EVE Server Stability question

chriswsm · August 2006

Hi folks

Been playing MMORPGS for ages (UO/DAOC/EQ2/DDO etc)

I tried EVE about a week ago with the 14 day free trial and so far I am quite impressed and have apend a lot of time on it.

Today the servers died. Then they came back after a couple of hours. Now they have died again and the websites for support and information are also dead.

First time it went down there was messages to inform the players that work was being done to rectify the situation. This was nice and is where many other MMORPGS fall over. Sadly with the support network down this is not now possible.

I need some information from those of you that have played this for a while.

What i want to know before I start parting with money to play this game is:

How often do server problems like this occur with EVE?

adolf102 · August 2006

From what I managed to read on forums before they went down as well it happends quite a lot since Red Moon Rising expansion.
That is base on brief forum reading though so don't blame me if that is untrue.

I'm sure they will sort it out soon though

Was just thinking that maybe some temp solution would be to just schedule one or two server reboots a day untill they will nail the bugs. I mean just restart server in controled way along with notifing players about reboot coming.
If it can be stable for like 12 hours then I wouln't mind waiting 30 minutes or so during scheduled reboot if it will be stable for next 12 hours. Players would be able to plan their actions accordingly.

This can even be explained in game by some Galaxy wide EMP or something

I realize it is not perfect soultion but if it would be improve perormance and stability guess it would do fine for now.

Will try to suggest that when the game will come up.

GlacianNex · August 2006

Originally posted by chriswsm

Hi folks

Been playing MMORPGS for ages (UO/DAOC/EQ2/DDO etc)
I tried EVE about a week ago with the 14 day free trial and so far I am quite impressed and have apend a lot of time on it.

Today the servers died. Then they came back after a couple of hours. Now they have died again and the websites for support and information are also dead.

First time it went down there was messages to inform the players that work was being done to rectify the situation. This was nice and is where many other MMORPGS fall over. Sadly with the support network down this is not now possible.

I need some information from those of you that have played this for a while.
What i want to know before I start parting with money to play this game is:

How often do server problems like this occur with EVE?

Well I have played EVE for quite a bit, ususally the only downtime is scheduled downtime. However you can see an issue here and there. Most of the issues come up right before or right after patches. So I would not be surpirsed if something were going wrong because we are having a patch on Tuesday. Usually that issue is non existant, aside from that EVE Dev. Team pritty good about letting people know why things happen. So you dont feel a underinformed.

chriswsm · August 2006

Fair enough. Teething trouble with patches and expansions are not uncommon in most games.

The additional research I have done has led me to two understandings

1: Servers are pretty stable in general.

2: To get the most out of the game I need to join a clan/guild. May have to wait a while as most are reluctant to take on Trial players. Wonder if I can find a good UK/EU guild as they should be online pretty much the same time of day as I am

Shame they are doing the update Tuesday I have the day off work and the UK timing for the update is between 08.00 - 17.00.

Guess I will have to spend my day off doing real life things *shudder*

Homelander · August 2006

Minor updates don't tend to cause much grief in the servers, following a major expansion, you can figure 2-3 days of glitches as the last of the bugs are worked out but in the past few months there have been about 5-6 bad days where the servers have been unplayable. This is due to the fact that CCP is actualy changing the coding in the game and it is very hard to forsee problems that arise when completely changing your base.

Add the fact that they are working towards a new client for users with high-end computers and adding ALOT of new content over the next several months, it's kind of natural that they can't pay as much attention to the upkeep, can only hope that things settle down when Kali gets here, only 2 weeks out now.

As for getting the best out of the game, yes, you really do have to join a corporation (guild/clan) because alot of the activities associated in EVE are meant to be done with a multitude of people. Plus, it's alot funner flying around with friends then it is solo'ing in a game this big because, fairly often you'll either run into nobody, which is quite dull or , you'll run into ALOT of people which can be quite bad if you don't have any back-up or means of escaping.

Resetgun · August 2006

Server crashed are very rare normally. However, after patch and during patch days there is normally some unstability that last maybe week.

