancement tree + Frogo vs. race, etc etc).

Actually its more comparable to feywild or sharn at that point

[J1NG]

If it really is at that price point, there better be lots of exclusive (over time worth it) stuff along with it.

+1 Destiny Tome all characters, Greater Legendary Tome 1x per server, Lesser Legendary Tome for all characters, Unlimted Spark of Consciousnes, Legendary Enhancements, Level 30+ access, etc.

Because that's around $100 more over the previous Ultimate Fan Bundles. Or effectively (nearly) purchasing 2x UFB expansions previously. So if there's not something worth that, that's going to be a hard sell at that price for the top tier package.

J1NG

[enkka1]

First lamannia preview will be even more intriguing because there are no clues what we are paying for quest etc wise and that is kinda the point. We don't care. We have spend hilarious amounts of money for this game so whatever.
I'll buy it and wait if the dare to have once more +15 and more items so will all gear we outdated already on June 8th (The Isle of Dread is currently scheduled to be released on June 8th, 2022.) or just later or will they think of
something else how the level cap raise to 40 works this time .... Well we will learn sooner or later :)

[C-Dog]

Actually its more comparable to feywild or sharn at that point
Feywild (https://ddowiki.com/page/Fables_of_the_Feywild#Available_bundles) is recent (ish - 1 year ago), and was $130/80/40 - less than half what the above suggests, and for a LOT more content than has been suggested at this point.

Or, maybe they're selling just fine, and only a strongly vocal minority finds this objectionable? <shrug> :p

[Sirea]

The prepurchase notes state that the new expansion top tier will be $246, 2nd tier will be $179, and 3rd tier $99.

I'm gonna call bull on that. That would make it by far the most expensive expansion to date, and nothing that I've seen so far justifies that price. Especially compared with the other expansions.

[Urklore]

Are we taking DDO point bets on if the pattern holds true and the servers will not be up at 1pm EST?

[Volumptuous]

I'm gonna call bull on that. That would make it by far the most expensive expansion to date, and nothing that I've seen so far justifies that price. Especially compared with the other expansions.

first I am vol and i love jokes, secondly i have a degree in quantitative analysis and this was great info to give to ddo as far as pricing is concerned, your welcome.

[cdbd3rd]

Curious - Dev Tracker both down "for maintenance" along with the game. Another side effect of the "new web site"?

...in fact, almost all of the forum page-top links are down. And the link to the release notes in this thread's OP. *chuckle*

[Volarr]

First lamannia preview will be even more intriguing because there are no clues what we are paying for quest etc wise and that is kinda the point. We don't care. We have spend hilarious amounts of money for this game so whatever.
I'll buy it and wait if the dare to have once more +15 and more items so will all gear we outdated already on June 8th (The Isle of Dread is currently scheduled to be released on June 8th, 2022.) or just later or will they think of
something else how the level cap raise to 40 works this time .... Well we will learn sooner or later :)

hey when they ruined all +14 +15 and +16 gear dropping it all to +13 i almost quit

[Garix]

Curious - Dev Tracker both down "for maintenance" along with the game. Another side effect of the "new web site"?

...in fact, almost all of the forum page-top links are down. And the link to the release notes in this thread's OP. *chuckle*

If you navigate to the front page of the forums (https://forums.ddo.com/forums/forum.php) and click on the Dev Tracker link above the "Announcements and Contests" subsection it's fine. The forums have been weird since they did the website "upgrade"

[J1NG]

£99.99 UFB, £59.99 CB, and £29.99 for basic according to theh expansion page. So roughly 130, 75 and 40 in US or there abouts, same as previous bigger expansions.

So the previously posted numbers posted were way off.

J1NG

[octoparrott]

every
single
time

1 - will be late
2 - launched with errors
3 - will be back down before the weekend
4-6 every, single, time

all my love

kind uncle wreck

[Cordovan]

The game worlds have reopened.

[fatherpirate]

$130 $80 $40 ok, can deal with that

[Mavnimo]

The game worlds have reopened.

Am i missing the NPC Zalnathe looked inside and outside of the Hut?

[CeltEireson]

If it really is at that price point, there better be lots of exclusive (over time worth it) stuff along with it.

+1 Destiny Tome all characters, Greater Legendary Tome 1x per server, Lesser Legendary Tome for all characters, Unlimted Spark of Consciousnes, Legendary Enhancements, Level 30+ access, etc.

Because that's around $100 more over the previous Ultimate Fan Bundles. Or effectively (nearly) purchasing 2x UFB expansions previously. So if there's not something worth that, that's going to be a hard sell at that price for the top tier package.

J1NG

Well you do get the +1 destiny tome, but instead of your legendary tomes your'e getting a heroic otto's and an improved epic ottos for the top tier bundle, one of each only alas, plus the usual cosmetic and hireling stuff.

[Lynnabel]

Am i missing the NPC Zalnathe looked inside and outside of the Hut?

From the release notes:


Once you have pre-purchased Isle of Dread you can speak to an NPC located past the Hut From Beyond in the Harbor docks named Zalnathe to pick up your available pre-purchase items!

Zalnathe is located past the Hut within the Harbor docks. There is a map note as well!

[Fauxknight]

1 heroic and 1 improved epic Ottos box with the $130 deal, that's what like $100 worth of extras that we don't usually get with a release. Everything else is pretty much identical to Feywild bonuses, race, iconic, 2 pets. 2 mounts, 2 hirelings, character slot, destiny tome, 2 cosmetic sets, and a teleporter...oh and the expansion itself of course.

[octoparrott]

stay LOUD in shiradi - the sonic one - says the word COLD at least 3 times in its tooltip

so well done for that

[Kelledren]

Thank god it is not $250- I was not ready for the rebellion that would have ensued. Also great job including Ottos boxes helping reduce newbie grind a tiny bit. Everything helps!

[Cordovan]

We have temporarily taken the worlds down while we investigate reports of game instability. We will keep you updated.

[octoparrott]

every
single
time

1 - will be late
2 - launched with errors
3 - will be back down before the weekend
4-6 every, single, time

all my love

kind uncle wreck

1 - yes you were late
2 - yes it was broken
3 - almost record time to pull the entire game worlds
4-6 - EVERY SINGLE TIME

all my love
kind uncle wreck

[irnimnode]

The game worlds have reopened.

So what went wrong I am still showing all worlds down

[DreamWebWeaver]

would have been nice to get more than 30 seconds notice that the worlds are shutting down

[octoparrott]

would have been nice to get more than 30 seconds notice that the worlds are shutting down

would be nicer to have prompt delivery, a functioning product, bugfixes, general competency.........

[WaxLyrical]

would be nicer to have prompt delivery, a functioning product, bugfixes, general competency.........

yes all those nice things are with QA, they'll let you know when that's ready... sometime in the future, perhaps, maybe.

[octoparrott]

yes all those nice things are with QA, they'll let you know when that's ready... sometime in the future, perhaps, maybe.

been 16years so far........should i set an alarm?

[Volarr]

So what went wrong I am still showing all worlds down

people were crashing in Cannith i got a 30 second notice before it shut back down

[ekaterina]

We have temporarily taken the worlds down while we investigate reports of game instability. We will keep you updated.<

Shouldn't information like this go in a service announcement not buried near the end of a long thread?

[octoparrott]

We have temporarily taken the worlds down while we investigate reports of game instability. We will keep you updated.<

Shouldn't information like this go in a service announcement not buried near the end of a long thread?

shouldnt you test and finish a product before you launch it, immediately pull it, but still sit with your hand out for money..........

[droid327]

is that in peso's the actual duck over

Wait wasnt their CC processor a Russian company?

Maybe they're forcing payments in rubles now :D

[droid327]

The formatting of the new website makes reading the release notes more difficult than previous. The text is TOO big and takes up too much space.

Oooooh yeah Cordo that is not a high-readability body font...they might be boring but the basic fonts are ubiquitous for a reason. And it looks like the whole thing is bolded, too. Function over form for patch notes.

[ArtinesTheBold]

Here goes my play for today. Another botched attempt at timely maintenance/patch.

Why are you not patching out of prime hours, as all other MMORPGs do?

I am so disappointed. I never wanted this dinosaur/furry bulldung in first place, now I can't play because of it.

Such a waste of my monthly subscription...

[ekaterina]

"shouldnt you test and finish a product before you launch it, immediately pull it, but still sit with your hand out for money.........."

