Blizzard Talks About WoW Stability and Service 100
Via 1up, information from Producer Shane Dabiri on the future of the World of Warcraft service. He offers up details on the new server setups, new server sites, and the much-anticipated character transfer service. From the article: "Scheduled to go live this summer, this feature will allow players to move their characters, within certain restrictions, to a realm of their choosing. This means that player's will now be able to join their friends on other realms without the need to wait for a pre-set mass realm transfer. In addition, this will also contribute to a balancing of the player load from realm to realm, which again is a specific way for us to reduce realm queues and lag. We know that many player's are eager for this service to be implemented, so we'll share further details as soon as more information becomes available. "
Too bad the server is down for maintenance. (Score:3, Funny)
eh? (Score:2)
I see that and immediately think: "bend over, here it comes..."
Re:eh? (Score:1)
I see that and immediately think: "bend over, here it comes..."
I don't know, I tend to think that's more like "we're not going to allow a PvE character to move to a PvP server" or something similar.
Re:eh? (Score:2)
-No moving to a new server that X people have moved to this day/week/month
-No moving to a new server with X people already existing
-No moving to a new server more than X times per day/week/month
-No moving to a new server unless you are level/age X
-No moving to a new server because the server move daemon is down...
Re:eh? (Score:1)
Talk about stability (Score:2, Insightful)
They should upgrade their forum servers first and then if this works out, think about upgrading the game servers and doing al those nifty things they're talking about.
Server Stability! (Score:1)
Translation of server transfer (Score:3, Insightful)
It could mean that Blizzard is expecting a rather massive drop in player numbers and may need to reduce the number of servers. They will transfer characters to other servers at random and then need that feature to let people get back together with their guildmates. Of course, it needs not be Free Beer, but that's probably just my paranoia speaking.
Re:Translation of server transfer (Score:1)
Re:Translation of server transfer (Score:4, Funny)
Well, it doesn't seem like they were paying too much for server upkeep... ;-)
Re:Translation of server transfer (Score:5, Informative)
Apparently a server can handle up to 40 realms so entire realms will be copied in whole from one server to another. Its more of a consolidation issue. Sure theoretically if they lost a lot of player they might want to close up some realms if they become underpopulated. But people would leave unpopulated realms pretty much voluntarily.
Re:Translation of server transfer (Score:2)
Hmmm. I'm not sure I agree with your usage of the word "handle".
My experience would suggest this slight revision:
"Apparently a server cannot handle up to 40 realms"
Re:Translation of server transfer (Score:2)
It wasn't slashdotted, it was the mages... (Score:4, Informative)
Mages, start your whineing...
Re:It wasn't slashdotted, it was the mages... (Score:3, Informative)
Mirror [vggen.com]
-Adam
Re:It wasn't slashdotted, it was the mages... (Score:2)
Its pretty interesting, and I think it gives a good idea of how Blizzard sees mages now. Unfortunatly, what Blizz thinks a mage is and what everyone else thinks a mage is have rarely been similar. Part of me is curious to test the new talents out... the other part of me is glad I quit WoW.
I love WoW players. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:I love WoW players. (Score:2)
If you don't have cake (Score:1, Offtopic)
Yes, I am a pedant, so what?
Re:I love WoW players. (Score:2)
In such a huge pool of players, the people who yell loudest are the only ones that are heard unless you take the time to look closer.
Re:I love WoW players. (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm no WoW player, but...
Shocking, I know.
Re:I love WoW players. (Score:2)
Re:I love WoW players. (Score:2)
Character Transfers, YAY! (Score:1)
Re:Character Transfers, YAY! (Score:2)
Re:Character Transfers, YAY! (Score:1)
Slashdot benchmark (Score:5, Funny)
Sadly, the new server setups rated poorly during the Ziff Davis Slashdot benchmark.
Here's what will happen (Score:5, Insightful)
Blizzard will disallow Horde Players on A to leave. Horde members get more grumpy, being outnumbered AND unable to leave. Blizzard will encourage Horders from other servers to move to server A to "balance" things.