Rabbitgod · August 2006

Originally posted by dakilla666
Minor updates don't tend to cause much grief in the servers, following a major expansion, you can figure 2-3 days of glitches as the last of the bugs are worked out but in the past few months there have been about 5-6 bad days where the servers have been unplayable. This is due to the fact that CCP is actualy changing the coding in the game and it is very hard to forsee problems that arise when completely changing your base.

Add the fact that they are working towards a new client for users with high-end computers and adding ALOT of new content over the next several months, it's kind of natural that they can't pay as much attention to the upkeep, can only hope that things settle down when Kali gets here, only 2 weeks out now.

As for getting the best out of the game, yes, you really do have to join a corporation (guild/clan) because alot of the activities associated in EVE are meant to be done with a multitude of people. Plus, it's alot funner flying around with friends then it is solo'ing in a game this big because, fairly often you'll either run into nobody, which is quite dull or , you'll run into ALOT of people which can be quite bad if you don't have any back-up or means of escaping.

The are doing a pretty big server and client up date today. They annoced this a week ago. The "Dragon code" is going to fix a lot of long running little issues as well as some of the more recent big issues that have showed up. A few hours of DT is a small price for a great fix. In other MMO you probly have to wait months and half the fixes would be on $20 expantion pack.

Elnator · August 2006

Originally posted by chriswsm

Fair enough. Teething trouble with patches and expansions are not uncommon in most games.

The additional research I have done has led me to two understandings

1: Servers are pretty stable in general.

2: To get the most out of the game I need to join a clan/guild. May have to wait a while as most are reluctant to take on Trial players. Wonder if I can find a good UK/EU guild as they should be online pretty much the same time of day as I am

Shame they are doing the update Tuesday I have the day off work and the UK timing for the update is between 08.00 - 17.00.

Guess I will have to spend my day off doing real life things *shudder*

I wouldn't say most are reluctant

I'd say most will flat-out refuse to take on trial accounts as members

I don't really blame them. Trial accounts come and go like the wind. It'd be a membership management nightmare to keep up with that kind of thing.

Once you are retail, however, you'll find corps are very friendly and open to new players (for the most part).. Some do have SP requirements (how many skill points they expect you to have prior to applying) but many don't. I recommend joining the recruitment channel (open the channels control and it's in the corp management section I believe) as it's the easiest way to find your first corp. Took me a whopping 30 minutes to find one last night (Though I am on a retail account and already have over 1.5mil SP so I met most Corp minimums already).

Nicoli · August 2006

I'll give you guys the low down on recruiting requirements from a CEO/Corp perspective so you understand our reasoning and why we have the restrictions.

NO Trial -- Basically trial accounts are people that haven't solidified that they are going to stay in EVE. As corps do have a max member limit based on skill training it can be a management nightmare to keep track of who is inactive do to RL and who is a trial account that will never comeback. Also a good chance that you don't know what you want to do in EVE yet and with limited corp resources I don't want to help someone out that will leave the corp in a few days.

SP requirement -- First these weed out alts. most alts have next to no training on them so by saying you have to have 1mil SP or so means the character isn't a alt. Other reasons is some corps participate in activities that will give you NO learning time. When you join you will be tossed into the thick of things and you'll either sink or swim. In alot of cases having more SP gives you a better understanding of the game abd as such a greater chance of swimming the sinking. As a personnal expierence once a player has around 1-2mil SP they start to realise what they don't know which makes them more receptive to take suggestions from us who have been around a while.

Convo me/join a channel -- Believe it or not this is a weeding out tool in recruitment. CEO's want people who take initative, and aren't afraid to speak up. EVE supports aggresive personalities, these are the people who aren't going to fall through the cracks of the corp and leave because they are pissed from the lack of help. We can't help those who don't tell us they are in need. Also when you approach a corp, ask a bunch of questions, you'll wnd up enjoying it more likely if you do join anyway.

