World of Warcraft Outage Charted

miller60 writes "World of Warcraft has had extended downtime in the past 24 hours, apparently due to problems with a content patch installation. Blizzard's first MMORPG had recurrent downtime problems in January. The performance problems haven't slowed the frantic growth for WoW, which now has more than 1.5 million subscribers (which, as the article notes, works out to at least $26,000 an hour in assumed revenue)."

Comments

What outage?

[Temporal]

World of Warcraft has had extended downtime in the past 24 hours

That's odd. I have been playing World of Warcraft for the past 21 hours. Literally. I don't know of this outage of which you speak. I was disconnected maybe three or four times in 21 hours of play, which is more that usual, but I'm typically disconnected from AIM three or four times a day and no one ever complains that AIM isn't reliable. I did not lose any progress any of the times I was disconnected and was able to reconnect immediately.

The reports of WoW's instability are perhaps massively exaggerated. Also, note that netcraft's graph of the web server doesn't say anything about the game servers. I couldn't care less if www.worldofwarcraft.com is working while I play. thottbot.com and allakhazam.com are more important, frankly. In all likelihood, the web server was having trouble serving all the people who went to read about the patch and bitch on the forums about everything new that they hated.

(And, yeah, before you ask... I'm on vacation.)

Re:What outage?

[Inominate]

Are you on crack? Or just on a low-population server?

Some of the servers have been dying nightly like clockwork on a daily basis for weeks now. The patch only made things much much worse.

I can't actually think of an mmog launch that has gone as amazingly badly as this, even SWG pulled thier shit together faster than this.

And yea, i'm playing it anyways.

Re:What outage?

[Temporal]

Low-population server. Which is most of them. These articles really need to specify that it is only the top 10-15 realms -- if that, even -- that have problems. New players should obviously not create characters there, and existing players now have the option to transfer to a low-pop server.

I mean, really... a server can only handle so many players. The hardware has limits. What do you expect Blizzard to do about it, beyond what they have done? Either they can start assigning players to low-population realms by force (like FFXI, which everyone hated for that) or they can try very hard to encourage players to choose low-pop servers and let the rest suffer the consequences.

The problem isn't that there aren't enough servers. If all the players were evenly distributed among all current servers, there would be no problem. The problem is that players have naturally wanted to play with their friends, which has encouraged people to gravitate towards a few servers while the rest lay mostly empty. And, so, yeah, those servers have problems. And even if Blizzard added 20 more, the high-pop servers would still have problems.

Re:What outage?

[Kris_J]

Your point about the graph being for www.worldofwarcraft.com is valid. The rest of your post, not so much.

As I type this, servers were taken down for a patch install about 40 hours ago. I'm told some came back up 5-8 hours after going down only to have major disconnection issues for a huge proportion of the population. Some servers were not brought up while attempts were made to fix the problem. It was roughly 17 hours after the initial take-down that I was finally about to log onto Proudmoore. I personally had limited opportunity to do anything at that time. Some further 4-5 hours after that (almost at the 24 hours mark) Proudmoore went down hard again. I was past the "realm not found" point, but I hadn't acutally loaded the world. I had a social event for the next few hours, but it did seem to be back up at about the 26 hour mark. This was getting late local time so I went to bed. This morning (34-36 hour mark) I again had problems getting on, with large delays at the "Authenticating" point of login. This can mean that the realm is up but the login server is down. As far as I know it's been up for the last few hours.

The latest patch seems to have caused major technical problems for some users. In addition, login server problems have amplified problems with disconnects and crashes -- meaning that if the game locks up on you, you might not be able to log back in for a couple of hours. That said, my SLI rig appears to be more stable, not less.

Between personal committments and downtime I think I've spent about 4 hours in game in the last 48.

Re:What outage?

