Downtime Notice: Tuesday, December 22nd 3:30 PM Eastern (-5 GMT)

[Zzevel]

The hotfix will address the following issues:

• Storm's Harness handwraps no longer lose their shocking effects. A recipe now exists in the Stone of Change to repair handwraps affected by this bug. NOTE: The Stone of Change will remove any Augments placed into the handwraps, so remove the Augments prior to using the Stone of Change.

So pay out of pocket to fix an issue that wasn't the players fault?

[Shoemaker]

The hotfix will address the following issues:

• Fixed an issue where several Green Steel weapon effects would not persist through logout.
• Arcane Warrior now works with ranged weapons.
• Scion of Elysium's tooltip now makes it clearer that the bonuses apply to your pets.
• Riposte no longer causes game performance issues.
• Tendon Slice is no longer the cruelest form of PvP.
• Insightful and Quality Potency effects now give their proper type of bonus.
• We have adjusted the horn sounds in To Curse the Sky.
• Tempest Spine Runes are now accepted by the Tempest Rune Trader instead of Hound of Xoriat Runes, although the tooltip continues to ask for Xorian runes.
• Adjusted lighting and several other issues in the quest Creeping Death.
• Fortis should no longer get stuck in an NPC state in the final part of Legendary Shroud.
• Storm's Harness handwraps no longer lose their shocking effects. A recipe now exists in the Stone of Change to repair handwraps affected by this bug. NOTE: The Stone of Change will remove any Augments placed into the handwraps, so remove the Augments prior to using the Stone of Change.

Any chance on a sale or code for a free jewel of fortune 1/account to fix handwraps? As far as length of downtime, we were told it takes 3-5 hours to push a build through all the stages - I expect it to be about that long.

[Elsbet]

Please, please let this fix work because my alternative to DDO is shopping and my bank account says, "OUCH!"

[Lonnbeimnech]

why is the hotfix issue coming up so often, i played this game for years and their where no hotfixes after half-orc, or druid releases. for the first several years this game was up their was almost no downtime. i dont know what noobs you guys hired but please bring back the old team lol

And druids are still very broken. Maybe they should have done a few hotfixes back then...

[M3thos]

The hotfix will address the following issues:

• We have adjusted the horn sounds in To Curse the Sky.
  
  

yea thats great lets fix the sound of a horn but not the lag in the game. wow seems they got there priorities right huh?

[forcefire]

And druids are still very broken. Maybe they should have done a few hotfixes back then...

i admit that i havent really tried the druid, however i remember building my first half orc, and the artificer release... the chronoscope was smooth, it seems like as they have changed the base game more with each update, it has made each update more unstable... they had a decent system when i started playing, but when they changed twf, and enhancements, and started changing the way the numbers work behind the scenes they also damaged the stability, and made a lot of people give up the game

[Sunnie]

yea thats great lets fix the sound of a horn but not the lag in the game. wow seems they got there priorities right huh?

Riposte no longer causes game performance issues.

You were saying?

[kbaskins]

yea thats great lets fix the sound of a horn but not the lag in the game. wow seems they got there priorities right huh?

Well, they think part of the problem with the recent lag is riposte, and the list Cordovan posted says they're fixing that. I guess you haven't been following the forum conversation about riposte. Anyway, they are addressing what they think is causing some of the U29 lag.

[Steelstar]

yea thats great lets fix the sound of a horn but not the lag in the game. wow seems they got there priorities right huh?

The pronounced lag since the update is largely due to Riposte, which is fixed in this build.

Horns was one of the most-reported things that people didn't like in the new content, so while the lag was being worked on, we fixed that too.

[Wakkander]

You were saying?

If someone is looking for a reason to be angry they will find one.

Thanks for the hard work guys, especially around the holidays which I am sure like for most people is a high stress period even without having to rapidly get hotfixes and the like ready.

[Lord_Jaffacake]

Thanks Devs for picking up on these bugs / issues and providing a prompt fix

[Dace]

The pronounced lag since the update is largely due to Riposte, which is fixed in this build.