Horde member on server C, suffering the same fate, sees the opportunity and jumps over to server A. Only to realize that he traded purgatory for hell. He gets grumpy and with a sigh decides to drop his old char.
Moves back to server A and makes an Alliance character...
Re:Here's what will happen (Score:2)
It's actually not fun to be on either side if the numbers are way out of whack. If you're in a huge majority, (and you like world PvP), you find little opportunity to have engaging, entertaining (challenging) PvP.
Likewise, if you're way outnumbered, you never get any good PvP because you're constantly being steamrolled. Personally I prefer this to being on the majority side though
Re:Here's what will happen (Score:1)
Outnumbering the opponent on servers means you have to wait forever to get into PVP. Otherwise you really don't care.
So the scenario should be more like:
Alliance on Server A is overpopulated. Alliance member on Server A gets tired of being unable to enter any battleground. Alliance members on Server A leave in droves for server B where Alliance isn't overpopulated.
Of course, the problem is finding a server where alliance isn't overpopulated, but the problem doesn't reinforce itself lik
Re:Here's what will happen (Score:2)
The Battlegrounds pretty much did it for me. No offense to those who enjoy WoW (I love EVE, and there are quite a few who simply don't get what the appeal of a game that's more a business sim than an MMORPG could be), but the Battlegrounds looked like some MMORPG version of Counterstrike to me. I've seen
Re:Here's what will happen (Score:2)
Re:Great, Fantastic Irony (Score:2)
So, it is no surprise that their forums are slashdot'ed.
Re:Great, Fantastic Irony (Score:2)
Still thought, I'm baffled that on some days it's just rotten (or Login Server Down) when there's no obvious excuse. The forums weren't working right today before
Re:Great, Fantastic Irony (Score:2)
For some unknown reason, Blizzard just does a poor job much of the time. If Blizzard were in the financial industry they'd be out of business already.
I can tell by the style of your post that you too miss posting on the WoW forums. I imagine it's hard to go more than an hour or two without an outlet for your "lern2play" and "crymorenoob" comments...
Re:Great, Fantastic Irony (Score:2)
Get real. +1 for the Blizzard fanboi who modded it offtopic.
Re:Great, Fantastic Irony (Score:2)
Re:Great, Fantastic Irony (Score:2)
It's been stated before that the ingame login server is the same as the forum login server. I think I've read before it's tied into the battlenet login servers too. I'm betting the problem is
There will ALWAYS be someone upset (Score:2)
1)Group one wanted more server fixing
2)Group two wanted more server content
When fixing 1) group 2) posts. Seems pretty simple to me.
Ironic/sad - this is posted now (Score:1)
Preemptive PR, bad timing or sychronicity? All I can say is: "Way to go Blizz!"
grayd skool (Score:1, Flamebait)
Hmmm.. "We know that many player is are eager for this service to be implemented"?
I see... it makes perfect sense.
On a more serious note, you'd think a company as "big" as Blizzard would catch such an error...
Re:grayd skool (Score:1)
Whatever it takes to get you through the day. Ye gawds.
Demonizing Blizzard (Score:5, Insightful)
People are really willing to demonize Blizzard for things like server performance. Lots of claims about how I would just fix the code, or how I would buy more servers, or how I would do this or that.
The fact of the matter is that Blizzard is running one of the single largest scale applications in the world period. Their database requirements are way more than anyone reading Slashdot (who doesn't also work for Blizzard or Google) has ever had any experience with.
No matter how much experience you think you have, all the rules change when you cross certain thresholds, and even if you're a really good enterprise architect, unless you have a single data-drive heavily-transactional application with many millions of users, and many billions of records, you don't know what they're going through.
No matter how sinister you might think Blizzard is, they're still a for-profit company (actually, the more sinister you think Blizzard is, the more this applies). For-profit companies don't do things (like be lax about fixing their network problems) if they can help it, since they do lose customers for that sort of thing, and that obviously directly correlates to lost income.
I guarantee that there's tremendous pressure from on top to fix these issues, and if they're not fixed yet, then it's because your php website that supports 20 SIMULTANEOUS users(!!!) was a little easier to fix.