This is a MMO - things tend to go wrong after patches. Not everything works the same on a test server or internal QA test as it does on live.
But more visible communications such as a separate announcement "We have brought the worlds down again" are well within the capacity of the Community Manager so I limited my suggestion to that.

[BrandonDeath]

"shouldnt you test and finish a product before you launch it, immediately pull it, but still sit with your hand out for money.........."

This is a MMO - things tend to go wrong after patches. Not everything works the same on a test server or internal QA test as it does on live.
But more visible communications such as a separate announcement "We have brought the worlds down again" are well within the capacity of the Community Manager so I limited my suggestion to that.



I completely disagree with you. If they had a proper test environment and a good QA process, they could avoid these types of outages.

[flotterjohnny]

would have been nice to get more than 30 seconds notice that the worlds are shutting down

This. Ty

[Volarr]

With so much to do here and so little time to do it in. After all the years of fighting with it I find it a Mighty Beast that will never truly be slain and laid to rest. One can only trudge through the muck and destruction of its passing. Knowing it comes at us when we least expect it, never ready when it shows it ugly face and ruins our day again and again. I will always hope it is not around the next corner or waiting down the hall sitting there waiting to pounce on me again.

[Vorachtin]

"shouldnt you test and finish a product before you launch it, immediately pull it, but still sit with your hand out for money.........."

This is a MMO - things tend to go wrong after patches. Not everything works the same on a test server or internal QA test as it does on live.
But more visible communications such as a separate announcement "We have brought the worlds down again" are well within the capacity of the Community Manager so I limited my suggestion to that.


This happens in every mmo. QA/Testing is like testing a fish in a fishbowl, code goes live to the servers is more like dumping that fish in a lake. There are going to be things that happen in the live environment outside of testing purview. This happens in EVERY SINGLE MMO, the differences being staff size, resources etc to quickly identify live bugs fix, test and re-release.

For example a world impacting bug in WoW might be discovered on patch day and fixed within 24 hours, in DDO it could be a week. But the staff and resources of Blizzard versus SSG are immense so you cannot hold them to the same standard.

It is annoying either way but we play a smaller game so have to deal with that aspect of it.

[Kylstrem]

Such a waste of my monthly subscription...

Hyperbole much?
even at $15/month rate (which most people aren't paying because of the great annual deals) that's 50 cents a day for the month.

[beholdapalehorse]

UPDATE: The game worlds have reopened.

The DDO game worlds will be unavailable on Wednesday, April 27th from 9:00 AM - 1:00 PM Eastern (-4 GMT) to release Update 54. Find the release notes on DDO.com (https://www.ddo.com/update-notes/ddo-update-54-release-notes).

UPDATE: the game is not currently up and the game worlds are not open.
Just a small window that pops up saying the game is down while the splash menu pip up windows says it's installing prereqs with no progress bar indicating somethings actually being installed.

[Kylstrem]

I completely disagree with you. If they had a proper test environment and a good QA process, they could avoid these types of outages.

Been in QA for 25 years.

You are not correct.

You can have a great test environment and a great QA process, but with a server/client cloud-based game with thousands of users (and especially an ancient code base that DDO has), there is no way to avoid these types of outages 100% of the time.

They'd have to spend a ****-ton on QA resources to AVOID all outages, and that cost is not worth the benefit for a game like DDO. Maybe WoW and other larger player-base games that have huge dev staff... but not a game this old running with a skeleton dev crew.

[droid327]

Ooh Cat Scratch is a Cleave now, and deals decent Bane damage with the T4

That's a huge improvement over the Lammania version for SWF builds :)

[beholdapalehorse]

Hyperbole much?
even at $15/month rate (which most people aren't paying because of the great annual deals) that's 50 cents a day for the month.

What annual deals? I saw no deals please explain where one gets these deals

[jskinner937]

Hyperbole much?
even at $15/month rate (which most people aren't paying because of the great annual deals) that's 50 cents a day for the month.

Just something to think about when it comes to economics, or perceived value:

What if someone only has time to play once every 5 days for 4 hours a session (that is very realistic for a casual player)....
That $15/mo subscription now becomes .63/hr or $2.50/day.

Open your eyes to more possibility than min/max or your own perception and I promise you may understand human nature much better.

[Ahtan]

What annual deals? I saw no deals please explain where one gets these deals

$100 for 12-months available in DDO store, also
$30 for 3-months available in DDO store

[Volarr]

This happens in every mmo. QA/Testing is like testing a fish in a fishbowl, code goes live to the servers is more like dumping that fish in a lake. There are going to be things that happen in the live environment outside of testing purview. This happens in EVERY SINGLE MMO, the differences being staff size, resources etc to quickly identify live bugs fix, test and re-release.

For example a world impacting bug in WoW might be discovered on patch day and fixed within 24 hours, in DDO it could be a week. But the staff and resources of Blizzard versus SSG are immense so you cannot hold them to the same standard.

It is annoying either way but we play a smaller game so have to deal with that aspect of it.

Sounds to me like your saying that they should work on what they have and not add new content until it is stable. that will never happen

[Caarb]

Been in QA for 25 years.

You are not correct.

You can have a great test environment and a great QA process, but with a server/client cloud-based game with thousands of users (and especially an ancient code base that DDO has), there is no way to avoid these types of outages 100% of the time.

They'd have to spend a ****-ton on QA resources to AVOID all outages, and that cost is not worth the benefit for a game like DDO. Maybe WoW and other larger player-base games that have huge dev staff... but not a game this old running with a skeleton dev crew.

Nobodies asking for perfect but game breaking problems nearly every major patch is a problem

[fatherpirate]

"All MMORPG experience this kinda thing all the time."

no they don't.

In particular, they experience this kinda thing once in a while or infrequently.
DDO experiences this EVERY SINGLE TIME.

The ONLY way an mmo experiences these issues every single time is
if they have a testing and QA department that is broken.

You can only spin this stuff so much.

[Fauxknight]

Ooh Cat Scratch is a Cleave now, and deals decent Bane damage with the T4

That's a huge improvement over the Lammania version for SWF builds :)

It was labeled single target, but was a cleave on Lam. The bane damage is a huge upgrade from Lam though.

[BrandonDeath]

Been in QA for 25 years.

You are not correct.

You can have a great test environment and a great QA process, but with a server/client cloud-based game with thousands of users (and especially an ancient code base that DDO has), there is no way to avoid these types of outages 100% of the time.

They'd have to spend a ****-ton on QA resources to AVOID all outages, and that cost is not worth the benefit for a game like DDO. Maybe WoW and other larger player-base games that have huge dev staff... but not a game this old running with a skeleton dev crew.



I did a bunch of reading an concur with you. My statement had assumptions that they had the staffing.

[madasa]

UPDATE: The game worlds have reopened.

The DDO game worlds will be unavailable on Wednesday, April 27th from 9:00 AM - 1:00 PM Eastern (-4 GMT) to release Update 54. Find the release notes on DDO.com (https://www.ddo.com/update-notes/ddo-update-54-release-notes).

The game is still down? What's going on?

[Khalesh]

Any ETA on when servers will be back up?

Its almost 21:30 .... should i just go to bed? ....

[Loromir]

We have temporarily taken the worlds down while we investigate reports of game instability. We will keep you updated.

Any chance to get a status update?

[Chaimberland]

We have temporarily taken the worlds down while we investigate reports of game instability. We will keep you updated.

Is there any sort of time frame when the worlds may be back up? Or was this such a blindside that there is no idea how much time it will take to fix?

[Cordovan]

We are continuing to investigate the cause and solution to game instability reports and do not currently have an ETA to announce. We will keep you updated.

[WaxLyrical]

Been in QA for 25 years.

You are not correct.

You can have a great test environment and a great QA process, but with a server/client cloud-based game with thousands of users (and especially an ancient code base that DDO has), there is no way to avoid these types of outages 100% of the time.

They'd have to spend a ****-ton on QA resources to AVOID all outages, and that cost is not worth the benefit for a game like DDO. Maybe WoW and other larger player-base games that have huge dev staff... but not a game this old running with a skeleton dev crew.

Despite your 25 years in QA you would have to admit that it's all about how much invest in testing and QA. You don't often see planes dropping out of the air 30 seconds after take off... because the testing is very structured and thorough. The business can't afford catastrophic errors, ask Boeing. SSG has shown consistently over the past several releases that it's QA and testing processes are flawed because of these repeated outages.

