WoW Server Stability

Kguku · Post by **Kguku** » February 26, 2005, 8:55 pm

Dear fucking god, this is giving me flashbacks of when SoE released luclin. It's sure amazing that after a patch to address lag, all of a sudden you get massive hardware failures at multiple clusters? YIPPIE FUCKING SKIPPIE!

Just needed to vent, month fucking 3 and this crap is still happening, and infact seems worse than the first month.

Mr Bacon · Post by **Mr Bacon** » February 26, 2005, 9:13 pm

Sounds like fun...

Nilaman · Post by **Nilaman** » February 26, 2005, 10:00 pm

You know, I do not mind it in WoW as much as I did in EQ.

Based on the assumption that it takes me less time in WoW to achieve a goal then it did in EQ. I do not NEED that extra hour to grind in WoW.

I use that time to do other things that I did not have time to do when playing EQ. I have taken up Metal Gear Solid 3, and I am loving it.

Boogahz · Post by **Boogahz** » February 26, 2005, 11:31 pm

Hmm, was there a patch today? It must have been after I left for work. Sad that I have had no latency issues at all on Gorefiend since around New Years.

Kguku · Post by **Kguku** » February 27, 2005, 7:26 am

the patch was on tuesday, and since then there's a number of realms that have had some major issues. Those being the ones that are down tonight, and have been down basically all day saturday. Lightbringer being one of them (that's the one I'm on).

Just bloody annoying as hell.

Truant · Post by **Truant** » February 27, 2005, 2:29 pm

I play at 5am pst.

No problems here!

Keverian FireCry · Post by **Keverian FireCry** » February 27, 2005, 5:25 pm

Suramar has rarely ever had to be brought down. Yay for low population servers!

Drinsic Darkwood · Post by **Drinsic Darkwood** » February 27, 2005, 5:32 pm

Nod, I've rarely ever had problems with Suramar. I've certainly never had to experience a log-in queue.

miir · Post by **miir** » February 28, 2005, 11:30 am

Nilaman wrote:You know, I do not mind it in WoW as much as I did in EQ.

Based on the assumption that it takes me less time in WoW to achieve a goal then it did in EQ. I do not NEED that extra hour to grind in WoW.

So shitty service in WoW is considered acceptable?

cadalano · Post by **cadalano** » February 28, 2005, 12:26 pm

So shitty service in WoW is considered acceptable?

Yes. To me, the quality of the game pardons any downtime I experience. Just the same as I enjoyed EverQuest even during periods of poor customer service. I sat around, checking the server every few minutes, just so I could get back on as soon as possible.. with thousands of other players. Its that kind of behavior that proves that EverQuest, and WoW, are quality games. I'm not jumping for joy when servers go down, but I'm certainly not going to whine about it. 13 bucks a month and a little patience is still a god damn bargain.

But that aside, You're swinging around at nothing, miir. Preference for either game, in any scope, is based on nothing save personal opinion. If you're here to hurt the game we play, you've already done all the damage that you can do by not playing it. If you're here to counter-troll, or whatever the fuck, then we all get your point, and we're all hurt very deeply and to great effect, alright? Either way, don't you think you could move on with your life soon?

miir · Post by **miir** » February 28, 2005, 12:49 pm

Nah, I was just curious.
A lot of the swipes at EQ2 are based on the shitty service that EQ1 had.

If you're here to hurt the game we play, you've already done all the damage that you can do by not playing it.

Actually, I did play WoW for a month. I quite enjoyed it, it's a very fun game. Other than my troll/spam outburst last thursday, I have never made any baseless criticisms of WoW.

The thing is, if I could not immediately log onto EQ2 when I wanted to play, I would cancel my account. I don't understand how shitty service like that is tolerated or can be considered acceptable... regardless of the game.

masteen · Post by **masteen** » February 28, 2005, 1:12 pm

Because 95% of the time they're able to log in with no issues. The other 5% of the time, they simply have to play on a lower pop server.

Some of us have almost no issues at all. WW, for example, is very seldom down. Aside of scheduled maint., I can't remember it going down since the lag issues shortly after release.

miir · Post by **miir** » February 28, 2005, 1:38 pm

OK, fair enough.