Consider things like common complaints, "Why don't they just throw more hardware at it," maybe their data centers have consumed their floor space, air conditioning capacity, or available power supply. They have 5 independant data centers in the U.S., and each data center can support up to 40 realms. That means, yes, data centers have limited capacity, and if you're full, you have no option to put another server in without begining to risk bringing the entire data center down. You can add more capacity when you physically enlarge the building, buy bigger air conditioners, and also get the power company to run bigger power lines, each of which can take many months to complete.
Not all things are easily fixed with brute force, and people's jobs are on the line here guaranteed, the guys who are in charge of this stuff are more interested in it working than you, since you can turn your computer off and go outside; they can't just ignore their jobs.
Re:Demonizing Blizzard (Score:2)
But you should consider that there are plenty of companies who live by their network and service availability and who are running vastly larger datacenters than Blizzard is.
5.5M users (or 6 or 6.5 or whatever they're up to now) pales in comparison to what many financial institutions support every day, or what payment processing companies support, or what trading and clearing companies support.
And the size of database that Blizzard supports is a jo
Re:Demonizing Blizzard (Score:2)
Re:Demonizing Blizzard (Score:5, Informative)
Right because if you think Blizzard's system is even remotely as complex or robust you are either totally ignorant of real financial systems or being obtuse on purpose. If there's a transaction error on a Blizzard database (and yes these do happen somewhat frequently) a person might complain via in game mail. An error with a financial transaction and laws may have been broken.
Blizzard is doing nothing special, the fact that they are having the same growing pains issues as every MMORPG simply shows their arrogance.
Re:Demonizing Blizzard (Score:1)
You know, I don't really remember any other MMORPGs ever reaching 6+ million subscribers. But then again maybe I'm just being arrogant...
Re:Demonizing Blizzard (Score:2)
Re:Demonizing Blizzard (Score:3, Funny)
Either that or you just landed on Community Chest.
Re:Demonizing Blizzard (Score:1)
Re:Demonizing Blizzard (Score:2)
Re:Demonizing Blizzard (Score:2)
Re:Demonizing Blizzard (Score:2)
It's really simple. If the servers aren't performing well (this is subjective but Blizzard is currently admiting this) then Blizzard should not be selling new subscriptions.
The fact that they are still charging for new subscriptions while the servers are borked is crooked. Whether they are unwilling to fix the servers, unable to fix the servers, or if nobody on the planet is able to fix the servers, is irrelevant.
Re:Demonizing Blizzard (Score:2, Insightful)
But seriously, I'm not one to tell them how to fix the problem - true, but I do know things have not gotten better in the last year, they've tumbled worse. And when it comes down to it, they don't pay me to fix their computers, or even understand them. I pay them for a service they aren't delivering. That's the most aggrevating thing a company can do. It would be different if Blizzard wo
Re:Demonizing Blizzard (Score:1)
That said, I think it is very fair for us to all claim Blizzard went into this without enough foresight, and it is their own fault they are now over their heads.
If their datacenters are op
Re:Demonizing Blizzard (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Demonizing Blizzard (Score:1)
Re:Demonizing Blizzard (Score:2)
Bullshit. The NYSE is far larger, and so is your regional ATM network. eBay is way bigger. Fortune 500 companies run datacenters with much more computing nodes.
Blizzard's main problem is that they are trying to run one of the cheapest large-scale applications ever.
No matter how much experience you think you have, all the rules change when you cross certain thresholds, and even if you're a r
Re:Demonizing Blizzard (Score:2)
Re:Demonizing Blizzard (Score:2)
Tell me, what's the biggest difference between a MMOG architechture and a transactional web architecture?
Re:Demonizing Blizzard (Score:2)
And actually, not even google has experience running an application as scaled as WOW, their frontend is so trivial there really is no comparison.
Re:Demonizing Blizzard (Score:2)
WOW! Way to make yourself look completely computer ignorant! Google searches trillions of websites simultaneously to millions of users almost hourly. The 5~6 million user base World of Warcraft caters to is water vapor compared to the number of users Google (and GMail and Google Earth and Google Groups and Google News and Froogle to say the least) serves.
