The availability of the NPC servers is measured by the percentage of a year in which the cluster is accessible and reachable. This is different than measuring the uptime of a system. Uptime refers to the system itself being online, however it does not take into account being able to reach it as in the event of a network outage.
The formula to determine a system’s availability is relatively easy: Total time = 365 days per year * 24 hours per day * 60 minutes per hour = 525,600 minutes per year. To calculate how many minutes of downtime a system may experience per year, take the uptime guarantee and multiply it by total time in a year. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_hosting_service)
Had hoped one of my toons was going to lvl before I went to work today, now that's not going to happen since NCWest loves to have the NPC Server go down daily.
GMs are not sleeping at work, therefore they can not wake up. They also do not pay attention the forums so the cries of help goes unheard. I'm sure if someone submits a support ticket, the support team will get to it. But, I am sure they already know that the NPCs are down and are busy working at it. I can guess it takes them different amount of time to fix the problem. Sometimes a minute to an hour.
They just need some real on-call duty like any large company has it these days. Service goes down -> SMS -> log in via VPN -> restart. Well, maybe they actually have that and it just takes that long to reboot the NPC server. So why not cluster the service so that a different server can take over the job while the first one gets fixed, so that players don't even notice that something bad happened? I guess our NCSoft crew does not have the money or manpower to do that.
Personally, I do not know the schedules of the employees at NCSoft West. But, I do know that they do not share the feeling of "L2 24/7 or you are a noob", "L2 for lyfe", or "L2 first! life second!" like the addicts of this game. Please do not expect the employees to cater to everyone's needs at a moments notice. I doubt they want to take their work home with them.
There should be someone to to monitor servers during weekends/nights. Cuz situation like this are kinda nubish...most of privs have better technical support at this point ;]
Most private servers are run by a guy who only have to pay attention to few people occupying the space. That's why no bots are found on those servers and GMs are more attentive to friends who play on it.
Personally, I do not know the schedules of the employees at NCSoft West. But, I do know that they do not share the feeling of "L2 24/7 or you are a noob", "L2 for lyfe", or "L2 first! life second!" like the addicts of this game. Please do not expect the employees to cater to everyone's needs at a moments notice. I doubt they want to take their work home with them.
I realize that some people (be it employees, bosses, or random forum readers) just can't get this through their skulls, but here is the groundbreaking revelation:
if a company provides some service on 24/7 basis, the company MUST also provide 24/7 monitoring of the quality of said service.
There can be NO reasonings, NO escuses.
Don't even start with that "they are so understaffed, so poor that they can't hire an extra game master to watch the servers on weekends" bullcrap.
Look at russian privs and you will see how "few" players play there. "Few" more than here.
Ofc its not an advertising...I never played there and I'm not intend to. Just stating the fact here.
I do not speak Russian and would probably get lost in that virtual world just as same as I would if I got dropped in front of the Kremlin irl. So, I shall take your word for it and if they do provide a better service, then that's cool. But, since our problem pertains to the NCWest servers, we had better concentrate on that instead. The servers are suffering from it's problems and I have true faith that they are trying to fix it as best as they can with the resources available to them. But, we can't expect them to instantly fix themselves overnight and show patience.
I realize that some people (be it employees, bosses, or random forum readers) just can't get this through their skulls, but here is the groundbreaking revelation:
if a company provides some service on 24/7 basis, the company MUST also provide 24/7 monitoring of the quality of said service.
There can be NO reasonings, NO escuses.
Don't even start with that "they are so understaffed, so poor that they can't hire an extra game master to watch the servers on weekends" bullcrap.
I am not saying that there is no one at the helm of the servers. But, truth be told, the employees of any company wouldn't take their work home. I'm sure anyone would be upset with their bosses if they were told to keep logged on when they get home and working after they put in the work that they were scheduled for. I am sorry that you are angry at the state of things. I suggest being patient as they try to work things out.
I am not saying that there is no one at the helm of the servers. But, truth be told, the employees of any company wouldn't take their work home. I'm sure anyone would be upset with their bosses if they were told to keep logged on when they get home and working after they put in the work that they were scheduled for.
It may be astonishing for you, but that exactly IS what most companies do. It's called on-call duty. Which means that some guy is responsible for keeping the servers up and running after normal office hours. Of course you're not sitting 24/7 in front of the computer, staring at the screen. But you have some automated monitoring of important servers/services, and if anything goes wrong (for example, some server does not respond anymore, or some parameters like response time of a service, cpu utilization, disk space etc. are not normal), you get a message via SMS/mail etc. and you have to go check it immediately, within the time the service level agreement specifies.
For example, that's what I will have to do next week at my company, since it's my turn for the on-call duty, and I will have to be available 24/7 via mobile phone and, if any crazy stuff comes up which cannot be fixed via remote, that also means having to drive to our data center at 3 in the morning. And of course also that during this week, I won't be able to go out much in the evening. But since it's only my turn every 5-6 weeks and I get some extra compensation (financially) for it, it's not all that bad.
I am not saying that there is no one at the helm of the servers. But, truth be told, the employees of any company wouldn't take their work home.