Say what you want about EQ2 but server stability has never been an issue.

Aabidano · Post by **Aabidano** » February 28, 2005, 2:32 pm

miir wrote:if I could not immediately log onto EQ2 when I wanted to play, I would cancel my account.

How long did you play EQ1?

masteen · Post by **masteen** » February 28, 2005, 4:32 pm

miir wrote:OK, fair enough.

Say what you want about EQ2 but server stability has never been an issue.

miir · Post by **miir** » February 28, 2005, 4:58 pm

Yeah, 300k+ is pretty low.

masteen · Post by **masteen** » February 28, 2005, 5:41 pm

WoW has that beat by almost a million.

Marbus · Post by **Marbus** » February 28, 2005, 6:06 pm

Current number is ~750,000 right now, while not over a million ~450,000 is a pretty large number and more than double that of EQ2.

Marb

masteen · Post by **masteen** » February 28, 2005, 6:25 pm

You're a little behind, Marb. WoW is sitting at 1.25 million subscribers now.

miir · Post by **miir** » February 28, 2005, 6:40 pm

Nah Marb, I think WoW is up close a million (euro release pumped 300k into it)... still nowhere close to 1.3 mil (or 'almost a million more' than EQ2).

Regardless, the original Everquest was considered a success when it had 200k subscribers.... I'd hardly consider 300-350k to be a 'low subscrieber rate'. Furthermore, Lineage 2 has more 'subscreibers' than EQ2 and WoW combined. Does Lineage 2 have similar server stability issues?

Anything over 250k in a MMOG I think would be considered an unqualified success.

One thing that remains to be seen is the longevity of these recent MMOGs. It's my opinion that EQ2 has the upper hand over WoW mostly because of the more indepth gameplay and vast amount of content. On the other hand, Blizzard has proven that even simplistic games like Diablo can enjoy popularity for a number of years.
I'm curious if Blizzard is going to rethink thier past history of patching and 'tuning'.... EQ2 seems to have adopted a (fairly succesful so far) model of frequent 'small' patches and a large content patch every 3-5 weeks.

miir · Post by **miir** » February 28, 2005, 6:49 pm

http://www.wowcensus.com/overall_stats.php

Since there is no way of accurately associating characters with accounts unless you have full access to Blizzards databases, I'm guessing that the 1.5 million characters are not an accurate subscription number.

Really, do you think 1 single server (Silverhand) has over 30k players who only play on that on single server?

I'll also assume that the average player has at least 1 alt... so the 1.25 million that you quoted, masteen, is grossly inflated.

Marbus · Post by **Marbus** » February 28, 2005, 6:55 pm

The smaller patches would be a good idea but they have to figure out how to do that without taking everything down for 4 hours IMHO. Sony has had almost 6 years to figure this stuff out, they definitely didn't know how to do when I discussed a job opportunity with Brad years ago... it was one of their main hurdles.

I disagree though that EQ2 will be the longer lasting, with greater numbers, if Blizzard can correct the server stability problems AND more importantly add more high level content.

From a business standpoint their model was blown when WoW released in regards to the number of players. I'm guessing their model in regards to new content was also blow because they didn't expect people to level so fast either. It take times to bring on new developers and get them up to speed. They are obviously hiring new people, as you can see from their website, I'm guessing it will just take a few more months to get everything going as they would like.

Blizzard also usually has an expansion up their sleve as well. I would be be suprised if the new developers were hired to focus on that in order to get it out early. My guess is another contenent with a playable race of light elves for the Horde (giving them a Paladin option) and some type of shamanistic race for the Alliance to balance things out a little.

EQ2 has the experience but currently WoW has the momentum, Blizzard just need to make sure they relize that and don't screw it up.

Marb

miir · Post by **miir** » February 28, 2005, 7:01 pm

WoW definately had some bloody impressive initial sales figures, but I'm starting to notice people just stopping playing WoW or playing it a lot less. Maybe it's burnout or lack of anything really interesting to do at level 60 unless you are in a top guild.

Wulfran · Post by **Wulfran** » February 28, 2005, 7:36 pm

miir wrote:Say what you want about EQ2 but server stability has never been an issue.

