The amount of downtime...

[Duncano]

Seriously, this game has so little downtime, one of the best launches I've ever seen as well.

Also the patches! You're back in the game in 2 mins!

I appreciated this a lot.

[Deleted]

Was expecting a "IS TOO DAMN HIGH" meme...

Nice to see Arena Net have their act together, I suppose they benefit from everyone having lightening fast internet nowadays unlike the early stages of Vanilla WoW

[DavidGX]

Yeah, all things considered, they've done a fantastic job in the area of downtime and updates.

[Delias]

Was expecting a "IS TOO DAMN HIGH" meme...

Nice to see Arena Net have their act together, I suppose they benefit from everyone having lightening fast internet nowadays unlike the early stages of Vanilla WoW

They handle adding content the same way they did in GW1, telling everyone that there is a new build that they can download by relogging in the next 3minutes or DCing them after that 3mins to force the update.

[Deleted]

Very little downtime that's true but I must admit Orr is full of bugs, it feels like they need to take the servers down and reset them at times.

[Vekrah]

Honestly (and I might be strung up for this but) I wish there was MORE downtime. There are many many broken skill points, escorts, and DEs (especially in Orr) that I would like to see either fixed or reset more often so that people have a chance to finish their map/world exploration. I'm two skill points away from 100% world completion but they've both been bugged for the past 5 days. There was supposed to be a fix but, apparently, they worked once then bugged again upon death and staying awake until 3AM isn't really an option for me.

I'm loving the game so please don't take this post the wrong way. However, there are plenty of things that need to be fixed ASAP and this can only happen with more downtime.

[Sylvanie]

Honestly (and I might be strung up for this but) I wish there was MORE downtime. There are many many broken skill points, escorts, and DEs (especially in Orr) that I would like to see either fixed or reset more often so that people have a chance to finish their map/world exploration. I'm two skill points away from 100% world completion but they've both been bugged for the past 5 days. There was supposed to be a fix but, apparently, they worked once then bugged again upon death and staying awake until 3AM isn't really an option for me.

More downtime won't fix that. They can deploy even complex updates with minimal downtime. The speed at which bugs get fixed is a function of developer resources committed to that effort, not the amount of downtime you experience as a consequence.

[Duncano]

...this can only happen with more downtime.

Not really... I'm sure they're working, they just have a different list of priorities.

[Vekrah]

More downtime won't fix that. They can deploy even complex updates with minimal downtime. The speed at which bugs get fixed is a function of developer resources committed to that effort, not the amount of downtime you experience as a consequence.

Well, yes and no. When the servers reset, skill point and escort bugs are fixed until whatever broke them in the first place happens again. I'm not saying that servers need to go down every two hours so that people can complete these; however, I am saying that I'd like to see them go down for 30 seconds once a night so that people can finish whatever they're stuck on until they find a more permanent fix.

---------- Post added 2012-09-14 at 09:55 AM ----------

Not really... I'm sure they're working, they just have a different list of priorities.

I'm not seeing where that quote is found in my post. I also don't see what could be more important than fixing bugs in an end-game zone.

[zito]

I forgot other mmos have downtime for patches....

well since every patch isn't really major they didn't need to bring servers down for a period of time. We have yet to see content patches though.

[SirRobin]

Seriously, this game has so little downtime, one of the best launches I've ever seen as well.

Also the patches! You're back in the game in 2 mins!

I appreciated this a lot.

Compared to my experiences at launch with other MMORPG's, GW2 has been so much smoother. The other day my screen went black while playing and I ended up task managing out. I realized that was the only time I recall "having" to quit. No disconnects, no crash to desktop, not even recalling a queue to login or connection error. Simply freaking outstanding job on arena Net's part.

[Deleted]

Honestly (and I might be strung up for this but) I wish there was MORE downtime. There are many many broken skill points, escorts, and DEs (especially in Orr) that I would like to see either fixed or reset more often so that people have a chance to finish their map/world exploration. I'm two skill points away from 100% world completion but they've both been bugged for the past 5 days. There was supposed to be a fix but, apparently, they worked once then bugged again upon death and staying awake until 3AM isn't really an option for me.