[Handsome_Potato_86]

Yes, please! Like, ANY statement would be nice... :(
Not even asking for "Oh well, about one and a half hours!" or so.
But maybe just a VERY rough idea? Like, tonight still, or not before
tomorrow?

I'm in GMT+2 here, so it's already not much of a game day left...

[octoparrott]

"All MMORPG experience this kinda thing all the time."

no they don't.

In particular, they experience this kinda thing once in a while or infrequently.
DDO experiences this EVERY SINGLE TIME.

The ONLY way an mmo experiences these issues every single time is
if they have a testing and QA department that is broken.

You can only spin this stuff so much.

precisely

this is entirely my point every single time
because it happens
every
single
time

kind uncle wreck

[Mornu]

Just something to think about when it comes to economics, or perceived value:

What if someone only has time to play once every 5 days for 4 hours a session (that is very realistic for a casual player)....
That $15/mo subscription now becomes .63/hr or $2.50/day.

Open your eyes to more possibility than min/max or your own perception and I promise you may understand human nature much better.

Which is still a LOT less than you'd pay for going to a movie or similar types of entertainment. Netflix costs more per month than DDO, and similar or more for most streaming services. And theatre prices are something you darn near have to roll into your mortgage these days.

Pick something with comparable entertainment/hour, and then compare costs on that. Don't just look purely at cost/hour.

[Chaimberland]

We are continuing to investigate the cause and solution to game instability reports and do not currently have an ETA to announce. We will keep you updated.

Thank you for your work. Hope it gets sorted out.

[Handsome_Potato_86]

We are continuing to investigate the cause and solution to game instability reports and do not currently have an ETA to announce. We will keep you updated.

Welp, ima use this to have a healthy dose of sleep, for once.
Good night, Argonessen...! :(

[SpritesDaddyo]

would have been nice to get more than 30 seconds notice that the worlds are shutting down

30 seconds! I would have appreciated *any* notice... :) I'm in my bank with a newly purchased Collosal Augment bag (which I *hope* is still there!:)), and next thing the UI crashes with a tiny dialog stating 'You have been booted'.

!!Happy Thoughts to the Devs!!

[Wheatus]

We are continuing to investigate the cause and solution to game instability reports and do not currently have an ETA to announce. We will keep you updated.

You know one thing this company has never been good at is recompense for downtime. Almost any other game I have played will give something to players as a means of saying sorry for the extra downtime. I do not recall that ever happening with DDO in any way. This is a big deal today. You announced early access to the new race, and preorders. Several people I know have taken off of work to play the new race and get their racial past lives again. Well now they can't do that, and honestly you should give something out to the people to show that you care about your base as you are literally costing people money. This is basic customer service, and extended downtime should be compensated properly.

[QuantumFX]

We are continuing to investigate the cause and solution to game instability reports and do not currently have an ETA to announce. We will keep you updated.

Hmmm... Looks like you guys should have gone with the third Lammaland preview you were talking about on DDOCast.

[JoyfulEagle]

Let's face it - Lamania is an "alpha" test. Lots of bugs are known to exist and there is no expectation otherwise.

SSG doesn't have a true beta environment. That is, most of the bugs have been worked out, but it needs a more thorough test before it goes live. So, it has become the initial release, and all of us are the beta testers.

People will be much happier if they can accept that any new expansion or major update is effectively a "beta" release.

I am not saying it should be that way. Just saying that acceptance leads to happiness. It's a game; try not to take it too seriously.

[Luthor_Darkhammer]

We have temporarily taken the worlds down while we investigate reports of game instability. We will keep you updated.

Did the new Dinos jump in the hamster wheels and not fit?

[ArtinesTheBold]

Hyperbole much?
even at $15/month rate (which most people aren't paying because of the great annual deals) that's 50 cents a day for the month.

What I meant, is that my monthly subscription is wasted on this game, which I could play for free anyway.

[longsdale]

Remind me please. I should pay vip or pre-purchase the new expansion with all those lost items, over 2 days of downtime last month, a forum which works or not and new bugs, why?
Did i miss anything? Reminds me on all those Teslas burning in flames.

[Luthor_Darkhammer]

30 seconds! I would have appreciated *any* notice... :) I'm in my bank with a newly purchased Collosal Augment bag (which I *hope* is still there!:)), and next thing the UI crashes with a tiny dialog stating 'You have been booted'.

!!Happy Thoughts to the Devs!!

There was notice in the chats

[Alisonique]

Did the new Dinos jump in the hamster wheels and not fit?

No, they ate the hamsters! Who could have foreseen that?

9.00pm gmt here and no sign of life :(

[NemesisAlien]

Yes, please! Like, ANY statement would be nice... :(
Not even asking for "Oh well, about one and a half hours!" or so.
But maybe just a VERY rough idea? Like, tonight still, or not before
tomorrow?

I'm in GMT+2 here, so it's already not much of a game day left...

Its coming to 4am for me, should I wait until daybreak?

[Umbra_Carmen]

Thank you for your work. Hope it gets sorted out.

+1

[jskinner937]

Which is still a LOT less than you'd pay for going to a movie or similar types of entertainment. Netflix costs more per month than DDO, and similar or more for most streaming services. And theatre prices are something you darn near have to roll into your mortgage these days.

Pick something with comparable entertainment/hour, and then compare costs on that. Don't just look purely at cost/hour.

Again, you miss the point. You want to belittle someone’s feelings because you do not perceive the same value as them.

It’s perceived value. In the eyes of the beholder.

Today people have zero empathy…I am merely stating that because it’s not important to you, doesn’t mean it’s not to someone else. But instead you argue to compare to something else?

Honestly, for most it’s probably more about the loss of playing time rather than money. But do not defend SSG for a poor policy of compensation to players. Almost every single MMO provides this, with far fewer outages when updates hit. As a matter of fact many will provide compensation to subscribing members for scheduled maintenance that goes as planned even. And if unplanned outages occur, they provide more.

[ArtinesTheBold]

23.00
Off to bed. Frustrated. Annoyed. I am so disappointed right now.
(For all this suffering we have to deal with each week, you should at least give us free kobold race and no lag environment. I know, lag is there to stay....)

[Prof-Moriarty]

I completely disagree with you. If they had a proper test environment and a good QA process, they could avoid these types of outages.

I am a computer engineer and we had an intervention today on 21 servers - all with exactly the same level of system and patches.

We had 4 of the 21 machines with a problem afterwards.

It doesn't matter how big or how many test environments you have there will always be the unexpected problems after a big update.

Do you imagine just how immense the code and software is for a game like DDO?

You will NEVER have 100% reassurance of zero problems - even a monster company like Microsoft and it's resources do not have a 100% perfect update record.

[Zeevie]

how much longer is game down for

[Maelphistez]

how much longer is game down for

Only the SHADOW knows!

[thwart]

We are continuing to investigate the cause and solution to game instability reports and do not currently have an ETA to announce. We will keep you updated.

I was using my shared hireling folder when everything crashed ... nervous it's not going to be there when I log on again!

[Avieendha]

UPDATE: The game worlds have reopened.

The DDO game worlds will be unavailable on Wednesday, April 27th from 9:00 AM - 1:00 PM Eastern (-4 GMT) to release Update 54. Find the release notes on DDO.com (https://www.ddo.com/update-notes/ddo-update-54-release-notes).


longest down time ever and no notices as to why it's still down

[jskinner937]

Which is still a LOT less than you'd pay for going to a movie or similar types of entertainment. Netflix costs more per month than DDO, and similar or more for most streaming services. And theatre prices are something you darn near have to roll into your mortgage these days.

Pick something with comparable entertainment/hour, and then compare costs on that. Don't just look purely at cost/hour.

Again, you miss the point. You want to belittle someone’s feelings because you do not perceive the same value as them.

It’s perceived value. In the eyes of the beholder.

Today people have zero empathy…I am merely stating that because it’s not important to you, doesn’t mean it’s not to someone else. But instead you argue to compare to something else?

[Cordovan]

We are continuing to investigate, and do not currently have an ETA to announce.

[Kelledren]

longest down time ever and no notices as to why it's still down

Eh… wrong both counts. Game instability and ETA not yet known per Cordo’s last post.

[fatherpirate]

I will only say this once.
SSG will ignore it, no doubt but will give them this advice once.

