UPDATED: Ashes of History World Event Starts Wednesday, 10/12!

[Rogrux]

People who threaten to quit aren't people we want in the game world anyway.

Toodly-hoo, have fun elsewhere.

[Korpayne]

is the event staying live for europe?

[the_real_seebs]

When will Trion learn how MMOs are supposed to be run?

I want to wait in a queue for 30 minutes, lose my place because the server went down, then wait in queue another 45 minutes so I can log in, crash to desktop, and wait in the queue again! I want quests that don't update, mobs that are bugged and can't be targeted! I want to have some servers where three of the boss spawned at once and others where the boss never spawned. THAT is how you run an MMO.

Haven't you even thought this through? The purpose of the event is to give us a reason to threaten to cancel and demand compensation. If you don't launch the event until it's actually working, what the heck are we going to do on the forums?

Sheesh, people. A little foresight here.

[Killerkonnat]

It's weird because I didn't notice any performance issues today on Bloodiron. In fact I farmed fire and earth rifts with a huge raid group for the event currency and finished a warfront just 15 minutes before the server shut down for the maintenance. I didn't see anyone complain about performance issues on my server. Did the problems affect only some servers?

[Shannae]

When will Trion learn how MMOs are supposed to be run?

I want to wait in a queue for 30 minutes, lose my place because the server went down, then wait in queue another 45 minutes so I can log in, crash to desktop, and wait in the queue again! I want quests that don't update, mobs that are bugged and can't be targeted! I want to have some servers where three of the boss spawned at once and others where the boss never spawned. THAT is how you run an MMO.

Haven't you even thought this through? The purpose of the event is to give us a reason to threaten to cancel and demand compensation. If you don't launch the event until it's actually working, what the heck are we going to do on the forums?

Sheesh, people. A little foresight here.

9/10

(10chars)

[-Raz-]

Just to clear any confusion,

We were fully intending to go live with the event this evening, in fact it went live in Europe. However, after looking into the performance issues that occurred we made the decision to delay the start just shortly before I announced it here.

It's unfortunate that some issues cannot be found without a live environment, test as we might on PTS and internally, we can't re-create the randomness of thousands of people connecting globally doing millions of random actions. Rest assured that this decision was made to ensure you had an enjoyable experience and that the event isn't memorable for the wrong reasons.

We'll kick things off as soon as we can deliver on those expectations - thanks all

the thing here is, this is not the first event that failed in this way due to performance issues, one would think trion learns from past mistakes/issues, but i guess not

while a PTS definitely can not be used to test events like this in a reliable way, you should have forseen issues like this coming up

[Azguard]

Trion, thanks for the "bonus" effects as a way to cheer people up a bit. Would have been better if you just mailed every character 5 more bonus exp, favor and prestige vials though

[Zolt]

Just to clear any confusion,

We were fully intending to go live with the event this evening, in fact it went live in Europe. However, after looking into the performance issues that occurred we made the decision to delay the start just shortly before I announced it here.

It's unfortunate that some issues cannot be found without a live environment, test as we might on PTS and internally, we can't re-create the randomness of thousands of people connecting globally doing millions of random actions. Rest assured that this decision was made to ensure you had an enjoyable experience and that the event isn't memorable for the wrong reasons.

We'll kick things off as soon as we can deliver on those expectations - thanks all

I work in IT and have had this happen to me before. I understand and know that others here do also. take your time guys and thanks for preventing something bad. Love the game and the hard work Trion team does for us.

[intrinsc]

When will Trion learn how MMOs are supposed to be run?

I want to wait in a queue for 30 minutes, lose my place because the server went down, then wait in queue another 45 minutes so I can log in, crash to desktop, and wait in the queue again! I want quests that don't update, mobs that are bugged and can't be targeted! I want to have some servers where three of the boss spawned at once and others where the boss never spawned. THAT is how you run an MMO.

Haven't you even thought this through? The purpose of the event is to give us a reason to threaten to cancel and demand compensation. If you don't launch the event until it's actually working, what the heck are we going to do on the forums?

Sheesh, people. A little foresight here.

[Pixel Monkey]

as a 'soul survivor' i get it
no probs

[Charlice]

It's easy to say 'oh well better to wait till it's ready' but why isn't it? This update isn't something they've cooked up in the last week is it? Hasn't this been planned?

Is that the approach you take when you miss deadlines at work? If I did that I'd be sacked.

Maybe stress tests could be added to whatever it is they do on the PTS before they 'try' to release new updates to live.

[Brioche]

It's unfortunate that some issues cannot be found without a live environment, test as we might on PTS and internally, we can't re-create the randomness of thousands of people connecting globally doing millions of random actions.

That might be a less of a problem if character copy and Fluffy were available full-time. I know that being stuck with a level 1 has discouraged me from spending more time on the test server on multiple occasions. I'm more than happy to roll my face across the keyboard a few hundred times for the sake of smooth patch days.

[the_real_seebs]

Maybe no fluffy, but character copy is in fact available -- it's a "transfer" option now.

[Keydric]

To all the complainers, did you log into the PTS and help with the testing? We all could help out and log into the PTS and actually help test. Oh ya, and actually send in some feedback, they haven't gotten the mind reading code in-game yet.

[the_real_seebs]

It's easy to say 'oh well better to wait till it's ready' but why isn't it? This update isn't something they've cooked up in the last week is it? Hasn't this been planned?

Is that the approach you take when you miss deadlines at work? If I did that I'd be sacked.

Well, pretty much. If something isn't working, we don't run it anyway, we stop and fix it. If that means the release date slips, then the release date slips, because shipping a non-working product is worse.

And the reason we don't get sacked is that the best way to get something out on time isn't to fire the only people in the world who have significant experience with it. :P

More generally... Some kinds of work are more or less amenable to being quite sure of readiness for load. Trion's issues with this have been, at the very least, unusually minor for an MMO. Compare with CoH's recent multiple consecutive 8-12 hour downtimes for system upgrades, because the system upgrades they did originally weren't good enough, etcetera.

I do think they could probably use better stress-testing, and in a year or two I imagine they'll have a much more powerful test infrastructure in place that has been tuned by observations and comparisons with the real world.