Scheduled Maintenance: Monday, December 16th from 6:00 to 12:00 PM Eastern (-5 GMT)

[supott]

Theyre up.

[Celebras]

servers up

[Bimbelbo]

working now.

[Zenove]

I think its mainly because we pay for the game monthly and expect to always be given it, now I cant play until tomorrow so should I be refunded the 1/30th of the $15 I paid? Meh, I dont really care.

I'd be happy to. Just send me a self addressed, stamped envelope and I'll be glad to send you 50 cents. I'm not really on any "side". It is what it is. Back in 2006, I started reading a series and a few years ago, I caught up to the author so that I find myself waiting for the next book each time. For one book, he had a projected date in June which he needed to move back a couple months. He announced that he could finish a half-assed book on time or a whole-assed book a couple months later. The fan response was overwhelmingly for the whole-assed version. I'll gladly wait a couple extra hours for a whole-assed game.

[toaftoaf]

i dont work for turbine

[Rishlin]

The maintenance has been extended until 12:00 PM Eastern (-5 GMT).

I'm sure you guys are working as hard as you can to get it all working properly but now I have to get interact with the real world for another half hour...please hurry!!

[Cordovan]

All right, log ins should now be working correctly. Thanks.

[ishr]

All right, log ins should now be working correctly. Thanks.

third time's a charm!

[HungarianRhapsody]

All right, log ins should now be working correctly. Thanks.

Any hints as to what this maintenance was for?

Were there changes to DDO or was it just replacing the hamsters in the server farm power generating wheels?

[lokomski]

I am a DeVry student currently attending to education majoring in Web Game Design. While I learn much more than just writing code I think mostly of those aspects including system analysis and design and object oriented construction and destruction during yet more Turbine downtime for maintenance.
Availability refers to how consistently and reliably a system may be accessed. Following data shows what 99% reliability is compared to how much downtime a system has (Dean, T., 2013):

99% availability is related to these downtimes:

Downtime per day: 14 min. 23 sec.
Downtime per month: 7 hr. 18. min. 17 sec.
Downtime per year: 87 hr. 39 min. 29 sec.

Remembering downtime for an entire year, of course, is not considered by end users that just want to play a game. Thinking of this month's Turbine downtime.. so far.. is an easy comparison to reliability. Today's original downtime was scheduled from 0600 to 1000 EST then extended to noon: 6 hours. On December 9th scheduled downtime was another 3 hours. Not including the all to often additional server crashes that is 9 hours total.. so far in December. A little ratio and proportion algebra returns Turbine reliability:

99% is to 7 hours as X% is to 9 hours.
7X = 99*9
7X = 891
X = 891/7 = 127.286

127% reliability but more hours of downtime indicates less availability: 27% less than 99%: 72%. That percentage is even less for rounding down hours from 7 hours 18 minutes 17 seconds to just 7 hours and not including other downtime problems than scheduled maintenance. .. And the month isn't over yet.
Other problems abound. DDO is entertaining when the mechanics work. For a long time now systems, including games, have been designed using object oriented concepts of programming. Everything with which interaction may occur is an object having attributes and actions that must be constructed. When the object no longer exists for a user computer memory should be freed by properly destructing the object from the memory of an individual computer. A destructor should be customized if the code creating an object, the class, contains a pointer that points to dynamically created memory. Otherwise the program may have a memory leak (Liang, Y., 2010). A lot, perhaps near everything, happening in an online game is dynamic. Objects may be created without customizing destructors. Default destructors are automatically created by utilities in which programmers write code. The defaults, however, do not always clean up memory correctly. Relying on default destructors is the case with Turbine games an amateur programmer may see.
Users that have several characters between which they log in and out fill up RAM and virtual memory, drive space used to simulate RAM, with memory leaks. Eventually the game crashes for having no place to store new data from that final loaded character. What of playing a single character for one session? Objects are still being constructed and inefficiently destructed as a character travels from zone to zone. Remember to close the client every 3 to 4 hours and clean up RAM on an individual basis.
Closer observation of objects themselves reveals inconsistency. A character may have a Flaming sword enhanced by Venomed Blades. During attacks against an opponent the poison damage is not always applied to the same target that just received poison damage a second before. The objects are occasionally missing implementation of methods not only with the example discussed here.
The time now is almost noon EST. Play time is hopefully almost at hand. After so many years of downtime maintenance Turbine should have a grasp on accurate estimates of return to access. Almost always, however, downtimes are extended. Turbine programmers work hard to entertain a world; to always bring their clients something new each several months. Still.. when something is done right no one will notice anything was done at all. So much of DDO is noticeable.

References:

Dean, T., (2013). Network + guide to networks. Sixth edition, p. 645.

Liang, Y., (2010). Introduction to programming with C++. Second edition, p. 372.

[FestusHood]

I'd be happy to. Just send me a self addressed, stamped envelope and I'll be glad to send you 50 cents. I'm not really on any "side". It is what it is. Back in 2006, I started reading a series and a few years ago, I caught up to the author so that I find myself waiting for the next book each time. For one book, he had a projected date in June which he needed to move back a couple months. He announced that he could finish a half-assed book on time or a whole-assed book a couple months later. The fan response was overwhelmingly for the whole-assed version. I'll gladly wait a couple extra hours for a whole-assed game.