Perfect example and I'll use Elnator for it. When he went looking for a corp, he more and likely new a few things:

    1. What type of activities he enjoys
    2. What how he can help a corp meet its goal
    3. What he hope the corp can help him with

Those 3 things are key to finding a good corp and alot of newer players haven't figured them out yet. You can usually identify people who don't know these because they have a new corp in they're employment history every few days. or they are a corp spy which means if you switch corps alot don't expect a lot of corps to be wiling to take you on either.

Anyway hopefully sall that rambling helps someone with a understanding of things and I'm sure I have missed a few reasons elsewhere.

chriswsm · August 2006

Thanks folks. All of that makes perfect sence to me. Chances are that I will continue although I am a little dismayed with the fact that the server is now down again.

I would love the opportunity to get my SP and ISK up. And so far a 14 day trial looks like being a 12 day trial. When I try to log in i get a message saying Starting up...(533 sec.) Earlier it said about 290 sec. so it looks like the countdown restarted. I am assuming things did not go too well with the patch.

***Waits 533 seconds***

OOO logon ******* (*almost gets hopes up*)

AGH!

Your character is located within (Nakri), which is currently loading.
Please try again in a moment.

It has remained like that for the last 10 mins now. I have 3 hours of play left at best tonight which will take me to 2am. If it is not working by then I have only tomorrow and part if Friday of my trial remaining. The ONLY thing stopping me subscribing at this very moment is the reliability of the server. I guess it is just unfortunate that I took my trial during a large patch deployment period.

On a lighter note the login screen tells me that my security status is now 0.1 and I have almost 4mill ISK

Nicoli · August 2006

well since you can always give another trial a shot after this one and you'll be a little bit smarter in the character creation, plus you can try another specialization route to see if you like it more. But yeah this is a minor overall pain in the arse that will hopefully allow for alot of nice future bonuses.

There are several issues that CCP and playerbase know about that reduce game performance on server/client side and for the most part CCP doesn't deny them and in the case of say the bookmark issue have asked the playerbase for any suggestions that could replace the current situation. And for the most part if you check the "official server is down" threads they do tell you what was wrong as soon as they know and fix it which is something that I like.

chriswsm · August 2006

Yes I could do that but I kinda like my character. He was new therefore a little imperfect but that is better IMO that a char built from some kind of template based on in depth knowledge. I will stick to the one I have and if the servers dont die for the entireity the next 48 hours I will subscribe.

And you are dead right about the server failure information. That facility is by far the most accurate and up to date of any MMORPG I have played or beta tested. Shame it does not seem to be mirrored elsewhere as when all of CCP servers died the other day this facility died also so there was no info available. A mirrored fault report facility would have compensated for this. Perhaps even sending a message to Eve radio to mention the status (which didnt happen while I was listening for it).

freebirdpat · August 2006

There is always the EVE IRC channel when all other places fail. Its on the coldfront network I believe. #eve-online, I think it is mostly player run though, and #eve-chaos is more official, CCP staff are known to lurk in there, its used for EVE test clients for the most part though.

By the way, if the forums go down, it probably means something really bad happened.

Although sometimes there is nobody at CCP that is alive that is on any of these either. So you may not find out what went wrong with the server for a couple of hours. But its too be expected, I rather they spend time getting the server up and running then stopping by and saying "we have no clue what went wrong, it was running fine then the database just crashed"

In the past month, I would say the server has been the most unstable since my 7 months of playing here, but Valar the guy that keeps the server up(he's a Database guy, I think), usually is quite informative when asked what went wrong. And he doesn't BS either or pass the buck either.

Elnator · August 2006

Originally posted by Nicoli
I'll give you guys the low down on recruiting requirements from a CEO/Corp perspective so you understand our reasoning and why we have the restrictions.

NO Trial -- Basically trial accounts are people that haven't solidified that they are going to stay in EVE. As corps do have a max member limit based on skill training it can be a management nightmare to keep track of who is inactive do to RL and who is a trial account that will never comeback. Also a good chance that you don't know what you want to do in EVE yet and with limited corp resources I don't want to help someone out that will leave the corp in a few days.

