Downtime Notice: Wednesday, April 20th 1:00 - 3:00 PM Eastern

[AlcoArgo]

Might like to avoid this type of scary language - one might interpret that as meaning characters are being wiped or rolled back!

They're not, right? Right?

When you reset your computer, do you lose all your data and installed programs?

Words are only scary when you don't know what they mean and have to try to guess at their meaning.

I'd be more concerned about the very last minute nature of the notice being provided for a service outage, and why Turbine never seems to be able to show any consistency, proactivity, and professionalism regarding their customer communications. I'd like to believe that implementing these changes to Argonnessen and Wayfinder was scheduled better than "Um, I just had my coffee, and I think now I'm ready to make the same changes to Argonnessen and Wayfinder that we've made on the other servers. Let's go!" But with this kind of notice being given, that's a hard sell.

Sarcasm check: rolled a 1! Fail!

[Silvamoon70]

I hope your fixing the loading screen bug, it's getting annoying to say the least. Had restarted client 15 times last night. Even after fresh client, still got stuck on loading screen. Once I had to restart client 3 times in a row just to get outta the Demon Web!

We will be bringing the game worlds down for maintenance at 1:00 PM Eastern today, and expect the downtime to take up to a couple of hours. During this effort, all worlds will be reset, and we will be making some specific changes to Argonnessen and Wayfinder in an effort to improve game performance and reduce lag. These changes involve various updates to 64-bit dll's and implementing an alternate internal game timer to Argonnessen and Wayfinder. We will be keeping an eye on the impact, and will consider the next step afterwards. Thank you!

[Coyopa]

We will be bringing the game worlds down for maintenance at 1:00 PM Eastern today, and expect the downtime to take up to a couple of hours. During this effort, all worlds will be reset, and we will be making some specific changes to Argonnessen and Wayfinder in an effort to improve game performance and reduce lag. These changes involve various updates to 64-bit dll's and implementing an alternate internal game timer to Argonnessen and Wayfinder. We will be keeping an eye on the impact, and will consider the next step afterwards. Thank you!

Thank you for the specific information related to what you're doing to combat lag. It's appreciated.

[skorpeon]

So we are expected back in in an hour or so?

I am GMT+1

[FreeMemory]

We will be bringing the game worlds down for maintenance at 1:00 PM Eastern today, and expect the downtime to take up to a couple of hours. During this effort, all worlds will be reset, and we will be making some specific changes to Argonnessen and Wayfinder in an effort to improve game performance and reduce lag. These changes involve various updates to 64-bit dll's and implementing an alternate internal game timer to Argonnessen and Wayfinder. We will be keeping an eye on the impact, and will consider the next step afterwards. Thank you!

Please also fix everything, everything more and everything else during this time. Also please makes sure nothing ever breaks again. Hurry now you only have a half hour left.
:P

Thank you!

[Aishana]

Eh...given the extremely short notice on this downtime, I'm not holding my breath that it'll fix anything. But hey, I've been wrong before.

[Cordovan]

The game worlds have reopened! Thank you, and we'll see you in the game.

[royboy]

I love ddo, and the devs are always working to improve it. I thank you for that. Now with the downtime maintenance, that seems to be happening a lot more lately, I understand why you let us beat you up at the anniversary party. I still feel guilty about that by the way. Thank you all for making it better and I will be patient.

Does put a positive spin on it

[dontmater]

thanks for the added information about stuff they are trying

[Amundir]

Seriously, what's up with the timer thing?

[VinceWhirlwind]

I'd be more concerned about the very last minute nature of the notice being provided for a service outage, and why Turbine never seems to be able to show any consistency, proactivity, and professionalism regarding their customer communications. I'd like to believe that implementing these changes to Argonnessen and Wayfinder was scheduled better than "Um, I just had my coffee, and I think now I'm ready to make the same changes to Argonnessen and Wayfinder that we've made on the other servers. Let's go!" But with this kind of notice being given, that's a hard sell.

I guess they're not going to publish every detail from their project and development meetings. Makes sense to me.

Can't you just be happy that they are doing stuff, AND, telling you what and when they are doing?

All the incessant moaning gets a bit tedious.

[GlassCannon]

I'd be more concerned about the very last minute nature of the notice being provided for a service outage, and why Turbine never seems to be able to show any consistency, proactivity, and professionalism regarding their customer communications. I'd like to believe that implementing these changes to Argonnessen and Wayfinder was scheduled better than "Um, I just had my coffee, and I think now I'm ready to make the same changes to Argonnessen and Wayfinder that we've made on the other servers. Let's go!" But with this kind of notice being given, that's a hard sell.

That's how human creativity and breakthroughs work though. Not on some plotted datapoint diagram with algorithms and such. People are not machines. They are far more unfathomably complex than machines.

Argo and Wheyfinder have had the worst experiences and as such they are the live-test environment like that zombie girl in I Am Legend after main-character-guy (Will Smith) discovered a working serum and decided to take it live.

If it works, I suspect service outages to apply the injection to the other servers too.

As for what we're going to do while Turbine tries to figure out how to not only fix all of this but make their game more awesome in the process, we have only three options (and assuredly some variations on a combination of those three): 1) Enjoy the game and try to help make it better, 2) Be narcissistic sociopaths and take out our frustrations at inconveniences caused by necessary stuff on the forums and other players, or 3) Go do something else in the interim, even to a point of just taking a break for a while.

I find that options 1 and 3 have the best results, but option 2 is entirely too common.

[Faltout]

Have you looked into the Guild Renown awarding script and into the Trash Mob AI script ?
Because you know a lot of reports indicates that these two are huge culprits when it comes to getting lag.

Hm, I think it's easier to just implement random thingies here and there and hope lag magically gets fixed. You have no idea how lag actually exists anyway, so a magical solution to a magical problem...
Besides, most players want the lag to go back to pre-datacenter move. guild renown and mob AI was the same so it can't be the reason since we had "no" lag back then[/sarcasm]

[Uska]

Might like to avoid this type of scary language - one might interpret that as meaning characters are being wiped or rolled back!

They're not, right? Right?

To bad they aren't

[Powerhungry]

Just ran L Hox (normal) and DoJ (normal)- full party both runs and lag was almost non-existent in HoX and DoJ was better than pre datacenter move.

[cdbd3rd]

Might like to avoid this type of scary language - one might interpret that as meaning characters are being wiped or rolled back!

They're not, right? Right?

Characters cause lag, this fix is meant to address that problem...

ROFL!!!


Oh, can you imagine the nuclear fallout?!?


Welll.... Maybe not on Wayfinder.

[Eth]

Hm, I think it's easier to just implement random thingies here and there and hope lag magically gets fixed. You have no idea how lag actually exists anyway, so a magical solution to a magical problem...
Besides, most players want the lag to go back to pre-datacenter move. guild renown and mob AI was the same so it can't be the reason since we had "no" lag back then[/sarcasm]

That's the only positive thing I take out of this massive lag fiasco we have now. They are finally actively trying to do something about it.
I've seen enough people leave the game due to lag - before the data center move.

Sure, the game was mostly fine for questing with 6 or less. But raiding in a full group has been bad enough for years now.

[Caca80]

First of all, I'm glad that positive progress has made in fixing the lag monster. Keep up the good work.
I know sometimes its hard to find the cause but its worth every minute. Second .... can we have more information about what caused the game lag mainly?