'World of Warcraft' patch downs servers for hours

The latest patch to the popular online game "World of Warcraft" has led to the game's servers being down for hours longer than expected.

According to Gil Shif, public relations manager for "World of Warcraft" publisher Blizzard Entertainment, the latest major patch to the game--version 1.10, which is designed to adjust the talents of priests--caused some "snags" that have affected the servers going back online as planned.

"It's part of the normal process," said Shif, "and unfortunately, it went a little longer than expected today."

Blizzard regularly devotes Tuesdays to scheduled maintenance and has implemented eight previous major patches, the most recent being version 1.09 in January. But while the company routinely requires server downtime for its patches and maintenance procedures, today's implementation caught it off guard.

"With previous patches, it hasn't taken (this) long," said Shif. "But you never know until you can full identify the issues and take care of it."

In addition, the main "World of Warcraft" Web site was experiencing extended delays Tuesday, but Shif said that had more to do with the site being slammed by users seeking the patch than any kind of technological problem.

And in any case, he said, Blizzard has been providing regular updates throughout the patch process, including notices beforehand that it was imminent.

At 6 p.m. PST Tuesday, Shif said that some servers were beginning to come back online, but that the process of getting all players up and running would be slow.

[Macniatic]

Downtime and lag are a common thing in WoW

We are used to downtime and lag in WoW. This is not the first time
the maintenance period lasted a lot more than expected.

My server went online for a couple of minutes, and then back
offline... I wonder if they are having problems with the hamsters
they use...

[wazzledoozle]

6:30

All realms were shut down again due to a bug. Still down as I write this..

[Atarian]

Evidence that Blizzard overcharges

What a surprise, WoW servers are down.
With Blizzard getting millions of dollars (every month) in revenue from the $15 they charge, you'd think they could hire some real IT help to help test their patches before implementing them.

[thannen]

It Gets Better

Hah, you think its bad that the servers werent up untill around 7, well, they had to shut the servers down again because of a problem. Its 11:18 and the servers still arent up. Practically a days loss of gametime. Also, the time that the servers were up, it was near impossible to log in, because of the common authentication server problems that exist. Blizzard isnt looking too great today.

[brian.lee]

It's a dam good thing

It's a dam good thing these guys aren't putting rockets into space, this would have been the shortest flight ever. But really this is unacceptable, and I'm glad News.com posted it and I hope Blizzard management is reading it. This isn't a server crash it's a patch that doesn't seem to have been properely tested. I say that because it's exactly what happened servers were patched they were up for just over an hour and than came back down again. I don't suspose they could just buy a few of these... http://www.top500.org/lists/2005/11/basic =P

[nhandler]

Good

Perhaps this will give WoW users a chance to get outside. j/k!!

WoW detractors

From the tone of many of the posters here, this event is the greatest excuse to slam what is easily the most popular MMO of all time. Yes there are issues today. But no, all of this "I told you so", and arrogant "Well *I* don't play games anyways", and "Oh, oh, look how bad Blizzard is looking now", solves absolutely nothing. Just be patient and let them fix the issue. Show me a man who says he's *never* been though a major IT issue caused by something just plain unforeseen, despite all testing, and I'll show you a liar.

[motex52]

Under Funded Incompetent I.T. Staff

Blizzard servers came up for 30 minutes yesterday, went down and never came up again! This is the result of an insufficiently tested patch from an under staffed, incompetent group of programmers who write code with more bugs than Microsoft. This is not the first time and will not be the last. Very little of the huge amount of money they make is spent suppporting the product.

[baswwe]

DOS attack

Other places reports a Denial of Service attack.

[thenet411]

Oh no! You may have to go outside!

Get a grip people. Oh no! The sky is falling because you can't play your game!

Go outside! See the wonders that exist outside of your dark and gloomy house!

[TheShane]

People don't understand what they don't know.

Servers do not have a magic button that when pressed brings them back up in working order.

For any System Admin the first thing is to try and resolve any issue a server is having without having to resort to bringing it down. If all else fails and a server crashes it can be painful to bring it up and fix the problem. This may include multiple reboots and configuration changes, not to mention additional patching/testing to their own software.

Just because you can't log into the server doesn't mean it isn't up, it just means they have the remote access disabled for their software. 80% of all problems are probably known to them well before you notice anything. Infact they could have found a problem and fixed without you even knowing it existed.

But don't they have testing servers for this?
Of course they do but you can't always find every issue large or small when testing. You try to simulate real world activity as much as possible but the result will never be the same.

[TheShane]

Apples and Oranges

You are comparing apples with oranges... Until WoW came along the most users any MMORPG had was 500,000. Blizzard now has 6 Million active users playing it's WoW title.

Supporting 500,000 users is far easier to do then 6 Million. If you actually did the math you would see you are actually getting a deal playing WoW then, for example, EQ2. Blizzard has a ton more hardware to support then Sony for it's MMORPG. Your payment goes towards the whole cost of supporting all hardware and not just the server you are currenlty logged into.

[bobj123]

Good

People that play this game have a problem. Get outside and "meet people"

[techguy83]

and thus

when I get off work I'll go back to playing Final Fantasy Online.

But seriously though, things happen, so get over it.

[Bill Dautrive]

This wouldn't be a big deal

Except that this is yet another mistep. Server queues and lag are ongoing and nothing proactive is being done about it.

New server do not help very much. New servers that are used to split other servers and a means to control server population will help. They refuse to do this.

So many things they do is the hard way. Take soul shards, allowing them to stack would have solved the problem, instead they shoved out soul bags that barely address the original issue and cause new problems(less general inventory space) that toally negate any gains.

In short Blizzard is acting like SOE, the most retarded MMOG company in the world.

[dheadley]

You do know don't you...

That when the announce that they have 6 million regestered users, they mean that since its initial launch to this day that 6 million people have registered. It is not saying that there are 6 million current subscriptions in any way, shape or form. The number of people I have seen try WoW and then leave in just a month or two after making thier first level 60 is staggering in this game vs. other MMO's i've played before.

I moved with a guild from EQ1 that had stayed together for nearly 7 years to EQ2 apon release, over 100 people. We hated EQ2 and decided to switch to WoW, having lost some people and gained others we were at 120ish people at the time. Of all those people only 4 actively play the game anymore. the rest of us have quit little by little over the past year because the game is sooo boring at lvl 60, and making alts is just too boring when you can get one to 60 in a week or so without even playing too long per day.

read any server forum on wow or a guilds forums and there is a constant common thread of goodbye i'm leaving the game posts. they are not maintaining 6 million users on any day at all. not to mention that a very large percentage of the 6 million people that did register weren't even playing on the US servers but totally seperate localised servers overseas.

[buddda]

Always down

That server is always down
.