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swissarmy68
GameAmp Staff
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| More downtime for specific servers |
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Another heads up... this one isn't as bad though.
Notice: down at the bottom Lighthouse states that the Valentine's Event is a February event (duh!). But, so is the Double XP weeekend. So Double XP some time in February.
| QUOTE | As we announced in the 2008 State of the Game post, we are in the process of re-investing in City of Heroes through upgrading our server hardware. With the prospect of another Double XP weekend coming and record numbers of players logging in to enjoy the game, we want to have everything in place to support a great play experience! To reach that goal, we've broken up our server maintenance schedule into several downtimes over the next two weeks and split the work across the different servers in an effort to minimize the impact of the work. Here are the details of what is happening this week:
Tuesday, January 22nd – West Coast Servers
West Coast Servers will be coming down for maintenance starting at 6 AM Pacific (9 AM Eastern) on Tuesday, January 22nd. This includes:
Champion
Guardian
Justice
Protector
Virtue
We anticipate the downtime will last 2 hours.
Tuesday, January 22nd – Training Room
The Training Room Test Servers will be coming down for maintenance starting at 11 AM Pacific (2 PM Eastern) on Tuesday, January 22nd.
We anticipate the downtime will last 2 hours.
Wednesday, January 23rd – East Coast Servers
East Coast Servers will be coming down for maintenance starting at 6 AM Pacific (9 AM Eastern) on Wednesday, January 23rd. This includes:
Freedom
Infinity
Liberty
Pinnacle
Triumph
Victory
We anticipate the downtime will last 2 hours.
Thursday, January 24th -West Coast Servers
West Coast Servers will be coming down for maintenance starting at 6 AM Pacific (9 AM Eastern) on Thursday, January 24th. This includes:
Champion
Guardian
Justice
Protector
Virtue
We anticipate the downtime will last 6 hours.
We likely will have some final work done during next week, which we will detail soon. To be clear, our objective is to have the server improvements completed before the end of January. This should allow us sufficient time to let the new stuff settle in before we run the Double XP Event and the Valentine’s Day Event. We will be announcing the details of those two February events in the near future as well, so stay tuned!
To discuss this announcement, join us on the Technical Forums.
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Lighthouse
Community Relations Manager
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Swiss
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| 01/22/08 07:11 |
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Chuck Bronco
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| RE: More downtime for specific servers |
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Good find Swiss and thanks.
off topic question here.
In your post they refer to the servers as "East and West"
What criteria do they use to label them? And, does any portion of the player base take this into consideration when choosing their servers?
I only ask because this is the first official post, that I have seen, actually labeling them. Then again I dont peruse the main boards all that often either.
Tank'ns my Bidness and Bidness is GOOD!
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| 01/22/08 08:37 |
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RonJ73
GameAmp Staff
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| RE: More downtime for specific servers |
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Physical location. Some of the servers are physically located on the east coast of the US, the others are on the west.
City of Heroes/Villains
Onion - L50 - Katana/Super Reflexes/Body Mastery Scrapper
Scotch Bonnet Girl - L50 - Fire Aura/Fire Melee/Pyre Mastery Tanker
RonJ73 - L50 - Stone/Energy Aura Brute
Aurora Australis - L50 - Willpower/Energy Melee Tanker
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| 01/22/08 09:11 |
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knickknack
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| RE: More downtime for specific servers |
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Actually, I heard from a friend of my friend's cousin's sister that they just flip a coin to decide. Well, that's what I heard anyway....
Signature courtesy of Big
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| 01/22/08 09:27 |
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Warron Peace
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| RE: More downtime for specific servers |
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| QUOTE | | Actually, I heard from a friend of my friend's cousin's sister that they just flip a coin to decide. Well, that's what I heard anyway.... |
Hardy Harr Harr, Knick. Seriously, Ron is correct. It's based on actual physical location of the servers themselves. Some people may choose a server for its location, though this will not seriously affect performance, generally speaking. I live in NY state and play mainly on Virtue, a west coast server. I don't get any significant lag due to location, only do to server population.
W.P.
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| 01/22/08 11:26 |
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lani
GameAmp Staff
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Credibility: 28 pts
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| RE: More downtime for specific servers |
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| QUOTE | | QUOTE | | Actually, I heard from a friend of my friend's cousin's sister that they just flip a coin to decide. Well, that's what I heard anyway.... |
Hardy Harr Harr, Knick. Seriously, Ron is correct. It's based on actual physical location of the servers themselves. Some people may choose a server for its location, though this will not seriously affect performance, generally speaking. I live in NY state and play mainly on Virtue, a west coast server. I don't get any significant lag due to location, only do to server population.
W.P. |
To complete the picture, there's three NOCs (Network Operation Centers), following the sun's path across our sky they're located in Amsterdam (Netherlands), New York City (US) and San Francisco (also US). Not surprisingly, SOE has the same setup as NCSoft. Both also have NOC each in Korea and Hong Kong I believe. But I haven't been keeping up with the Asia market :-)
Coming from the Netherlands, playing on Virtue doesn't give much Network Latency issues either. Mind you a ping of 200 means 5 updates per second, more than enough for a MMORPG, iffy for FPS games though. In general my to the SF area is between 130 and 180 depending on Server Population.
Server Population is what causes network lag these days, the amount of data coming in and going out of the server. The days when physical distance made a (noticable) difference are three or more years in the past.
Back on topic. Shoot me if I'm wrong but wasn't last years Valentine a double XP Weekend as well? Or was it really close on each other like it appears it will be this year.
