Daily server downtime and rollbacks

[Utrrabbit]

Aaaand... i am so happy i did not buy this.
I wanted to wait and eventually start when season/league starts but looks like it is not worth.
Their solution? Let's reduce avaiability for players and make them wait to start new game, LOL.
No, thanks. I will be still playing old version the game WHEN I WANT.
So sad to see such good remaster being slaughtered by Bli$$ard.

Literally hundreds of thousnds of games being created at the same time up to over 700k on the same server. . You can try to be all high and mighty but the old game could not even handle 1/5 of that back in the day

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Blizzard's basically blaming the players for you know, "playing" the game. Being stingey with their servers and not properly having enough for the influx of players trying to play the game.

Another "I did not actually read the post" reply.

They are not blaming the players. They clearly stated it was due to the code they are using. Just to clarify they are using old code to keep it as close to the original as possible.

They never blamed the players. It is due to coding.

Also just because they said that the way people play the game now caused it does not mean they are blaming people. They clearly stated they want people to play how they want and are working on coding fixes to handle it.

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Yeah. It is the easiest way to blame old code.
How about release the game when its done/fixed then?
I wanted to play sooo much but they already lost me as customer when i see that after 1 month game is still unplayable.

The game is fine and 100% despite the server crashes. My thinking is your computer is just old and can not handle it.

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the easy fix would be million person region clusters. but i doubt blizz will put that money there.

It has NOTHING to do wity the size of the clusters and 100000% to do with the coding. They could literally make 10billion region clusters and the same would happen.

[MakeMeLaugh]

Woow this queue is dumb as fuck, unbelievable.

[minteK917]

Woow this queue is dumb as fuck, unbelievable.

Waited 20 minute in queue, got in, cleared chaos sancturary, as soon as the zone turns red i get the message that im disconnect from the server.... im done with this shit. Fuck the shill above you trying to pretend the game is fucking working online.

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It seems like more people are playing more D2R games after 3 weeks. I never had to wait in a queue for Diablo before now. lol

Nah they added the queue system, they didnt have it before thats why lol. Game is losing online players for sure, its as unstable as it get and its been out for a couple weeks already.

[Zeta333]

It's still VV working on it. VV is now a part of blizzard, they've taken over control of classic blizzard games.

And I'm playing it right now?

blizzard still runs the bnet and server aspect.

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Literally hundreds of thousnds of games being created at the same time up to over 700k on the same server. . You can try to be all high and mighty but the old game could not even handle 1/5 of that back in the day

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Another "I did not actually read the post" reply.

They are not blaming the players. They clearly stated it was due to the code they are using. Just to clarify they are using old code to keep it as close to the original as possible.

They never blamed the players. It is due to coding.

Also just because they said that the way people play the game now caused it does not mean they are blaming people. They clearly stated they want people to play how they want and are working on coding fixes to handle it.

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The game is fine and 100% despite the server crashes. My thinking is your computer is just old and can not handle it.

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It has NOTHING to do wity the size of the clusters and 100000% to do with the coding. They could literally make 10billion region clusters and the same would happen.

they already said that thier region servers were maxed out at a few hundred thousand people playing at once. rate limiting games was impllemented before ques to slow down game creation. right now there are to many people wanting to play for the servers. they literally said that. The creation was another aspect but not the only one.

[RobertoCarlos]

My thinking is your computer is just old and can not handle it.

Come on dude, cut that shit out.

The game is ancient if someones computer couldnt run it I'd ponder how they managed to make a PC from the 90s still run today.

[Onikaroshi]

blizzard still runs the bnet and server aspect.

And it's VV's decisions that lead to the issues, because they used legacy code (to keep the game feeling the same way it did before) mixed with new systems things are overloading, it says that literally in the post.

Even says how they're working to fix it.

[Aeluron Lightsong]

Legacy code is a real son of a bitch.

Waited 20 minute in queue, got in, cleared chaos sancturary, as soon as the zone turns red i get the message that im disconnect from the server.... im done with this shit. Fuck the shill above you trying to pretend the game is fucking working online.

Or maybe their experience differed, not because they are a shill.

[Vespian]

Yeah... just checked Diablo reddit it looks TOTALLY playable...

This has two sides. Console players are getting the shaft, because of load-times and no invulnerability timer. So HC players are getting fragged while loading the game. That's one big issue. Then there's the queues and crashes. The crashes exacerbate the queues, because they feel doubly unfair when you just crashed and then are met with a 600+ queue, but for now they're necessary.