[Temporal]

Your information is out of date. The following transfers are currenty allowed:

• Arthas to Nathrezim
• Warsong to Bonechewer
• Bleeding Hollow to Crushridge
• Illidan to Stonemaul
• Blackrock to Daggerspine
• Stormreaver to Stormscale
• Shattered Hand to Bloodscalp
• Mannoroth to Destromath
• Blackhand to Windrunner
• Whisperwind to Azjol-Nerub

Warsongers have been trashing my home server of Bonechewer for many days now. Trust me, transfers are active.

I guess your server isn't on the list, though. Sorry.

Re:What outage?

[AuMatar]

I've been playing since day 1. I have a level 60 and multiple 20+ alts. I have been unable to log in... three times. I've had difficulty getting past the login server maybe a half dozen times. There's a small subset of very troubled servers, the rest work more or less perfectly.

Re:What outage?

[dasunt]

Currently, my understanding of MMORPGs is that they keep a copy of the world on each server. When a player logs into that server, that player exists only in that server's copy of the world.

Why can't MMORPGs set up the server-clusters so that the world is partitioned into seperate zones on the servers, depending on load. So a player can (say) log onto the European server cluster, enter zone Foo, and the zones Foo, Bar, and Baz are currently located on server #5. If zone Bar gets too many players on it, zone Bar is seemlessly transferred to a mostly idle server along with all of its players.

What's preventing this?

Re:What outage?

[GoofyBoy]

>The hardware has limits.

Trust me, Blizzard hasn't reached it yet. And it doesn't give me a warm fuzzy feeling when they start posting for key database and network positions soon after the release.

>What do you expect Blizzard to do about it, beyond what they have done?

1. Not screw up how they assign players: i.e. Agent Dawn server. This is a RPG server, as labeled by Blizzard, but for 3 months(?) everyone who allowed the game to pick a PvE server got assigned to it.
2. Have the ability to move characters to another server. They are only this limited functionality now, months after it should have been.
3. Assign limits to servers. If you have a friend who is on the server, have them "sponser" you so you can get on. Do something to limit it.

>The problem is that players have naturally wanted to play with their friends,

No, the problem is Blizzard didn't forsee this and is able to handle this.

Re:What outage?

[Anonymous Coward]

What's preventing this?

Fundamental server design?

A distributed network of game servers is easy enough, but one where game state shifts instantly and seamlessly from machine to machine "at need"? If the server "needed" to move part of the game world somewhere else, it wouldn't have the free time to wrap it up and transmit it to another machine, which in turn wouldn't have the free time to open up its new world, get the memory sorted out, oh, and all this time keep serving the content as its being transferred. Plus the whole seamless transfer of the internet connections, which would be damn hard as well, even with some kind of front end redirection, it'd have to be notified when the data/connection transfer was in progress and completed.

Re:What outage?

[cbuskirk]

They do. Based on the many crashes on Kil' Jaden, heres what I gather are the there is a master server which handles global/guild chat, auction, and mail functions. Then there is a server for each of the two continents. Before there was a bug with boats that would cause the Eastern Continent to reset constantly however those in the West were unaffected. Instance Servers. There are likely many servers which host private instanced dungeons for groups, and these probably get scaled with population and popularity. Also based on observation and what other players have said there is at least one separate server for loot drops, which is what causes "loot lag" where a player gets stuck in the looting position while the server is queried.

At least Blizzard gives credits...

[antdude]

for the major downtimes, even on specific servers. I think so far, I had six total days credited since the first week of the game release. Also, they give you XP bonus in case you got disconnected outoside of the inn/city.

Still the new kid on the block

[flipper65]

Keep in mind that WoW is the new kid on the block. What has happened to them is virtually the same as what we see every day here. They were /. According to every interview I read they were not expecting anything like the response they recieved. That kind of slammage is gonna requre a serious rescaling of the backend which will not happen overnight. Imagine if you had 1.5 million users banging away on your project, no matter how careful you were or how much you tested, things happen in the real world that don't happen in the dev sandbox. As far as endgame content is concerned, again, it's a new game. To compare it to games like EQ with its X number of expansions is insane. Give them time to stabalize their platform and I am sure you will see more content.