Bored? Curious? Check out my "Gaming Experiences" Blogerette thingamjiggy whatchamacallit Now with Comment feature!
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| 01/22/08 12:13 |
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knickknack
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| RE: More downtime for specific servers |
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I think they were really close to each other like it sounds like they have planned this year. I am getting old though, and the memory is starting to go so I could be wrong.
Signature courtesy of Big
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| 01/22/08 13:45 |
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Darkdragon405
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| RE: More downtime for specific servers |
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there's a post about it under troubleshooting... east vs. west servers that is
Previously @Shadow Blaze 405
Currently @AuraBladeX
Triumph:
Duos lvl 16 DM/Regen Scrapper
Light Fang lvl 48 NRG^2 Blaster
Duos Blades lvl 17 DB/Regen Scrapper
Pinnacle:
ChaoticShade AR/Dark Corr
Forced Submission Mind/NRG Dom
Shadow'Fang DM/WP Brute
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| 01/22/08 20:23 |
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Falcon15
GameAmp Staff
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| RE: More downtime for specific servers |
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Just to add personal observations to this thread...
Back in the day when a 14.4 modem was the fastest thing around, the speed of your download/ping reply was very much affected by the location of a host server relative to your geographical location. Downloading even a small file from a distant server meant you had many relays or nodes that your signal had to traverse. Even the location of your ISP dialup was important, because telephone charges could get out of hand if you had to make a long distance call to connect to the ISP. AOL was one of the first really well advertised services in the United States that started offering relatively local servers. Then along about the mid to late nineties, the technology for modems started changing and changing fast.
I was a Beta tester for a game called "The Realm" kind of a stone-age version of WoW, and even with a 56.6 modem and max connection speed, I'd lag out or get disconnected from the game server at the most inopportune times due to signal loss, signal degredation, and/or malicious attacks against your ports (Nuking). With the advent of inexpensive high-speed "always on" connections, the physical locations of host servers became more unimportant, as signal strengths are very high with less data loss from origin to destination. Not to say it does not exist today. However, because the technology that we rely on to get connected has advanced so far in the past 10 to 15 years the physical locations of servers are less about where a player is located and more about where the company who owns the servers chooses to place them. In that vein, Lani is very right, lag today on MMORPGs is server population dependant, especially on "dynamic world" servers like WoW or CoX. THe more connections to a server the slower it responds, because it is responding to so many connections simultaneously.
I play on Champion server (West Coast physical location) and have gamed with people from Sweden, the UK, Norway, all over the United States and at various times of the day/night.
Back on topic...I am glad the server downtime is set to such a seriously early hour and that the company has decided to upgrade the hardware, that means they intend for CoX to have some longevity. Too many MMORPGs have fallen to the fate of "people are no longer interested because the servers/client software is very out of date" and companies decide to ash-can the works in favor of a newer title, better graphics, or whatever. CoX Forever, or at least for as long as NCSoft decides it's profitable to them!
***THIS POST HAS BEEN EDITED***
"The only substitute for good manners is fast reflexes" - Vlad Taltos
"Not all still water runs deep. Some of it is pretty damn shallow." - Personal Observation
A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects. - Robert A. Heinlein
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| 01/23/08 08:08 |
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LordStarwolf
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| RE: More downtime for specific servers |
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Holy crap falcon, your ancient! Oh wait, I remember that too, and your the same age I am! I'm ancient too!!! lol Oh well, we can still beat down all the whippersnappers. Thank God for broadband!
Guardian
Avant Guard = Emp/Rad/Psychic Defender Lvl 50 (Dedicated Healer)
Astral Plane = Peacebringer Lvl 50
Spica = Fire/Em/Energy Tank Lvl 50 (Scranker)
Avant Spines = Spines/Regen Scrapper Lvl 50 (AOE King)
Beliskner = Eng/Eng Blaster Lvl 42 (Blapper)
Avant Kin = Ill/Kin Controller Lvl 39
BMG = AR/Dev Blaster Lvl 29
Avant Psy = Psychic Blast/Empathy Defender Lvl 20 (Offender)
Avant Def = Kinetics/Energy Blast Defender Lvl 16
Avant Stone = Stone/Storm Controller lvl 15 (Super Controller)
Triumph
Lord Yu = MA/Regen Scrapper Lvl 25
Protector
Electrostun = Electric/EM Blaster Lvl 21 (Sapper)
T-99 = Ice/Ice Tanker Lvl 20
Starwolf = Katana/Inv Scrapper Lvl 18 (my very first toon, 3 1/2 years ago)
Pinnacle
Avant Claws = Claws/Regen Scrapper Lvl 24
Champion
Avant Dragon = Fire/Fire Blaster Lvl 20
Freedom
Avant Arch = Archery/NRG Blaster Lvl 50
Avant Char = Fire/Kinetics Controller Lvl 50
Avant Shade = Warshade Lvl 41
Avant Fire = Fire/Mental Lvl 34
And many, many, many, many, many more....
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| 01/23/08 20:43 |
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Falcon15
GameAmp Staff
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| RE: More downtime for specific servers |
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http://www.realmserver.com/
Oh my goodness! The Realm is still running!!! I...Cannot...Believe...It!
Looks identical to when I was Beta Testing the darn thing back in the mid-nineties! The graphics, everything!
"The only substitute for good manners is fast reflexes" - Vlad Taltos
"Not all still water runs deep. Some of it is pretty damn shallow." - Personal Observation
A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects. - Robert A. Heinlein
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| 01/24/08 13:00 |
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