I've noticed the server maintenance times have crept up from about 4 hours (last year) to more like 6 hours these days.
Has there ever been any posts or explainers from devs about what's actually taking place during that time? I know a lot of (mild) complaints are made on Twitter etc with each update.
I think it'd be cool to know a bit more about the process so the community has more of a collective understanding of it.
@punyweakling The skeletons get a chance to get out in the sun and bleach their bones without interruptions from pirates trying to kill them or steal their loot. Lol
@punyweakling There's an incredible amount of very boring stuff that goes on during any server maintenance (within IT, not just video games). Any time that there is maintenance, the developers and who ever (Microsoft) are maintaining the infrastructure the game runs on will take the opportunity to update and patch the software and hardware that sits behind the scenes, just to ensure everything is as up to date and stable as possible.
It's not really something they need to inform us about.
Do you recall of any modern game that takes down servers for 6 hours in order to apply a medium/low quality of life improvement update???
I do not.
This sounds like a ridiculous outdated way to do it. None of the games I play do it that way.
Most modern games just require the user to stop playing and download the update and thus immediately when the update is ready
It's much more subtle and servers are NEVER taken down for such long hours...
i dont know about SoT specifically, but a large mmo i used to play once said that the great majority of the total time was due to propagating the patches over various regional servers, rebuilding databases, and actually getting all the various machines booted and interconnected again.
its probably similar for SoT.
@tehstepford I don't recall of any modern game that goes full shutdown and restart their servers for 6 hours to roll out a minor bug fixes update...
It's not like they're adding a new zone to explore or adding a ton of content and gameplay features.
Most of these patches should be hotfixes anyway.. (meaning they are applied during server operation) At least that's what most games do nowdays...
The anniversary update took the exact same maintenance time than yesterday's.. (if not shorter)
Quite odd...
@dotcomrobots Both Neverwinter and Elder Scrolls Online are taken down regularly for updates. As far as what they are addressing during these maintenance windows varies quite a bit. They can be down for several hours as a result.
For example, here is a recent post from ESO concerning planned downtime:
Hi everyone!
Over the next couple weeks, we’ll be performing updates to the databases associated with various services (things outside of the game such as the login system). We’re planning to focus on one platform per maintenance window, which will include NA & EU, and will have staggered openings where needed. All timings are outlined below:
Wednesday, April 24:
PC/Mac and PS4: 4am to 8am EDT
XB1: 4am to 12pm EDT
Tuesday, May 7:
XB1: 4am to 8am EDT
PS4: 4am to 12pm EDT
Monday, May 13:
PC/Mac: 4am to 12pm EDT
Edit: The PC/Mac maintenance previously scheduled on May 6 moved to May 13.
Edit 2: The console maintenance previously scheduled on May 8 moved to May 7.
@Ghostpaw Both Neverwinter ESO were released between 2013 and 2014.
Both of these games are MMOs, not open world games so I can understand that the architecture of these games are outdated because of their age and most likely more complicated tp update than SoT... This might force them to basically restart everything. I can't also count the number of parameters to take into account for a Massive Multiplayer Online game considering that the servers are filled by the hundreds (if not more?)
Sea of Thieves have been released LAST YEAR, it has Microsoft Azure datacenters hosting their servers and it's NOT an MMO. SoT has a medium size map world and not that much of services running compared to what an MMO can have in terms of cosmtics, trade, ressources and assets to manage. The servers are also limited to 24 players only.
So no, these games don't qualify as a comparison to SoT because they are both relatively old and aren't built the same way at all. The content of both the games you mentionned is far more dense than what SoT will probably ever reach.
First you shut down the server, you take a snapshot (takes a while based on server size).
Then you either Bump the Acceptation enviroment server to active status or you update your active servers. (completely based on the way you operate).
Once done you test if things work propperly, and after testing you boot it back up.
That's generally what you do with server updates. When I update a Server here it takes me around 4-5 hours just for normal windows updates.
@dotcomrobots said in What actually happens during the server downtime on update day?:
@Ghostpaw Both Neverwinter ESO were released between 2013 and 2014.
Both of these games are MMOs, not open world games so I can understand that the architecture of these games are outdated because of their age and most likely more complicated tp update than SoT... This might force them to basically restart everything. I can't also count the number of parameters to take into account for a Massive Multiplayer Online game considering that the servers are filled by the hundreds (if not more?)Sea of Thieves have been released LAST YEAR, it has Microsoft Azure datacenters hosting their servers and it's NOT an MMO. SoT has a medium size map world and not that much of services running compared to what an MMO can have in terms of cosmtics, trade, ressources and assets to manage. The servers are also limited to 24 players only.
So no, these games don't qualify as a comparison to SoT because they are both relatively old and aren't built the same way at all. The content of both the games you mentionned is far more dense than what SoT will probably ever reach.
I’ve been gaming since the late 70’s and programming since the mid 80’s so my perspective on what is considered old vs. modern may be different. 2014 seems very recent to me. Your initial question asked about downtime on modern games in general, not games released within the last 18 months with a specific map size, player/server ratio, and using a particular network architecture.
@dotcomrobots said in What actually happens during the server downtime on update day?:
Do you recall of any modern game that takes down servers for 6 hours in order to apply a medium/low quality of life improvement update???
No, I cannot think of any other games released last year that are almost exactly like SoT in every aspect.