The most COST EFFECTIVE (that is business talk for 'cheap') way
to improve the FUNCTIONALITY ( tech term for 'does it work?' ) of your
DLC is to do THIS.

Keep Lam open 24/7
Stop using it for 'previews' you don't need previews,
you need Quality Control.
Post whatever current build your working on there and
use the LAM thread for bug reports and to tell testers what
to focus on.
Player Testers work for free.
When a new build is ready, wipe and reload.
Have a little flag on the airship your new character
starts at that says either Alpha, Beta, or pre-release
so the volunteer testers know what they are working with.

But what about SPOILERS?
GOOD ... DDO could use some free social media advertisement.

DO THIS and you will have a LOT less wasted man/woman power
fixing bugs under the gun when they could have been fixed already.

Keep LAM up
Use it for it's ORIGINAL purpose.
accept help from your customer base.

Stop pretending everything is fine, it is not.
We all love D&D
you want to stay profitable.

Meet us half way.

[Urklore]

I was using my shared hireling folder when everything crashed ... nervous it's not going to be there when I log on again!

Shared hireling folder? Is this something new??

[Aelonwy]

Shared hireling folder? Is this something new??

BTA 50 slot hireling folder that came with the Ultimate Bundle of Saltmarsh.

[SoulDustar]

Shared hireling folder? Is this something new??

https://ddowiki.com/page/Sinister_Secret_of_Saltmarsh

Dimensional Hireling Folder

[Kylstrem]

Shared hireling folder? Is this something new??
no, someone using wrong term to describe their BTA hireling folder

[NemesisAlien]

longest down time ever and no notices as to why it's still down

Longest I recall was 3 days, friday, saturday and sunday. Forgot what exactly happened but this forum was down also so we couldnt find out whats going on, if i recall only twitter was updated, sort of.

[Dhurrin]

Eh… wrong both counts. Game instability and ETA not yet known per Cordo’s last post.

As found on the forum. I am only rarely on the forum though, and I'm not the only one. Logged in this morning (Eastern-time here) and had a message pop up the world would be closing in 15 minutes.
Ok, no problem, another update. So I wait. And have been ever since, tried to log on at 1:15 PM...2PM...3PM...4PM...still nothing.
Wasted day. A shame, since I was off from work today. I'll be looking in again in 4 days, on my next day off

[NemesisAlien]

As found on the forum. I am only rarely on the forum though, and I'm not the only one. Logged in this morning (Eastern-time here) and had a message pop up the world would be closing in 15 minutes.
Ok, no problem, another update. So I wait. And have been ever since, tried to log on at 1:15 PM...2PM...3PM...4PM...still nothing.
Wasted day. A shame, since I was off from work today. I'll be looking in again in 4 days, on my next day off

https://64.media.tumblr.com/82980e0f5c17803f5ed8776809ec4d58/64771b5d289e27f9-d4/s540x810/d986809804f81edaecdc807d5261b23f94507688.gifv

[drex81]

Over/under we end up exceeding last week's LOTRO downtime?

[Kylstrem]

What I meant, is that my monthly subscription is wasted on this game, which I could play for free anyway.

Well that's up to you to decide. The game has been around since 2006.
Reading the forums, you get a daily dose of players who complain about how bad the game is, how many bugs it has, how badly it is run, how they have issues with almost every update.

It's up to each person to weigh how much enjoyment they get out of it vs how much they pay.

It is definitely frustrating when a new expansion comes out and people pay for it and then there is usually some downtime that first day or later that week. When it happens soon after release, yeah, everyone wants to yell and scream.
But then in a few days, the game is pretty much stable and everyone is back to playing and most having fun, and some having fun complaining about how the game is not what they want, but still playing and complaining year after year. :)

At this point, we all know what this game is.

It's got some great stuff in... the character/classes/abilities permutations can't be equalled in any other game.
But it's an ancient game with a spaghetti code base with a small dev staff and small QA resources that continues to improve.

I would prefer them to always release a perfect expansion with no hiccups, but my expectations based on what I think I know about their dev resources, are "This is good enough for me". They'll fix the release issues and in a week or so, we'll all be playing again with little detriment.

not kissing the dev's asses here. I'm just being realistic. It's okay to be frustrated.
If you feel your monthly fee is wasted because you lose 1 or 2 days of play, then that's a decision you need to make.

I'm just saying that it doesn't realistic. Someone this upset about downtime is likely not playing 1 time a month but for many hours. I find the $100/year I pay per year to more than pay for the entertainment value I get from it, even with occasional downtime.

I just feel people using the "I pay a monthly fee and expect it to be up 100% of the time or else I'm being cheated" don't have realistic expectations of that $100/year gets you.

[Mornu]

Again, you miss the point. You want to belittle someone’s feelings because you do not perceive the same value as them.

It’s perceived value. In the eyes of the beholder.

Today people have zero empathy…I am merely stating that because it’s not important to you, doesn’t mean it’s not to someone else. But instead you argue to compare to something else?

Honestly, for most it’s probably more about the loss of playing time rather than money. But do not defend SSG for a poor policy of compensation to players. Almost every single MMO provides this, with far fewer outages when updates hit. As a matter of fact many will provide compensation to subscribing members for scheduled maintenance that goes as planned even. And if unplanned outages occur, they provide more.

I think you may be mixing me up with someone else. Nothing I wrote belittles anyone.

[Mand_OLin]

I will only say this once.
SSG will ignore it, no doubt but will give them this advice once.

The most COST EFFECTIVE (that is business talk for 'cheap') way
to improve the FUNCTIONALITY ( tech term for 'does it work?' ) of your
DLC is to do THIS.

Keep Lam open 24/7
Stop using it for 'previews' you don't need previews,
you need Quality Control.
Post whatever current build your working on there and
use the LAM thread for bug reports and to tell testers what
to focus on.
Player Testers work for free.
When a new build is ready, wipe and reload.
Have a little flag on the airship your new character
starts at that says either Alpha, Beta, or pre-release
so the volunteer testers know what they are working with.

But what about SPOILERS?
GOOD ... DDO could use some free social media advertisement.

DO THIS and you will have a LOT less wasted man/woman power
fixing bugs under the gun when they could have been fixed already.

Keep LAM up
Use it for it's ORIGINAL purpose.
accept help from your customer base.

Stop pretending everything is fine, it is not.
We all love D&D
you want to stay profitable.

Meet us half way.

The only way I see this working is with a separate client. With most server updates there is a corresponding client update... the two likely need to be in sync with each other. That said, I am absolutely fine with a separate client for bug testing purposes. One problem with allowing the community as a whole help with testing is dealing with the influx of bugs/comments/concerns. Another problem is that testing software for bugs is a fine art. Stating "it crashed" is not helpful... nor is "it's broken", "I cannot ________" (fill in the blank), or any such thing. To be productive a big tester needs to provide specific details on what "action(s)" cause the issue to manifest. Most people are simply not cut out to be very helpful with (the detailed repetitive nature of) bug testing and any beneficial input could easily get lost in the excessive chatter. If you narrow down the testers to a limited few, you run into the problem of (potentially) not having enough variety of activities to find the bugs.

However, I am with you! Let's try something to get the software and updates in better shape!

[Arkat]

We are continuing to investigate, and do not currently have an ETA to announce.

https://i.imgur.com/tzd7Gkc.gif

[nakedglory]

https://i.imgur.com/tzd7Gkc.gif

Would it not be possible to update half the servers one day, and the other half the next ? That way we would always have a game up and the bugs could be addressed without a complete game crash.
Just an idea...Personally I would prefer the time to be spent fixing the game mechanics instead of developing new content that does not work.

[JoyfulEagle]

It doesn't matter how big or how many test environments you have there will always be the unexpected problems after a big update.

Do you imagine just how immense the code and software is for a game like DDO?

You will NEVER have 100% reassurance of zero problems - even a monster company like Microsoft and it's resources do not have a 100% perfect update record.

Yes, said more effectively than my previous post.

And, while SSG could do more to test before releasing updates, there is a cost. If they had a larger dedicated testing staff and/or spent more time, they could definitely improve the reliability. However, more time spent testing has diminishing returns and exponentially increasing cost. (80% of the work takes 20% of the time. It's those last details that cost the most).