There is something called "night shift", sir;) And as Varaya said - on-call duty. But no in NCWest...NCWest is empty during nights and weekends. Even this one bot-guy from Support is leaving for weekend :P
@Varaya - I said that few years ago...but your Horo-avatar is still epic :P
There is something called "night shift", sir;) And as Varaya said - on-call duty. But no in NCWest...NCWest is empty during nights and weekends. Even this one bot-guy from Support is leaving for weekend :P
@Varaya - I said that few years ago...but your Horo-avatar is still epic :P
Yep, night shift, which is different to day shift and weekend shift. Day shift is the busiest part of the business day, as all businesses are open at this time and businesses do business with other businesses. The night shift have few people working, because businesses are mostly closed so there are less business being conducted. Less business requires less people to mind it. The weekend have less people than the weekday, because some businesses are closed so less people are needed to mind it. I can assure you that I will get a nice letter from Sace about my behavior on the forums tomorrow which is a weekday, because since there is less business on the weekends, she probably has the weekends off.
And? Your point is? Since its weekend servers can drop dead? Sounds like NC's logic.
No point at all. Just saying that the server crashes regularly but they are trying their best to get it back up again so the sieges, oly matches, forts, instances and raids can continue. It just takes longer on the weekends and nights because there are less people around to help get it back up again. But, don't be angry if it happens again. It will happen again because they are still working out the bugs from the Glory Days update. Until then, just be patient when something goes wrong. Come on, when have you ever had any game that didn't have to have patches to correct bugs and exploits?
Im just curious if this bug is client or server sided. Usually i'd say server its servers issue, but since i cant find any post about it yet i might be wrong.
Screens taken: Monday, 11/19/2012 08:00 gmt+1 Naia Server
Come on, when have you ever had any game that didn't have to have patches to correct bugs and exploits?
No...but we had many games with competent crew. Not a bunch of AFK-guys...
I know, I know...i have been playing here for yours and I know its American NCs way...but its still stupid. That's why servers from high are medium and low again. Not all but still.
No...but we had many games with competent crew. Not a bunch of AFK-guys...
I know, I know...i have been playing here for yours and I know its American NCs way...but its still stupid. That's why servers from high are medium and low again. Not all but still.
I was including non-MMO games as well. I'm sure you heard about the "Mass Effect" fiasco where players pressured EA games to change the game. I remember Diablo 2 having several exploits with the Amazon archer skills. Skyrim also has it's share of bugs. New Vegas crashes regularly on me. I hope you get what I mean. Even a good game that went through beta testing will have it's share of problems at the end user level.
Why you are comparing single-player games to an MMO that needs constant monitoring? I'm not talking about instant patches - I'm talking about monitoring. Simple thing.
So your argument is invalid.
Srsly sitting there and restart NPC server if needed (if they are really waiting for patch from NCKorea) server can't be harder that adding new post on L2 site. There shouldn't be the situation where players are left without an NPCs - so almost anything is impossible to be done in-game - for god knows how long.
And stop defending their incompetence - night and weekend shifts aren't something from outer space. Really. And here in NCWest every single problem looks like "mission impossible" from their side. I won't even start talking about bot-problem that is "impossible" to remove from the beginning.
Just to remind you, a couple of days ago it stayed down for 45 minutes. If someone still thinks it's normal, and "working as intended", more power to you.
Why you are comparing single-player games to an MMO that needs constant monitoring? I'm not talking about instant patches - I'm talking about monitoring. Simple thing.
So your argument is invalid.
Srsly sitting there and restart NPC server if needed (if they are really waiting for patch from NCKorea) server can't be harder that adding new post on L2 site. There shouldn't be the situation where players are left without an NPCs - so almost anything is impossible to be done in-game - for god knows how long.
And stop defending their incompetence - night and weekend shifts aren't something from outer space. Really. And here in NCWest every single problem looks like "mission impossible" from their side. I won't even start talking about bot-problem that is "impossible" to remove from the beginning.
Again, you are assuming that I am saying that there is no one at night keeping an eye on the game. Please don't use "arguement is invalid". over used meme. totally over used. Why not just use, "Your statement likes to use horses and bayonets"? It's way funnier and insulting and hip to the current times. :P Once again, please do not get angry. It's just game. I am sure you have other things to do than to badger at a game that is almost to it's shelf life. However, I agree with you. The game is buggy, troubled and crashes a lot. It's frustrating but you have to agree that there is not perfect game out there online or offline.
When NPC server down the hero daakk is exping the summoner dual class @ execution grounds, during the server crash, they party start a crazy movements.
Hahahahaha, the npc server down allow "players" to see how much funny is "real legit pro-players" lf mobs.
14 hours after this exp style, the hero party left the spot (due to problems with FuriousSteel) (http://pt-br.twitch.tv/mandachumbo/b/341555086) (jump to 22'', the begin is a "old party of live streaming 24h EXP partys")
@gamemasters: during npc server crash, clear instancezone of players.
I think it is broke... good thing you came to the forums to inform the guys in the NCSoft NOC their cluster is having issues... this should speed rebooting up.
This is a little more than unacceptable at this point. We are going on at least 1:20 of not a single NPC on chronos at the moment. Will there be reimbursement for items such as 200% exp runes and birthday potions used?