And if you want to see a computer system that with enough processing power to make a
Re:Demonizing Blizzard (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Demonizing Blizzard (Score:2)
Re:Demonizing Blizzard (Score:2)
Re:Demonizing Blizzard (Score:2)
Yes and Holy mother of God, hell yes. Speed is everything in the information age, ESPECIALLY when it comes to the NYSE. If the NYSE went down for just 1 hour, whoever screwed up would be blacklisted from working every single corporation even the world for the rest of their lives. Thats how damned important server stability can necessary.
You response indicates a grave misunderstanding of the dif
Re:Demonizing Blizzard (Score:2)
It's a very different type of data C.R.U.D. operations which allow you to focus on making the R. aspect insanely efficient while the others can complete whenever they complete. Also, even the R. aspect is not accuracy sensitive, if two people from di
Blizzard deserves the demonization they get... (Score:1)
Re:Blizzard deserves the demonization they get... (Score:2)
Re:Blizzard deserves the demonization they get... (Score:2)
With Guild Wars there is only a single point of login with some central place to hold player data. They do not seem to have the problems that
Re:Demonizing Blizzard (Score:1)
I understand where you are coming from, but it seems to me that they should be keeping everyone in the loop as to what going on. I kno
Re:Demonizing Blizzard (Score:2)
I know their datacenters are limited in space but you cannot tell me that in a year and a half, they could not:
- increase the amount of data centers
- reduc
Player's and players (Score:3, Funny)
"We know that many player's are eager for this..."
I note a common error here, and offer the following. It is intended to be a polite, adult comment, not offered as an insult or to denigrate anyone's intelligence.
"'s", as in "Bob's" or "player's" is used in reference to something belonging to or about Bob, or a single player. As it appears in the post, players should not have an apostrophe. Without a ', it then refers to multiple players, generic players, not 'a' player, but |some, all, many, the| players.
This is a remarkably common error, and your writing stands a greater chance for being taken seriously if you try to avoid this sort of thing. Some grammar/spelling/usage mistakes are much more easily overlooked, but things like the misplaced ' as above are SO common they become worthy of polite comment. The writer is submitting in a professional capacity, representing a company, and seeks to have his comments taken seriously. That's more likely to happen if he avoids most of the more basic mistakes, such as that one.
Again, I intend this as a polite, reasonable observation, with honest intent to help someone, not to cause ill-will. I apologize to anyone that feels offended, and ask that you re-read the above, while considering me smiling as I write it. Rather than feel offended, I'd rather you read the above and come away feeling empowered with new information.
Blizzard and WoW (Score:2)
I'm going to go out on a limb here and state as I have before that I do not consider Blizzard the evil company that many seem to make them out to be. Yes, they're strict, and yes, they come across as somewhat paranoid with regards to the rules, but given w
Re:Blizzard and WoW (Score:2)
Please, enlighten me. Which software ownership was violated?
Re:Blizzard and WoW (Score:2)
My own perspective about bnetd though is that Blizzard (and anyone who develops an application or protocol, for that matter) has the right to decide whether to open the source of said application or document the workings of the protocol, or not.
I'm not going to disagree with anyone who says that FOSS is a good thing. It's beneficial in a lot of different ways. What I do have problems with on the
One-shot case study, eh? (Score:2)
Point in case: yeah, so your new character created on an empty server still has no problems. Whop-de-freakin'-do. Big surprise that. Mine had no problems after a week either.
Skip forward a month or two, and the server was already full to the brim. Yay for 30 minutes waiting in a queue. Well, ok, that still worked. Then it was occasionally
Re:One-shot case study, eh? (Score:2)
>server still has no problems. Whop-de-freakin'-do. Big surprise
>that. Mine had no problems after a week either.
What I meant was primarily that none of the *gameplay* issues which I saw with UO are present in WoW. Yes, I've experienced a queue on my resident server now, (Jubei'Thos) and yes, I've also now experienced the joy of Tuesday night. One other problem which I'll admit having is that on my server at least, Alliance players appar