If you want a consistently higher degree of reliability, how much more are you willing to pay to get it - 50% more, 200% more? This is not a rhetorical question. If everyone is willing to pay more for more testing, SSG will likely accommodate us. But as Moriarty said "You will NEVER have 100% reassurance of zero problems"

[metalclanger]

Would it not be possible to update half the servers one day, and the other half the next ? That way we would always have a game up and the bugs could be addressed without a complete game crash.
Just an idea...Personally I would prefer the time to be spent fixing the game mechanics instead of developing new content that does not work.

like the chat & voip!

[Kizzik_the_Krafty]

[QUOTE=Raiztlin75;6512739]is that in peso's the actual duck over[/QUOTE

Its the new Inflation/Socialism prices.
DDO is building back better.

[metalclanger]

Yes, said more effectively than my previous post.

And, while SSG could do more to test before releasing updates, there is a cost. If they had a larger dedicated testing staff and/or spent more time, they could definitely improve the reliability. However, more time spent testing has diminishing returns and exponentially increasing cost. (80% of the work takes 20% of the time. It's those last details that cost the most).

If you want a consistently higher degree of reliability, how much more are you willing to pay to get it - 50% more, 200% more? This is not a rhetorical question. If everyone is willing to pay more for more testing, SSG will likely accommodate us. But as Moriarty said "You will NEVER have 100% reassurance of zero problems"

Fair points, however there is no perceivable implementations of lessons learned from previous release issues. If we could at least see things have changed then people might have more patience and good will.

[J1NG]

Would it not be possible to update half the servers one day, and the other half the next ? That way we would always have a game up and the bugs could be addressed without a complete game crash.
Just an idea...Personally I would prefer the time to be spent fixing the game mechanics instead of developing new content that does not work.

This wouldn't work, because we all use the same client on the player side and there's only one version on our end. So the ones who got the updated client side stuff, wouldn't be able to play on the non-updated servers, because the data won't match. This would only prevent those other non-updated server players from being able to play at all, vs possibly needing a quick intervention like we have now.

J1NG

[JoyfulEagle]

Would it not be possible to update half the servers one day, and the other half the next ? That way we would always have a game up and the bugs could be addressed without a complete game crash.

No, it is not possible. You download the update to your machine and then can go to any server. The server software needs to match.

[Katanauser]

Another PPPPPPP thread... (Proper Prior Planning Prevents PZZZ Poor Performance) Who knew...:rolleyes:

best game ever is evidently in the hands of the challenged...

still it's common when working code you didn't originate to have f ups..

michael

[Ahngus]

And back down again? :D


UPDATE: The game worlds have reopened.

The DDO game worlds will be unavailable on Wednesday, April 27th from 9:00 AM - 1:00 PM Eastern (-4 GMT) to release Update 54. Find the release notes on DDO.com (https://www.ddo.com/update-notes/ddo-update-54-release-notes).

[CursedBlessedOne]

https://i.imgur.com/tzd7Gkc.gif

anyone? LOL

[pondcruzer]

UPDATE: The game worlds have reopened.

The DDO game worlds will be unavailable on Wednesday, April 27th from 9:00 AM - 1:00 PM Eastern (-4 GMT) to release Update 54. Find the release notes on DDO.com (https://www.ddo.com/update-notes/ddo-update-54-release-notes).

Not from my client. Game worlds still down message from launcher.

[philoe]

Just flat out terrible .. happens every time ..how do you get paid with
this quality of work?

[fatherpirate]

Yes, said more effectively than my previous post.

And, while SSG could do more to test before releasing updates, there is a cost. If they had a larger dedicated testing staff and/or spent more time, they could definitely improve the reliability. However, more time spent testing has diminishing returns and exponentially increasing cost. (80% of the work takes 20% of the time. It's those last details that cost the most).

If you want a consistently higher degree of reliability, how much more are you willing to pay to get it - 50% more, 200% more? This is not a rhetorical question. If everyone is willing to pay more for more testing, SSG will likely accommodate us. But as Moriarty said "You will NEVER have 100% reassurance of zero problems"

Catch 22

I am an ...older person so I like old sayings.
"I you can't find the time and manpower to do it right the first time,
how do you ever find time to fix it later?"

Either you fix the bugs first or you fix them later ... if you keep fixing them 'later' your reputation goes in the toilet.
Same work, 2 different results.

[Mand_OLin]

Longest I recall was 3 days, friday, saturday and sunday. Forgot what exactly happened but this forum was down also so we couldnt find out whats going on, if i recall only twitter was updated, sort of.

Was that when "they" forgot to pay for the domain name?

[ahpook]

This wouldn't work, because we all use the same client on the player side and there's only one version on our end. So the ones who got the updated client side stuff, wouldn't be able to play on the non-updated servers, because the data won't match. This would only prevent those other non-updated server players from being able to play at all, vs possibly needing a quick intervention like we have now.

J1NG
Yeah with a fat client there are limits to what can be done. But it seems they could use VM's to stage and prep releases and then patch day could be swapping servers in a minimal outage window. It would allow them to test deployments ahead of releasing them. The Database can pose challenges if it needs updates in the release but cloning for testing should provide options. The point is that they should be able to verify their releases better and release them much quicker. But that takes $ they may not want to spend.

[ruktis]

Eh… wrong on both counts. Game instability and ETA are not yet known per Cordo’s last post.

Too true. I clearly recall the server migrations...

I'd love to get in-game and play with the new toys, but, I'd also really like my inventory to not get borked, so... I can play next time if it isn't ready by the time I need to sleep.

[Cordovan]

The game worlds remain unavailable. We are currently working to reopen the game worlds tonight with a fix and then scheduling a small game patch for the near future. We will have more information as soon as we can.

[Jedthered]

Again, you miss the point. You want to belittle someone’s feelings because you do not perceive the same value as them.

It’s perceived value. In the eyes of the beholder.

Today people have zero empathy…I am merely stating that because it’s not important to you, doesn’t mean it’s not to someone else. But instead you argue to compare to something else?

Let me solve this. DDO rocks. WB tried to dump it and the DEVs bought it. Owned by people that love it. So long my their stone stand. Taxes are the price of society. i gladly pay mine and boot in a bit more. i too see the value, but more swag is always nice. That is my opinion. And i believe goo is in the eye of the beholder.

[CursedBlessedOne]

anyone? Lol

ridiculous........

[ShrimpO]

How is it that I am not surprised, coming back from work, to see that SSG has ****ed up again?

We should all give a big middle finger to the new pack.

(Or at the very least purchase the bare minimum. Sure glad I paid 100$ for Saltmarsh when I could have easily done without. Me will be smarter this time.)

Thanks.

[ariel7]

The game worlds remain unavailable. We are currently working to reopen the game worlds tonight with a fix and then scheduling a small game patch for the near future. We will have more information as soon as we can.

Thanks for working on it. I know things go pear-shaped from time to time, like me trying to scroll to the marketplace :)

[CursedBlessedOne]

How is it that I am not surprised, coming back from work, to see that SSG has ****ed up again?

We should all give a big middle finger to the new pack.

(Or at the very least purchase the bare minimum. Sure glad I paid 100$ for Saltmarsh when I could have easily done without. Me will be smarter this time.)

Thanks.

me....foul........

[Buddha5440]

Fair points, however there is no perceivable implementations of lessons learned from previous release issues. If we could at least see things have changed then people might have more patience and good will.

This is a game forum. Patience and good will are fictional things here (in case you haven't noticed)!!!

[CursedBlessedOne]

Thanks for working on it. I know things go pear-shaped from time to time, like me trying to scroll to the marketplace :)

bah!

[BrandonDeath]

+1

+2

[metalclanger]

The game worlds remain unavailable. We are currently working to reopen the game worlds tonight with a fix and then scheduling a small game patch for the near future. We will have more information as soon as we can.

"tonight" in which time zone?

[CursedBlessedOne]

"tonight" in which time zone?

i'm playing DCUO.....

[Camatam]

So much for the 1 pm EST, LOL. 6pm EST no game still!

[SlowDM]

It’s all a conspiracy.

[CursedBlessedOne]

It’s all a conspiracy.


.....a line forming outside the "login center" all shaking like in front a methadon clinic.,...

[Stormraiser]

Which is still a LOT less than you'd pay for going to a movie or similar types of entertainment. Netflix costs more per month than DDO, and similar or more for most streaming services. And theatre prices are something you darn near have to roll into your mortgage these days.