Fair enough as well, and I can see some of this being that SOE had the EQ (and to some degree) SWG experiences to draw from. They should have had a realistic idea of what kind of resources they'd need. Blizzard feels like they are trying to "re-invent the wheel" in this regard. Will it hurt them? Possibly, but as others have said they have a huge pile of momentum and it isn't affecting all servers. For those of us on the "problem servers" (i'm on Lightbringer) it does suck, we wish they would get it fixed, and although a lot of us lived with the problems in the early days of EQ, WoW isn't the only game in town, like EQ was, for those who really get frustrated.

As for people who "stop playing it" I think its a little early to start getting too deep into it. The game is just over 3 months since release. Some people will simply think the hype isn't what they expected. Some, who have never played an online game like this won't like to be just a cog in the world, instead of a focal point. Burnout? Possible. A lot of hard core gamers will have gone out to "beat the game" as fast as they could. There are people like this in every game though. Boredom? Yes, some top guilds have defeated the top encounters (i.e. MC and Onyxia) but that is the smallest fraction, and at risk of sounding like a fanboi, Blizzard has already announced there will be more high end content forthcoming (pvp and pve) in the near future. Again, we'll have to see how they deliver on the promises they make.

noel · Post by **noel** » February 28, 2005, 7:40 pm

I'm not making excuses for Blizzard. Their server/network performance has been unacceptable, even though it hasn't really affected me.

That said, there's an entire thread devoted to EQ2 having a weekend outage in the EQ2 forum.

http://www.veeshanvault.org/forums/view ... hp?t=12708

Overall though, EQ2's servers have been many times more usable and stable than WoW's.

Adela hit the nail on the head though. People continue playing WoW for the same reasons they continued playing EQ1 when it has server issues. They enjoy the game.

I suspect that if EQ2 began to have server issues, it would be much the same.

miir · Post by **miir** » February 28, 2005, 7:50 pm

That said, there's an entire thread devoted to EQ2 having a weekend outage in the EQ2 forum.

Ah yeah, I knew someone would bring that up.
Eventhough it was over 2 months ago and all players were compensated with 2 days credit and a couple of days of bonus (double) XP. Heck, I even got a cool book to put in my room that gives a fun 'roleplay' account of the events of those 2 days.

noel · Post by **noel** » February 28, 2005, 7:52 pm

Not only does it say that in the thread, but I pretty much said as much in my post. The only point I was making was that even SOE has had some server instability issues.

Marbus · Post by **Marbus** » February 28, 2005, 7:55 pm

Correct me if I'm wrong but I thought only one guild had defeated Onyxia and it was a very hardcore JP guild. We are getting there but I didn't think it was commonplace even for the Uber Guilds like Ixtlan and the Booty Bay Bandits.

Marb

miir · Post by **miir** » February 28, 2005, 7:56 pm

noel wrote:Not only does it say that in the thread, but I pretty much said as much in my post. The only point I was making was that even SOE has had some server instability issues.

Well I think it's rather silly even comparing the ongoing server issues in WOW to a 1 time database issue in EQ2.

EQ2 has no server stability issues.

noel · Post by **noel** » February 28, 2005, 8:01 pm

I thought I qualified it rather well, and expressed a fairly negative and realistic view of Blizzard's server/network administration.

I'm not sure what else you're looking for.

Animalor · Post by **Animalor** » February 28, 2005, 8:01 pm

Correct me if I'm wrong but that may be due to the experience that they accumulated in the 6 years. Also the massive infrastructure that they run all their games on.

Blizzard is doing pretty well considering they have 250k concurrent connections routinely.

Fash · Post by **Fash** » February 28, 2005, 8:32 pm

On these game and server stability issues, I take the John Kerry position: I could do it better if given the chance.

Marbus · Post by **Marbus** » February 28, 2005, 8:39 pm

Actually according to their Website today they are running 530,000 peak, 200,000 more online than EQ2 total player base if we include Europe and Korea.

Marb

Hayley · Post by **Hayley** » February 28, 2005, 11:22 pm

WoW has server stability??

Boogahz · Post by **Boogahz** » February 28, 2005, 11:23 pm

I don't think they tip over...does that count?