Maintenance scheduling. Again.

12 hours notice to this one, and I've spotted that it's coming and luckily it won't affect my buffing regime much (it will, but only a little), but you HAVE to stop doing this. More notice is required; the minimum being the amount of time of the longest generally used buff (steaks, 72 hrs). If you give that we, the players (paying good money often), can adapt and it'll only be our own fault if we lose out.

But for now, thanks again for the lost resources. In 13 hrs, a lot of players buffs will end.

PS There was a time BB used the (semi-justified) excuse that sometimes it's a third-part maintenance and BB don't control it. Just an idea: check with them when they're going to do it in advance as you rely on that info to keep your customers happy.

Well, 13 hours just for :

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This is to perform routine checks on our database.

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is so much, I really was hope a better performance last time did a database maintenance, but game become worst and no improvements were noticeable.

For me, it is not annoying me, except the sending my lucky explorers for artifact search, and a few minor things.

I wish this time we will see some real improvements and fixes.

Couldn't a bit more notice have been given? We have to manage and time our buffs, explorer searches etc. and getting less than 12 hours can cause a lot of disruption.

OMG not again! If its just a routine check is it that hard to get notice with more time ahead? Last time, just a little time ago, I got chaos on my island and now I will get it again.

or send us all 250 stop buffs :cool:

Now that you are not having scheduled maintenance or updates how about giving us at least 36 hours of warning..

Merged.

BB may give us some candy because of this, though if they were lollipop men/ladies (crossing guards) there would be bodies everywhere.. :rolleyes:

push gems and another huge maintenance after it,need I say more, bb strike again (and not much notice as usual)

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Originally Posted by joe1969

push gems and another huge maintenance after it,need I say more, bb strike again (and not much notice as usual)

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Same old stories..
Perhaps we just need a comment from Saqui, assuring this was a decision made after careful consideration.. :cool:

Having played games which did not carry out such maintenance's and having to endure a months downtime as a result, I will take any of these sorts of maintenance's at any time.

I'd say BB isn't in control, when they "suddenly" decide to have a maintanence and not give us more notice than this. They found a big problem and cover it up with this bad excuse.

Oh brilliant, just logged in at my nomal time and the game is down for "routine" maintenance. :(
If it's routine then you must have known it was coming and could have given us at least 24 hrs notice, instead we only find out when the game is already down.

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Originally Posted by MikeLido

More notice is required; the minimum being the amount of time of the longest generally used buff (steaks, 72 hrs).

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*cough*RAINBOWS*cough*FOUR DAYS*cough*

routine implies it was planned, or even scheduled, which means that it should have been perfectly possible to give a reasonable amount of notice, rather than dropping this on us so close to the event that some daily players (such as Nogbad) don't find out about it until after it has already started.

So, BB, either you're being less than honest about how routine this maintenance actually is or you're exhibiting a mindless indifference towards your customer base.

To be honest, I'm not sure which I think is worse.

This could be a new thread but I thought I'd put it here. At these times (which I'm sure there will be more of off and on) it would be nice if I could still "review" my kingdom. While I keep a variety of notes (like I'm sure most do) it would be tedious to always update every building and it's status, your inventory of all materials, troops counts (actual and queued), etc.

I wonder about if it would be possible to be able to somehow get a 'snap shot' of of your kingdom in an easy way - i.e. a download in CSV format or some such thing so you could at least review your current state as of your last time online. Not something interactive or any kind of an offline mode where you could actually queue anything but just a static summary of where you last stood.

i'm dreaming I suppose...

Fine by me that the server is sometimes down due to updates and maintenance, but if it is maintenance it cant come as a big surprise for BB. They should be aware of this plenty of time ahead of it.
I am not sure when the announcement was put. I am pretty sure it was not there yesterday in the morning. It was there when I got home from work. It is not very long before closing the server down for 12 hours.
I will agree that if you need to run a routine maintenance for 12 hours it must have been something you have know for way longer than 6- 8 hours before close down.
I would say 24 hours before is not enough time either to warn of players. We live in different time zones and some log on before work some does not. To give all fair warning we need more time.
People are often more understanding when you are honest with them.

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Originally Posted by Dorotheus

Having played games which did not carry out such maintenance's and having to endure a months downtime as a result, I will take any of these sorts of maintenance's at any time.

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Only junk games not do maintenance and got months downtime, and most awesome games do updates without any downtime, but the problem is the long time maintenance always a bad idea (as for example, first time I quit settlers online game in 2013, because of long maintenance so I found another game and stick with it for 3years before I back to settlers online), Also "routine check" take 13 hours is a big joke, BB can take a backup for database and take days without annoying players by working in the copy database (after all it is a check !) if they see they want to fix something they can schedule it for later!

in most modern systems there is no need to downtime, also even applying updates could be doable without any downtime, in the cluster systems specially, in so simplified procedure:

1. You find the most inactive time for players.
2. Disconnect half of nodes of database servers, and half of nodes of application server (if you have 4 nodes you disconnect 2).
3. You backup these disconnected nodes.
4. You do update these disconnected nodes, and you test them.
5. You do connect HTTP servers to those updated nodes and disconnect old one.
6. You may need to update the database "data".
7. You update those old nodes and connect them to HTTP servers.

For new database data between old and new databases transaction logs or with a script can do the job, or in worst case, with less headache, after you do that everything is OK in the new database structure, you do downtime for 1 hour maximum then:

After step 4 Return old backup of updated databases, and /or you persist the database that stayed connected node to the database servers that you tested, and then you do update to the all nodes together. then you continue to step 5 for application servers.

I was involved with staging many products and services with almost 0 downtime, and most of times downtime was = a critical issue.
Any batching, testing, "routine check", fix issues, apply new updates was always 0 check.

Finally again, "routine check" downtime is a joke :)

i really do thing BB is not blame for the updates as they only pass the much needed information onto Ubisoft like bugs/feedback and so 4th ,, its down to Ubisoft to give a little more information to BB for when something like this occurs as to regards on downtime. don't forget Ubisoft are the developers of the game not bb.

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but all credit to BB they try and do a good job

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Originally Posted by Lord6Smeg

i really do thing BB is not blame for the updates as they only pass the much needed information onto Ubisoft like bugs/feedback and so 4th ,, its down to Ubisoft to give a little more information to BB for when something like this occurs as to regards on downtime. don't forget Ubisoft are the developers of the game not bb.

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but all credit to BB they try and do a good job

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Development from BB side, Ubisoft is just a publisher for this game !!!
Also, when Ubisoft do the maintenance (like network and login system) they mention that the maintenance is from Ubisoft side !

BB is who responsible for stage the game, study and apply suggestions/feedback, add new features, and fix bugs (in general called maintain the game).

thank you TheVictorious i allways thought it was ubi i stand corrected ,, yes bb should give its customers/players abit more time so they don't waste buffs and other things