Pick something with comparable entertainment/hour, and then compare costs on that. Don't just look purely at cost/hour.

Why does it have to be a comparable method of entertainment? A movie in El Salvador costs about 50 cents while a movie in Lebanon is nearly $30. The person mentioned they have a subscription and it's not usable because the game is down. It does not matter how much it costs relative to other entertainment - much less US entertainment.

https://www.netcredit.com/blog/price-to-watch-movie-every-country/

[Buddha5440]

It’s all a conspiracy.

Nope, it's actually Russian misinformation but don't post that on Twitter or you might get banned...Oh wait, that period of tyrannical censorship appears to be over with the new management. :)

[CursedBlessedOne]

Why does it have to be a comparable method of entertainment? A movie in El Salvador costs about 50 cents while a movie in Lebanon is nearly $30. The person mentioned they have a subscription and it's not usable because the game is down. It does not matter how much it costs relative to other entertainment - much less US entertainment.

https://www.netcredit.com/blog/price-to-watch-movie-every-country/

...don't think cause i got a lot of money i give you taco flavored kisses honey......

[Bobjester]

Nightshift coming up soon. I guess I must wait until tomorrow afternoon to see if the game is back up. :(

[Kelledren]

As found on the forum. I am only rarely on the forum though, and I'm not the only one. Logged in this morning (Eastern-time here) and had a message pop up the world would be closing in 15 minutes.
Ok, no problem, another update. So I wait. And have been ever since, tried to log on at 1:15 PM...2PM...3PM...4PM...still nothing.
Wasted day. A shame, since I was off from work today. I'll be looking in again in 4 days, on my next day off

I get the disappointment.. nothing better than a day off and gaming, just that at the time Cordo was responding fairly regularly. Not much to say but at least it wasn’t silence. I will say while not the longest downtime ever it is starting to move up the rankings quickly!

[Stormraiser]

...don't think cause i got a lot of money i give you taco flavored kisses honey......

I'm not even sure what language that's in.

[Airmaiden]

The game worlds remain unavailable. We are currently working to reopen the game worlds tonight with a fix and then scheduling a small game patch for the near future. We will have more information as soon as we can.

Thank you for the update.

Please keep the player based informed and do not leave us in the dark for too long. Even if you can narrow it down to within a couple hours (with no promises given, but trying etc).

[drex81]

I'm not even sure what language that's in.

https://southpark.fandom.com/wiki/Taco_Flavored_Kisses

[Jedthered]

Quote Originally Posted by CursedBlessedOne View Post
...don't think cause i got a lot of money i give you taco flavored kisses honey......



I'm not even sure what language that's in.


You need to sing it

[CursedBlessedOne]

Quote Originally Posted by CursedBlessedOne View Post
...don't think cause i got a lot of money i give you taco flavored kisses honey......





You need to sing it

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGlmP4Os2rE

[jskinner937]

How is it that I am not surprised, coming back from work, to see that SSG has ****ed up again?

We should all give a big middle finger to the new pack.

(Or at the very least purchase the bare minimum. Sure glad I paid 100$ for Saltmarsh when I could have easily done without. Me will be smarter this time.)

Thanks.

MoTD and EDs waited a whole long weekend. Those were highly anticipated.

Fortunately this is just a cat race. Meh. I can wait until it’s fixed.

[CursedBlessedOne]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGlmP4Os2rE

https://c.tenor.com/8iSobq9-6UsAAAAC/dave-tyrone-dave.gif

[Mand_OLin]

The downtime has exceeded the update time. Perhaps a simple rollback to the previous version?

[originalbod]

The downtime has exceeded the update time. Perhaps a simple rollback to the previous version?

far too obvious and logical, given that the worlds are likely running in [snapshottable] virtual machines anyway

[Mand_OLin]

.....a line forming outside the "login center" all shaking like in front a methadon clinic.,...

Hmmmm... First three toons are free... and then you are hooked... for LIFE!!!

[Memnir]

Well, back to Elden Ring.
*shrug*

[JoyfulEagle]

Fair points, however there is no perceivable implementations of lessons learned from previous release issues. If we could at least see things have changed then people might have more patience and good will.

They might. But the evidence doesn't support that. History shows that some people are going to complain no matter the circumstances.

[Camatam]

Surely when they figured out the update was a mess they could have just rolled it back to the previous version? Incompetent much? At 7pm EST I cannot imagine people are hanging around to implement some kind of a fix ahahahaha... so why not just roll it back and work on the fix and bring it back later on?

[Avenarus]

UPDATE: The game worlds remain unavailable. We are currently working to reopen the game worlds tonight with a fix and then scheduling a small game patch for the near future. We will have more information as soon as we can.

The DDO game worlds will be unavailable on Wednesday, April 27th from 9:00 AM - 1:00 PM Eastern (-4 GMT) to release Update 54. Find the release notes on DDO.com (https://www.ddo.com/update-notes/ddo-update-54-release-notes).

So, I'm fairly new to this game. I joined earlier this year actually, a few weeks before they made a bunch of stuff free to F2P players. I came to this game because of the dungeons and dragons name. I stuck around, because it has charm, and for that matter even mechanics that no other MMO has... but you guys seriously have way too many bugs, and failures happening to be doing so under the D&D name. Like I've tried to bring friends in, and they're usually stoked, never even heard of the game... but half the time I end up being embarrassed I even recommended them to the game, and usually because of absurdly flagrant bugs and just general lack of addressing issues. I mean for god's sake, you still have portent of dread on the **** downloader client, guys... that's literally from before I even joined the game. Like, I seriously love this game... but yall need to reach out and get help or something. It almost seems stupid to even see you guys trying to put out new content, when the old content is in such disrepair. I mean jesus christ guys, literally all dogs in wheloon can't aggro.. they just stand there and give you free slayer xp. How has no one noticed and fixed that? lol I could find something like that once per hour if I tried... probably way less than an hour actually.

[Mindos]

Its coming to 4am for me, should I wait until daybreak?

Ha, in my opinion, Daybreak is the problem!

[JoyfulEagle]

Surely when they figured out the update was a mess they could have just rolled it back to the previous version? Incompetent much? At 7pm EST I cannot imagine people are hanging around to implement some kind of a fix ahahahaha... so why not just roll it back and work on the fix and bring it back later on?

It was scheduled to take 4 hours to implement. So, the backout would take about the same amount of time and work. Then there wouid need to be a new implementation at a future time. So, committing to a roll-back is at least an additional 8 hours of down time. Without the benefit of hindsight, that is a very difficult choice to make.

[sago]

This does suck... How bad could it be... ??
Are players getting something they shouldn't ??

[fatherpirate]

the servers are up, let the carnage begin

[Mand_OLin]

Do I see light... at the end of the tunnel?!?!

[Maxem]

Downloading now!!!

Edit* game is up!

[Cordovan]

The game worlds have reopened. Today's downtime was caused by a physics issue that we worked today to resolve. We are currently working overnight on a game patch which - could - go out tomorrow, depending on how things go. We will let you know more as soon as we can.

[DoctorOfLiterature]

So, I'm fairly new to this game. I joined earlier this year actually, a few weeks before they made a bunch of stuff free to F2P players. I came to this game because of the dungeons and dragons name. I stuck around, because it has charm, and for that matter even mechanics that no other MMO has... but you guys seriously have way too many bugs, and failures happening to be doing so under the D&D name. Like I've tried to bring friends in, and they're usually stoked, never even heard of the game... but half the time I end up being embarrassed I even recommended them to the game, and usually because of absurdly flagrant bugs and just general lack of addressing issues. I mean for god's sake, you still have portent of dread on the **** downloader client, guys... that's literally from before I even joined the game. Like, I seriously love this game... but yall need to reach out and get help or something. It almost seems stupid to even see you guys trying to put out new content, when the old content is in such disrepair. I mean jesus christ guys, literally all dogs in wheloon can't aggro.. they just stand there and give you free slayer xp. How has no one noticed and fixed that? lol I could find something like that once per hour if I tried... probably way less than an hour actually.

I’m glad you play but a bit confused when you and others complain about bugs. I literally couldn’t care that dogs don’t aggro and didn’t know it was a bug. I couldn’t name more than a couple bugs. Lag? Sure. Although it has improved tbh.

[SpritesDaddyo]

logged in and In (forgot the server :()

[Mindos]

Keep Lam open 24/7

The more Lam is up, the less money is spent on the "real" world.