SP requirement -- First these weed out alts. most alts have next to no training on them so by saying you have to have 1mil SP or so means the character isn't a alt. Other reasons is some corps participate in activities that will give you NO learning time. When you join you will be tossed into the thick of things and you'll either sink or swim. In alot of cases having more SP gives you a better understanding of the game abd as such a greater chance of swimming the sinking. As a personnal expierence once a player has around 1-2mil SP they start to realise what they don't know which makes them more receptive to take suggestions from us who have been around a while.

Convo me/join a channel -- Believe it or not this is a weeding out tool in recruitment. CEO's want people who take initative, and aren't afraid to speak up. EVE supports aggresive personalities, these are the people who aren't going to fall through the cracks of the corp and leave because they are pissed from the lack of help. We can't help those who don't tell us they are in need. Also when you approach a corp, ask a bunch of questions, you'll wnd up enjoying it more likely if you do join anyway.

Perfect example and I'll use Elnator for it. When he went looking for a corp, he more and likely new a few things:

    1. What type of activities he enjoys
    2. What how he can help a corp meet its goal
    3. What he hope the corp can help him with

Those 3 things are key to finding a good corp and alot of newer players haven't figured them out yet. You can usually identify people who don't know these because they have a new corp in they're employment history every few days. or they are a corp spy which means if you switch corps alot don't expect a lot of corps to be wiling to take you on either.

Anyway hopefully sall that rambling helps someone with a understanding of things and I'm sure I have missed a few reasons elsewhere.

Good example Nicoli,

And I'll go even further and agree 200% on the 'be agressive and ask questions' when joining a corp. When I was looking I contacted 3 recruiters.

Before they even started talking I hit all 3 with the same questions:
1) What hours does the bulk of your corp play
2) What type of activities does your corp primarily do
3) Where is the corp's base of operations and how often do you move

From there I started digging down into those categories to find out:
a) What would be required of me by the corp
b) How the corp helps it's members (or doesn't)
c) What kind of allliances the corp is in and how often it changes
d) How long it's been around

I didn't get *asked* a single question (and I don't generally get asked a lot of questions on Job interviews either because I tend to do the same thing there.) I know how I like to play and I ask questions to determine if my playstyle will mesh with that of the corp.

Don't be rude or overbearing but by asking pointed, but polite, questions you will not only instil confidence in the recruiter you're talking to but you will also show that you have a desire to succeed. And that is key.

Elnator · August 2006

Originally posted by chriswsm

Thanks folks. All of that makes perfect sence to me.   Chances are that I will continue although I am a little dismayed with the fact that the server is now down again.

I would love the opportunity to get my SP and ISK up. And so far a 14 day trial looks like being a 12 day trial. When I try to log in i get a message saying Starting up...(533 sec.)   Earlier it said about 290 sec. so it looks like the countdown restarted. I am assuming things did not go too well with the patch.

***Waits 533 seconds***

OOO logon ******* (*almost gets hopes up*)

AGH!
Your character is located within (Nakri), which is currently loading.
Please try again in a moment.
It has remained like that for the last 10 mins now. I have 3 hours of play left at best tonight which will take me to 2am. If it is not working by then I have only tomorrow and part if Friday of my trial remaining. The ONLY thing stopping me subscribing at this very moment is the reliability of the server. I guess it is just unfortunate that I took my trial during a large patch deployment period.

On a lighter note the login screen tells me that my security status is now 0.1 and I have almost 4mill ISK

Something to remember is that they are implementing a HUGE code change with the patch that was just deployed. Expect some stability issues for the next several days while it all gets sorted out. They've re-tooled the entire game around Win2k+ now with tighter security and better algorhythms since they no longer have to support the 98 platform at all.

Everyone in game has noticed a HUGE improvement in performance pretty much across the entire spectrum of the game. Even framerates have improved because the new code base appears to be allowing the OS to offload the graphics processing to the GPU... (The old code base appeared to keep it on the CPU).

There's going to be hiccups and snags for the next several days but, so far, I've been pleasantly surprised by the fact that there has actually been very little downtime, beyond the first day, due to the patch. I was expecting a lot worst from such a drastic change to the code.

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EVE Server Stability question

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