About the code. I know how this goes. We should probably all know how this goes. You have a team of people, you discuss issues with the code, things that need to change, things that do not need to change and things that may or may not need change. Sometimes decisions are made based on theory. Sometimes they are made based on weighing the pros and cons (which can be financial, technical, timemanagement, etc), but in the end, this code probably was assumed enough to do the job. I have no doubt one or two engineers warned for potentials risks. I'm pretty sure that after some debate, it was agreed to keep the old code. I wasn't there, but I've been working in IT for about 20 years now and that's how it works in a professional world. There's input, discussion and decision. Sometimes it's the wrong decision. It happens.

They are going to fix it, it will take time, it's a pity it's happening and you are free to have your own feelings about that, but I'm impressed with this remaster and I'm really not going to get my panties in a twist over a few weeks of rough terrain. I've been playing the game for about ~14h today. 8h straight, then a crash , queue of 700, watched an episode, logged back in, played another 6 hours without interruption. People should relax and let go of their consumer mentality for once. Fucking entitlement is killing everything.

[MakeMeLaugh]

Fucking entitlement is killing everything.

No.

They sold a product that is not working properly.

Fucking whiteknights are killing everything.

[Video Games]

haha, one of my most anticipated games of the year and it's been almost a month since release

[Biomega]

There's plenty of explanations for what's going on, but that doesn't really mean it's excusable.

They knew there was legacy code in the architecture, and that would lead to inefficiency. If they say they didn't think this many people would play the game, that's one thing; if they don't have a contingency in place, that's quite another. They basically went the equivalent of "naaah, it'll be fine", which is a big no-no. Even if they didn't just go and spend money to upgrade everything to withstanding the assault (which is understandable), they should have had plans in place to make that happen very quickly IF it becomes necessary; they did not, and that really isn't understandable given that Blizz has had countless game/expansion launches dealing with exactly this problem.

In short, they were either incompetent by not having contingencies in place to handle a bigger-than-expected load; or they were callously greedy, banking on player goodwill and acceptance even in the face of bad servers because of the Blizzard name and Diablo brand (and, perhaps, the fact it's buy-2-play so what are people going to do, refund?). Neither is a good look

That being said, server issues aside it IS a great game, so I guess maybe their goodwill equation will hold after all...

[Mendzia]

This has two sides. Console players are getting the shaft, because of load-times and no invulnerability timer. So HC players are getting fragged while loading the game. That's one big issue. Then there's the queues and crashes. The crashes exacerbate the queues, because they feel doubly unfair when you just crashed and then are met with a 600+ queue, but for now they're necessary.

About the code. I know how this goes. We should probably all know how this goes. You have a team of people, you discuss issues with the code, things that need to change, things that do not need to change and things that may or may not need change. Sometimes decisions are made based on theory. Sometimes they are made based on weighing the pros and cons (which can be financial, technical, timemanagement, etc), but in the end, this code probably was assumed enough to do the job. I have no doubt one or two engineers warned for potentials risks. I'm pretty sure that after some debate, it was agreed to keep the old code. I wasn't there, but I've been working in IT for about 20 years now and that's how it works in a professional world. There's input, discussion and decision. Sometimes it's the wrong decision. It happens.

They are going to fix it, it will take time, it's a pity it's happening and you are free to have your own feelings about that, but I'm impressed with this remaster and I'm really not going to get my panties in a twist over a few weeks of rough terrain. I've been playing the game for about ~14h today. 8h straight, then a crash , queue of 700, watched an episode, logged back in, played another 6 hours without interruption. People should relax and let go of their consumer mentality for once. Fucking entitlement is killing everything.

You made very good post and i understand what is going on with the game... but they rereleasing it after 20years and as customer i would just expect to be able to play as i want and when i want... especially after 1 month.
I do like to wait in queues, be blocked after X games, be in constant fear that my +80lvl HC char is gone due random server hiccup i lose very rare rune like Cham after sudden rollback etc.
From customer side... why would i care about that?
I see this as not finished product and all of these problems do not convince me to buy it... even if remaster looks amazing.

[Vespian]

No.

They sold a product that is not working properly.

Fucking whiteknights are killing everything.