I'm loving the game so please don't take this post the wrong way. However, there are plenty of things that need to be fixed ASAP and this can only happen with more downtime.

You can just transfer to another server, do the SP there and then transfer back. That's what i did when i found bugged SP.

[Deleted]

Not really... I'm sure they're working, they just have a different list of priorities.

Fixing major bugs isn't supposed to be a top priority, then?

[DrakeWurrum]

Honestly (and I might be strung up for this but) I wish there was MORE downtime. There are many many broken skill points, escorts, and DEs (especially in Orr) that I would like to see either fixed or reset more often so that people have a chance to finish their map/world exploration. I'm two skill points away from 100% world completion but they've both been bugged for the past 5 days. There was supposed to be a fix but, apparently, they worked once then bugged again upon death and staying awake until 3AM isn't really an option for me.

I'm loving the game so please don't take this post the wrong way. However, there are plenty of things that need to be fixed ASAP and this can only happen with more downtime.

Absolutely false. They can release new builds, and the moment you download it, you can play. They don't need to shut down servers for several hours to put out new builds.

[Dannoson]

Fixing major bugs isn't supposed to be a top priority, then?

The real question is "Is this bug major enough that they would spend time to work on it?" Or "They are working on it but the underlying problem is much more complicated than the symptom."

Basically the Devs have better tools than we to find out what exactly the problem is, and have a laundry list of issues to go through. Every major release of a new game has many issues. Remember The Old Republic and Diablo 3? Unfortunately for us, it takes time to fix these things and everything has a priority.

[Supersomething]

I was pretty happy they carried over their 'build' feature from Guild Wars. Very rarely did you see the servers taken down. Matter of fact I had only seen them taken down once in GW1 and that was due to a massive exploit that was being fixed and the people utilizing it were either losing their profits or getting banned heh. Typically ArenaNet would fix bugs, and do whatever else on their end and then implement the new build for everyone to go out and get, which made the transition process incredibly smooth.

[DrakeWurrum]

Unfortunately for us, it takes time to fix these things and everything has a priority.

And fortunately for us, they don't need to shut down the servers for long periods of time to fix these things.

[Vekrah]

Absolutely false. They can release new builds, and the moment you download it, you can play. They don't need to shut down servers for several hours to put out new builds.

But you have to restart your client, yes? As in, the servers go down for a few seconds to apply the patch? As in...downtime? I'm not saying servers have to go down for hours and I'll bet you can't find anywhere in my previous posts where I said so; however, skill point bugs reset on a server restart until they break again. No need to shoot down a post just because you took it the wrong way.

[Lucas Ashrock]

Not really... I'm sure they're working, they just have a different list of priorities.

Yes. Nerf everything is fun of this game, is the top priority, typical Anet attitude. Cook, armor tokens, legendaries etc etc

[DrakeWurrum]

But you have to restart your client, yes? As in, the servers go down for a few seconds to apply the patch? As in...downtime? I'm not saying servers have to go down for hours and I'll bet you can't find anywhere in my previous posts where I said so; however, skill point bugs reset on a server restart until they break again. No need to shoot down a post just because you took it the wrong way.

No, the servers don't go down at all. The servers are still online, and are not restarted - you just need to restart your client. This means exactly one thing: Exit GW2. Re-open it. Download new build. Hit PLAY.

I often restart the client the moment I get that "your client will restart automatically in 3 minutes" message, and I'm often back in the game in way less time than that, while other people are still trying to frantically finish whatever they're in the middle of. The servers are not restarted at all.

If you really see that as such a terrible thing, then uh... boy are your standards high.

During the first week of the game, they did some kind of scheduled maintenance thing where the servers were offline for 20-60 minutes at a time (i'm assuming for some major infrastructure changes in the actual hardware), but they stopped that a while ago.