[Ahngus]

Servers are up but I have dropped connection and rolled back twice in 20 minutes.

I'm sad. Disappointed, too.

[Zander108]

It's a meme to say "don't read the YouTube comments" but it seems to apply double for gaming forums. Memories of some players are selective it seems and when they don't get what they think they deserve right away, they selective negative **** to recall. So I'd like to point out some of the positive things some seem the want to forget during these moments...

SSG literally was created to save this game from disappearing into digital oblivion. Their own time and money, from my understanding, and we are all able to continue to play because of that. This is also one of very, very few gaming companies that takes the time to talk to its player base. There is actual communication, whether you like the amount of it or not, it exists. Many never have a back and forth from devs to players, ever. It. Is. Rare.

When the pandemic hit, the World, we all got free quest pack codes. They didn't need to do that, it was a gift that likely hurt their bottom line somewhat, because most every smaller corporation was hurt by the pandemic. They extended the free stuff as the pandemic dragged on too.

We have a test server that players can join and add input too. They listen to feedback, the changes they make are sometimes directly based on that player feedback. They also do things we don't all agree with... welcome to being an adult, the World isn't fair. No one is chained to their computer forced to play DDO to my knowledge. Gaming companies have always made choices for their own games, many never listen to their player base ever, SSG does. If they don't implement every change we ask for that's literally how it works. I still want a Kobold player race, just saying.

I've been a DDO player since before Gianthold, and traditionally when there are longer than expected downtimes we are compensated. Live servers are not test servers, and never will be. Even the various live servers are all different enough that glitches can occur on some but not all. A sudden restart, without warning could be a sign that a glitch is serious enough that it may be causing character corruption, just a thought. On a test server I would presume that items and character tomes may function slightly differently because those servers get wiped frequently, I really don't know. But I would prefer a sudden restart that saves my years of data over a 30 minute warning. But that's just me.

For all the quirks that do exist in our little niche game, I still come back because it offers something I cannot get anywhere else. I appreciate those that went out of their way to save this game and keep it alive, for me, and others. I also recognize that SSG is a smaller crew of people compared to Blizzard, or Epic, or Wargaming, all three of which do not put anywhere near the same effort into dev-player communications.

Some of us need to stop throwing soul-stones into lava pools and realize there are human beings at SSG. This is a video game not a pace-maker or insulin injector, we will not die if it stops working for a day. This is an inconvenience, I know this because I buried my video game hating father this past Friday. That was way worse than DDO being down. Just saying.

[Frezar14]

Just lagged out in a quest. Maybe best to just wait for tomorrow.

[Cordovan]

We have brought the worlds back down due to new instances of game instability taking place since we reopened the worlds. We are working on a new fix to alleviate this issue, and we will keep the game worlds down until the fix is deployed. We are working to reopen the game worlds in about two to three hours, and we will keep you updated.

[Dmitrythewizzy]

Just lagged out in a quest. Maybe best to just wait for tomorrow.

Servers go boom... not just lag.

[fatherpirate]

el' crash-o

[Uyness]

As we approach 12 hours, my hat is off to all the folks who have been working on this all day.

[Talon_Moonshadow]

We have brought the worlds back down due to new instances of game instability taking place since we reopened the worlds. We are working on a new fix to alleviate this issue, and we will keep the game worlds down until the fix is deployed. We are working to reopen the game worlds in about two to three hours, and we will keep you updated.

Words cannot express how I feel right now.

I was trying to TR!!!!!

My greatest fear, is that my character I have spent YEARS!!!! getting past lives on, is now ruined!

[Zeklijan]

Can we have more than 30 seconds notice? Even 5 minutes is much more manageable than none.

[Buddha5440]

It's a meme to say "don't read the YouTube comments" but it seems to apply double for gaming forums. Memories of some players are selective it seems and when they don't get what they think they deserve right away, they selective negative **** to recall. So I'd like to point out some of the positive things some seem the want to forget during these moments...

SSG literally was created to save this game from disappearing into digital oblivion. Their own time and money, from my understanding, and we are all able to continue to play because of that. This is also one of very, very few gaming companies that takes the time to talk to its player base. There is actual communication, whether you like the amount of it or not, it exists. Many never have a back and forth from devs to players, ever. It. Is. Rare.

When the pandemic hit, the World, we all got free quest pack codes. They didn't need to do that, it was a gift that likely hurt their bottom line somewhat, because most every smaller corporation was hurt by the pandemic. They extended the free stuff as the pandemic dragged on too.

We have a test server that players can join and add input too. They listen to feedback, the changes they make are sometimes directly based on that player feedback. They also do things we don't all agree with... welcome to being an adult, the World isn't fair. No one is chained to their computer forced to play DDO to my knowledge. Gaming companies have always made choices for their own games, many never listen to their player base ever, SSG does. If they don't implement every change we ask for that's literally how it works. I still want a Kobold player race, just saying.

I've been a DDO player since before Gianthold, and traditionally when there are longer than expected downtimes we are compensated. Live servers are not test servers, and never will be. Even the various live servers are all different enough that glitches can occur on some but not all. A sudden restart, without warning could be a sign that a glitch is serious enough that it may be causing character corruption, just a thought. On a test server I would presume that items and character tomes may function slightly differently because those servers get wiped frequently, I really don't know. But I would prefer a sudden restart that saves my years of data over a 30 minute warning. But that's just me.

For all the quirks that do exist in our little niche game, I still come back because it offers something I cannot get anywhere else. I appreciate those that went out of their way to save this game and keep it alive, for me, and others. I also recognize that SSG is a smaller crew of people compared to Blizzard, or Epic, or Wargaming, all three of which do not put anywhere near the same effort into dev-player communications.

Some of us need to stop throwing soul-stones into lava pools and realize there are human beings at SSG. This is a video game not a pace-maker or insulin injector, we will not die if it stops working for a day. This is an inconvenience, I know this because I buried my video game hating father this past Friday. That was way worse than DDO being down. Just saying.

Well said. +1

[Maatogaeoth]

We have brought the worlds back down due to new instances of game instability taking place since we reopened the worlds. We are working on a new fix to alleviate this issue, and we will keep the game worlds down until the fix is deployed. We are working to reopen the game worlds in about two to three hours, and we will keep you updated.

Where is the issue happening? Khyber seemed fine to my group and the people I saw running around.

[Jerevth]

Words cannot express how I feel right now.

I was trying to TR!!!!!

My greatest fear, is that my character I have spent YEARS!!!! getting past lives on, is now ruined!

*wince* And here I was grumpy about losing five minutes of an xp pot because the quest wasn't finished.
Good luck on that recovery, seriously.

[Dulcimerist]

Thanks for working on the issue.

I really wish we had more than just 30 seconds warning before the servers are brought down. This was way too abrupt.

[ChrisTOTG]

Launches are hard. Pretty much every studio has problems with pretty much all major launches.

I'll go do something else tonight and see you all tomorrow!

When the dust settles, I'd love to see a public RCA. In fact, it would be nice to see those for all unexpected outages.

[fatherpirate]

on our server, there was no notice ... just crash
(I think)

I am going to go sleep in the dungeons ...
send a room service Kobald down to wake
me if it gets fixed ...

[Jerevth]

So, I'm fairly new to this game. I joined earlier this year actually, a few weeks before they made a bunch of stuff free to F2P players. I came to this game because of the dungeons and dragons name. I stuck around, because it has charm, and for that matter even mechanics that no other MMO has... but you guys seriously have way too many bugs, and failures happening to be doing so under the D&D name. Like I've tried to bring friends in, and they're usually stoked, never even heard of the game... but half the time I end up being embarrassed I even recommended them to the game, and usually because of absurdly flagrant bugs and just general lack of addressing issues. I mean for god's sake, you still have portent of dread on the **** downloader client, guys... that's literally from before I even joined the game. Like, I seriously love this game... but yall need to reach out and get help or something. It almost seems stupid to even see you guys trying to put out new content, when the old content is in such disrepair. I mean jesus christ guys, literally all dogs in wheloon can't aggro.. they just stand there and give you free slayer xp. How has no one noticed and fixed that? lol I could find something like that once per hour if I tried... probably way less than an hour actually.

the dogs are well behaved, staying by their dead masters... why are you attacking them? What is WRONG with you?!
Jokes aside, I didn't think they gave kills toward slayers...
Foxes on the High road do, but animals elsewhere that don't aggro will not.