Salary

[senocular]

Hey! $26,000 - thats what I make a year too!

... what?
Hour?
Huh?

Re:WoW = Modern day Ultima Online

[secolactico]

generally jackassery on the PvP servers

Anybody remembers UO in the begining? There was no such thing as non-PvP server (shard). Once you stepped outside the protection of the town guards it was no-man's-land. Anybody could kill you. Anybody could loot your corpse (wether they killed you or not) and anybody could loot your kills.

And if you carried too much money, suddenly you couldn't move because it was too heavy.

God, I miss those days... not. Ok, so I do a little. Maybe I'll reactivate my account for nostalgia's sake.

This IS a bit ridiculous

[BladesP9]

I play World of Warcraft. And during my non working hours I have been playing it a lot the last several weeks because I really enjoy the game. I enjoy playing online with my friends and clan-mates and I enjoy the fantasy-based concept of the Warcraft universe even though I did not enjoy other Warcraft games.

That said, the downtime and disconnect issue with the WoW system is seriously irritating me. The other night I lost about 2 hours worth of tasks and resource building because of a server glitch. If this had been the first time this had happened then I wouldn't really think too much about it... but I've been disconnected on almost a nightly basis from the "Alleria" server. So much so that I'm about to the point where I'm going to demand that Blizzard move me to a more stable server or I may deactivate my account until they get their act together.

Which... honestly, really sucks because it's a good game and I'm willing to pay the $15 a month to play (even though I once said I'd never do that because it was too expensive). I just want what I am paying for. I don't think that is unreasonable for any customer to demand. If we're paying, then we deserve consistent, stable servers. I understand the task of trying to run a server with heavy load at times and I can't imagine the logistics of trying to accommodate 1.5 million gamers - but they should have been prepared for this... and increasingly I'm of the opinion that they were not.

Re:You're probably right...

[Anonymous Coward]

blah blah blah

Wait, you've posted the exact same rant before.

And no one cared then, either.

Face it: An MMORPG means exactly what it says: Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game. Which is what WoW is.

It does not mean "massively boring grind-fest". WoW is an MMORPG, and it's succeeding by allowing the more casual players to actually succeed at it.

As for the "hard core" players, they're freaking nuts. I don't have eight hours a day to play the game. I want the same chance to enjoy the content as anyone else. The thing is, most other MMORPGs don't really have any more content than WoW. They take care of those "hard core" players by making them pull the lever for hours on end before getting a reward.

Then the "hard core" players think that because they spent eight hours doing a quest instead of one hour, that they enjoyed seven additional hours of content. Wrong. They enjoyed seven additional hours of the same content.

WoW has plenty of content, but not enough time sinks to keep this crowd pleased. Which is fine with me, because I don't want to play time sinks or, really, want to play with people that do.

Productivity

[CmdrTookah]

I am pretty sure that University profs and middle management have sabotaged the servers in an effort to increase the attendance rates and productivity that has been seen since the outset of the game.

Anyway, service has been fine for me.

I really tire of your type

[Shivetya]

They have had nearly 5 months to fix their problems. They are pulling in how much per month? I haven't seen them stop charging people until they get it right. Sure they credit a day or two here but they continue to charge.

That 1.5m looks impressive until you realize its worldwide and the server problems most are concerned with are those in North America. We don't know what their status is in Korea and elsewhere. As for the unexpected NA numbers, well they had enough hardware on hand for 80+ servers which tells me they did anticipate a crush.

There is NO end game for WOW except PvP and Battlegrounds. New game or not they should have had enough in place to satisfy the players. Instead they released before they were done, again a common theme, and have decided to let the players sit and spin until they get the updates out.

So quit apologizing for them. Your only hurting the fans and Blizzard isn't going to reward you for your kissing up. If anything they sit back, chuckle, and think "how nice to have fanbois to eat our shit". This is a big corporation, they are selling a service, they damn well better get it right and quickly if they keep charging for it.