If the author had spent as much time as the mad doctor in South Park, perhaps he could have produced a book with three asses.

[FestusHood]

99% availability is related to these downtimes:

Downtime per day: 14 min. 23 sec.
Downtime per month: 7 hr. 18. min. 17 sec.
Downtime per year: 87 hr. 39 min. 29 sec.

Remembering downtime for an entire year, of course, is not considered by end users that just want to play a game. Thinking of this month's Turbine downtime.. so far.. is an easy comparison to reliability. Today's original downtime was scheduled from 0600 to 1000 EST then extended to noon: 6 hours. On December 9th scheduled downtime was another 3 hours. Not including the all to often additional server crashes that is 9 hours total.. so far in December. A little ratio and proportion algebra returns Turbine reliability:

99% is to 7 hours as X% is to 9 hours.
7X = 99*9
7X = 891
X = 891/7 = 127.286

127% reliability but more hours of downtime indicates less availability: 27% less than 99%: 72%. That percentage is even less for rounding down hours from 7 hours 18 minutes 17 seconds to just 7 hours and not including other downtime problems than scheduled maintenance. .. And the month isn't over yet.

I have to admit, i dont know what your calculations are supposed to mean.

A month has 720 hours, so i get that 7 hours out of a month would represent about 1% of the total time, ergo 99% availability.

What i'm not getting is how 9 hours out of 720 becomes 27%.

[Krelar]

99% is to 7 hours as X% is to 9 hours.
7X = 99*9
7X = 891
X = 891/7 = 127.286

127% reliability but more hours of downtime indicates less availability: 27% less than 99%: 72%. That percentage is even less for rounding down hours from 7 hours 18 minutes 17 seconds to just 7 hours and not including other downtime problems than scheduled maintenance. .. And the month isn't over yet.

Your math seems a bit wacky here. I don't think it's measuring what you think it is.

Availability is really easy to measure there are about 8760 hours in a year (365*24) 1% percent of 8760 is 87.6 this is how they get the 87 hr. 39 min. 29 sec. of downtime per year for 99% availability. (they actually used about 365.25, likely to account for leap years)

There are 730 hours on average in a month (8760/12) so 9 hours of downtime a month translates to 9/730 or 1.23% downtime which mean they have 98.7% availability quite a bit better than 72%.

[ImanCarrot]

I've just cancelled my subscription. I am voting with my cash. This is *****.

[enochiancub]

This is *****.

What is? The maintenance that has been over for hours now?

[Grecan]

Maybe you should perform those maintenances more often.. they give me some time to sleep =)

And this time, with the extended downtime, i even found the time to take a bath! Felt great after all this time 8-)


So thank you, Turbine! :-D

lol

[lokomski]

Your math seems a bit wacky here. I don't think it's measuring what you think it is.

Availability is really easy to measure there are about 8760 hours in a year (365*24) 1% percent of 8760 is 87.6 this is how they get the 87 hr. 39 min. 29 sec. of downtime per year for 99% availability. (they actually used about 365.25, likely to account for leap years)

There are 730 hours on average in a month (8760/12) so 9 hours of downtime a month translates to 9/730 or 1.23% downtime which mean they have 98.7% availability quite a bit better than 72%.

Considered in the ratio and proportion is not only one company's service but a comparison to what is 99% reliability of online services of an entire industry. Games, banks, movie downloads.. any service accessed online. Thus partially the reason for specific reference: to keep my post from becoming a novel to describe the ratio of what is 99% and who is lower.
If every online service in the world had a 99% uptime and one service remained at 98% uptime the reliability of the one lower service would be far less than 99% compared to everyone else.
My apologies, I should have described at least that briefly the difference in meaning of availability and reliability.

[Zenove]

If the author had spent as much time as the mad doctor in South Park, perhaps he could have produced a book with three asses.

I suspect it is much more reasonable to create a.. four assed baboon was it?.. since such things are part of the natural order of things. Under current technology, it's best to restrict books and games to single asses. Besides which, Dr. Mephisto is a genius. He did after all figure out who Cartman's father is.

[lokomski]

It's not that, it's like every week we have a patch to fix a patch and an upgrade. I'll play as premium from now on because I am not paying inept incompetent imbeciles anymore.

*Subscription cancelled* and I urge others to do the same, it's the only way they'll take notice: hit them on the bottom line because all else will not work.

If you disagree then meet me in a dark alley, you'll be needing a patch or two afterwards I can assure you.

Years ago I let my subscriptions expire and remained premium ever since; related to the downtime and quick fixes that produce additional problems themselves. I understand if a company makes no profit eventually no product will be offered. When that time arrives for Turbine I'll just entertain myself with any of a thousand other choices of games. I have interests in DDO. The many different ways to build each class.. the newest enhancement system choices are great. I do not, however, have the emotional attachment an industry would wish from a client. When the game is gone I'll find my +5 sword somewhere else.