[Dulcimerist]

Words cannot express how I feel right now.

I was trying to TR!!!!!

My greatest fear, is that my character I have spent YEARS!!!! getting past lives on, is now ruined!

Ouch! I hope everything is safe with your character.
We need to put the word out there to never, absolutely never, do any reincarnation of any kind after a patch or update. Always wait two or three days.

[Pigfancy]

Sad face!

[CursedBlessedOne]

Sad face!

so ridiculous and such bull...... feels liek things weren't properly tested...and now we all suffer for it..... might as well give up for the day.........

[Heideggar]

Thank you for the updates Cordovan,

As someone who doesn't like working nights or weekends I am sympathetic to the team who's working diligently on these issues.

Keep up the great work.

Wish you the best,

Dualspoons

[DoctorOfLiterature]

As we approach 12 hours, my hat is off to all the folks who have been working on this all day.

Me too. Thank you for all the folks working double time to try and get things to work.

[Dyg]

A big thanks to everyone who is working on this. Honestly, I love this game and appreciate the work that is put into adding content.

Side note: My cat really likes the extra attention I am giving this evening as I am not gaming....

[Memnir]

Welp, continuing with Elden Ring.
*shrug*


Please take as long as it takes to get it right. Measure twice, cut once - and all that.

[fatherpirate]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9F3iBMYvQOs

[Oranor]

Well said, well said, indeed!
I support and believe in this dedicated team.

[Mand_OLin]

Where is the issue happening? Khyber seemed fine to my group and the people I saw running around.

I would agree with you in that Argo seemed just fine...

However, it would not surprise me to learn the devs have access to server performance data which indicated a looming / fast approaching critical issue with the decision being made to shut the servers down in a controlled manner before they crashed - possibly resulting in lost character data (or lost characters!).

[ismikes]

[QUOTE=Raiztlin75;6512739]is that in peso's the actual duck over[/QUOTE

Its the new Inflation/Socialism prices.
DDO is building back better.

The prices quoted were way off from reality... much like your political hyperbole.

[Chaimberland]

Words cannot express how I feel right now.

I was trying to TR!!!!!

My greatest fear, is that my character I have spent YEARS!!!! getting past lives on, is now ruined!

Basic rule of thumb. NEVER TR A FEW DAYS BEFORE OR AFTER A SCHEDULED UPDATE!

[fatherpirate]

Words cannot express how I feel right now.

I was trying to TR!!!!!

My greatest fear, is that my character I have spent YEARS!!!! getting past lives on, is now ruined!

But words most definitely can express what I am feeling right now,
but I do not feel like getting a bunch of fresh infractions :-P so I will just watch some funny fail videos

[enkka1]

Looks like mousefolk with the help of their fellow hamsters took their revenge on tabaxi asap. Now you have to bring them into the game too to make things even and fair

[Cordovan]

The game worlds have reopened. We will have more information about tomorrow's planned game patch once we know more.

[Heideggar]

The game worlds have reopened. We will have more information about tomorrow's planned game patch once we know more.

Please pass on to the team our thanks for their dedication and diligence.

- Dualspoons

[Talon_Moonshadow]

Words cannot express how I feel right now.

I was trying to TR!!!!!

My greatest fear, is that my character I have spent YEARS!!!! getting past lives on, is now ruined!



Well, everything turned out ok.

Thank you

[Alisonique]

Please pass on to the team our thanks for their dedication and diligence.

- Dualspoons

I would like to add my thanks to this. Its easy to take the rip...I do it often enough....but on this occasion it went a bit pear shaped, not the end of the world. Looking forwards to getting my fix tonight!

[jskinner937]

Basic rule of thumb. NEVER TR A FEW DAYS BEFORE OR AFTER A SCHEDULED UPDATE!

I TRed after first outage and right before second. Got through the process, logged out and exited app. Waited a min and logged on. Immediately after re-logging, worlds went down.

But all was fine. No missing PLs, no missing items, no missing tomes. If you follow-up the ritual, it’s pretty safe.

[Mindos]

UPDATE: The game worlds have reopened. We will have more information about tomorrow's planned game patch once we know more.

The DDO game worlds will be unavailable on Wednesday, April 27th from 9:00 AM - 1:00 PM Eastern (-4 GMT) to release Update 54. Find the release notes on DDO.com (https://www.ddo.com/update-notes/ddo-update-54-release-notes).

at the release notes here: https://www.ddo.com/update-notes/ddo-update-54-release-notes you have a link Learn more about our upcoming Isle of Dread expansion in the DDO Market (https://www.ddo.com/update-notes/Isle%20of%20Dread%20FAQ%20Can%20I%20purchase%20Isl e%20of%20Dread%20with%20Store%20Points?%20Isle%20o f%20Drad%20features%20will%20be%20available%20for% 20points%20in%20the%20DDO%20Store%20in%20December% 202022%20•%20Isle%20of%20Dread%20Quests:%203999% 20•%20Tabaxi%20Character%20Race:%201595%20•%20 Trailblazer%20Iconic:%201395%20•%20Tome%20of%20D estiny%20+1%20(Dread%20type):%203495%20Is%20Tabaxi %20Character%20Race%20free%20to%20VIPs?%20Yes.%20I f%20you%20are%20a%20VIP%20you%20can%20automaticall y%20access%20the%20Tabaxi%20Character%20Race%20so% 20long%20as%20your%20subscription%20is%20active.%2 0Zalnathe%20won't%20talk%20to%20me,%20what%20do%20 I%20do?%20If%20you%20were%20logged%20into%20the%20 game%20at%20the%20time%20of%20your%20purchase%20yo u%20may%20need%20to%20log%20out%20of%20the%20game% 20and%20back%20in%20before%20the%20changes%20take% 20effect%20on%20your%20account.%20For%20the%20Hero ic%20or%20Improved%20Epic%20Otto’s%20Boxes%20fro m%20Collector’s%20and%20Ultimate%20edition,%20ar e%20they%20granted%20once%20on%20per%20account,%20 or%20once%20per%20server%20world?%20Zalnathe%20wil l%20only%20deliver%20one%20Bound%20Heroic%20Otto†™s%20Box%20(for%20Collector’s%20edition)%20or%20 one%20Bound%20Improved%20Epic%20Otto’s%20Box%20( for%20Ultimate%20Edition)%20per%20account,%20to%20 the%20first%20character%20that%20claims%20them%20f rom%20her.%20She%20will%20not%20grant%20them%20aga in%20on%20subsequent%20servers.%20I%20misplaced%20 my%20Collector’s%20or%20Ultimate%20edition%20cos metics.%20How%20do%20I%20get%20more?%20Speak%20wit h%20Zalnathe%20again!%20So%20long%20as%20you%20own %20Collector’s%20or%20Ultimate%20Edition%20Isle% 20of%20Dread,%20any%20time%20you%20need%20another% 20one%20of%20your%20cosmetics%20you%20can%20return %20to%20Zalnathe%20and%20ask%20for%20another%20one .%20What%20level%20are%20the%20Teal%20the%20Raptor %20Hirelings?%20Are%20they%20permanent?%20Is%20it% 20even%20wise%20of%20me%20to%20travel%20with%20vel ociraptors?%20Collector's%20Edition%20comes%20with %20a%20Permanent%20Gold%20Seal%20Heroic%20Level%20 7%20Teal%20the%20Raptor%20Hireling,%20while%20Ulti mate%20Fan%20Bundle%20Edition%20comes%20with%20a%2 0Permanent%20Gold%20Seal%20Legendary%20Level%2032% 20Teal%20the%20Raptor%20Hireling.%20Teal%20the%20r aptor%20is%20quite%20safe%20for%20you%20to%20trave l%20with,%20but%20whether%20or%20not%20it%20is%20w ise%20to%20try%20and%20domesticate%20raptors%20is% 20a%20philosophical%20question%20if%20you’re%20n ot%20from%20the%20Talentia%20planes.%20)! that is a broken link. It looks like some of the FAQ got copied into the hyperlink.

[Boogafreak]

Please pass on to the team our thanks for their dedication and diligence.

- Dualspoons

Adding my support :)
A game this big can be hard to update without issues.
Also, the best QA is (almost) always the end users.
No one can expect everything to go smooth with (any) software updates, unless they are minor.