Horns was one of the most-reported things that people didn't like in the new content, so while the lag was being worked on, we fixed that too.

Steel, a rough ETA please?

It's 9pm GMT, bed or wait for the servers to come up?

[Paryan]

yea thats great lets fix the sound of a horn but not the lag in the game. wow seems they got there priorities right huh?

The Devs have often said that if a fix is easy, then they do them as they can. This must have been a simple fix to add, so they did. It's not a matter of there being things that are more pressing or something you may see as a priority...they could fit it into this build so they did. On Lamm, some of the first feedback on the forums about this quest was the noise of the horns...some people obviously thought it was important enough to address...

Ninja' by steel's reply above

[jaedom]

This is my guess:

Maybe they will fix concentration items and insiteful prr and mrr that show enhancement bonus instead while they are at it.

[Draeqo]

As far as length of downtime, we were told it takes 3-5 hours to push a build through all the stages - I expect it to be about that long.

Nah I think they will have pre-compiled this one, just installing it.
But what they must do is:

Shutdown all server login possibilities & kick-out everyone,
... waiting until kick-out manages to kick everyone, grab a coffee
Back, verify all are kicked, manual kick remainder (sorry)
Start back-up of data on all servers
... waiting for backup to finish, grab a coffee, shoot some darts, choose Pizza
Back, verify all backups are done, and of course one (we know which one) is still busy ... more coffee?
Ah, done.
Lead verify all systems clear for install & order install.
Installation started on all servers.
... waiting for installation to finish, grab some Diet-Coke (not too much coffee), re-choose Pizza as the one you wanted is not there. As if Salami is really a special flavour ....
Back, not all there some went outside etc.
Verify installs are all done
Lead verify all systems clear for data upgrade to fix items & some back-end tables (string tables anyone?) & order data migration fix to start.
Start data fix on all servers
... waiting for data fix to finish, and again the same server takes a wee bit longer, oh well it seems Pizza has arrived !
... eating
... all done? nope G is still busy
Back, all done, G almost
Done.
Lead verify all seems OK & orders final checks & tests.
QA-team arrived in time for Pizza, figures, now they start testing.
... waiting DEV team shoots some pool, plays darts etc
Back, all done, all OK (yeah right, but hey this is fantasy OK?)

Lead verifies all OK and orders restart of servers

Something like that.
Compilation will have been done before, installation does not take that long.
It is the preliminaries and the after work that do.
It especially depends on how long the data fix (if any) takes and how long QA will be busy.

[Draconium66]

At least the Bliz team dose this kind of thing in the middle of the night (3am pst) when the least number of players are on, not Mid-day when there are a lot of people on, and a hot fix is not a patch but only needs a server restart... not sure I left WoW for the right game now. . . and with no estimate of the duration of the down, I am inclined to go back to WOW or maybe play EQ. . .

[Krelar]

why is the hotfix issue coming up so often, i played this game for years and their where no hotfixes after half-orc, or druid releases. for the first several years this game was up their was almost no downtime. i dont know what noobs you guys hired but please bring back the old team lol

Druid was U14 ,the hotfix was significant enough that it even had official release notes.

[Shoemaker]

Steel, a rough ETA please?

It's 9pm GMT, bed or wait for the servers to come up?

Depends what you consider an appropriate bed time. I anticipate if it's not up in two hours, it'll be a long night.

[Dace]

Depends what you consider an appropriate bed time. I anticipate if it's not up in two hours, it'll be a long night.

Enjoyed your DDOCast the other night. Cheers for that btw ^

[forcefire]

Druid was U14 ,the hotfix was significant enough that it even had official release notes.

having one hotfix on druid, versus the 3 we have seen for update 29... before the druid their where none... updates where in the middle of the night usually. and by the next morning almost everything worked and whatever needed tweaking could usually wait for the coming update. i understand that sometimes things just go sideways, but with the maintenance problems, and the unbalanced updates the player base has reduced to nearly a third of what it was when i started this game