You managed to selectively quote that quite nicely, but the reason I'm saying it, is because I have just played 14h straight, with only one crash. It's (PC) not unplayable. It's currently working absolutely fine. I'm not whiteknighting, the game is playable, the game itself is near pristine, they just put some measures into place to prevent us from having a far worse experience.

Inaction is inexcusable. I was annoyed for about 5 days, because no information was shared, no public acknowledgement of the persistent downtime. Then, they came with a good, lengthy, detailed statement. They have implemented what they said would be implemented. Therefore I believe they are working on the issue. As long as the issue is being actually worked on, I'm respecting the fact that unforeseen problems arise, and as I said, professionally I can attest that unforeseen issues arise quite often, and that these take time to solve.

Yes, you are an entitled little shit. If you want to keep up that attitude, put your money where your mouth is. Refund the game, then exit this forum until you decide to buy the game again and stop your entitled millennial whining.

You made very good post and i understand what is going on with the game... but they rereleasing it after 20years and as customer i would just expect to be able to play as i want and when i want... especially after 1 month.
I do like to wait in queues, be blocked after X games, be in constant fear that my +80lvl HC char is gone due random server hiccup i lose very rare rune like Cham after sudden rollback etc.
From customer side... why would i care about that?
I see this as not finished product and all of these problems do not convince me to buy it... even if remaster looks amazing.

Their explanation for why this is happening makes a lot of sense. The rollbacks were a thing in the old game too. It's, as far as I know, the origin of duping. When your game is interrupted by server-side issues, the game used to rollback the previous entire game. Apparently they took this architecture with them into D2R. Now we know what the issue is, it explains a lot. There's a master database that's the "truth" and a temporary slave database that processes current activities. The master database discards any games that have not properly been concluded and therefore all progress is rolled back from that single game.

It makes sense. It absolutely sucks, don't get me wrong, but technically it makes sense. Yes, you can be angry, yes we can unite and start a cancel Blizzard even more hashtag, but in reality, nothing is going to change. It's just a game. You lost progress in a game. I get it. I lost stuff too. Not as much as a cham, but still a punch back down and that still hurts on my HC progress. All they can say is "sorry, yes it sucks, we are fixing it"... They are fixing it. You are currently angry with them, for implementing some measures to temporarily solve the downtime, so they can work on permanently fixing it. I'm glad they are fixing it.

[Beastiel]

what's the deal with these queues? i've never had such small numbers take so long. For example i'm #144 in queue, and 10 minutes later i'm still #144.

[Vespian]

what's the deal with these queues? i've never had such small numbers take so long. For example i'm #144 in queue, and 10 minutes later i'm still #144.

There are no forced DC's, so AFK players don't count towards queue progress. Only people that physically log off reduce your queue.

[cateran100]

Few thousand ???

Try hundreds of thousands because people love farming bosses and each time they create and destroy a session it was creating massive load on the global server, so no it wasn't a few thousand it was more massive than that. Simply put the code built for handling the sessions was never designed for the scale of load it was designed for, its still the old 2001 code they are using here. So now they need to go in and separate out that old code and bring it up to a standard for handling the farming behaviour of people in 2021.

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Its the reuse of old 2001 code for handling play sessions, its explained that it was never designed for the stupid boss farming playstyle of current players who create and destroy thousands of sessions per minute searching for that one perfect McGuffin.

Cant blame VV here or Blizzard really, they had no way of knowing that the old code was not up to the task, now they need to go in and separate the code so they can patch it.

not an easy task since it requires a huge amount of testing.

Edit - VV had no way of knowing as they never coded the game to begin with and were having to work with antiquated 2001 code. Blizzard might have known if there were still coders on staff that built the engine but I doubt any of the original coding staff still work there so it was a gamble to even use the code and here it failed badly.

Jesus...please tell me you do not really believe "hundreds of thousands" people playing and doing exactly the same thing in the same time in the same region within the game.../facepalm and silent cry...

Yeah..codes works in a mysterious way....again.../facepalm and silent cry....It was the most pathetic white knight try since ages...

[Onikaroshi]

There are no forced DC's, so AFK players don't count towards queue progress. Only people that physically log off reduce your queue.

Yea, it's a problem, I don't mind the queue, if it were to actually move.

[Bigbazz]

In 2003 I used to either run pindle and then remake or run pindle + frigid and remake, and I'd sometimes do that all night. And the leaving games/joining games was faster then too, no heroic loading screens like we have in D2R. Farming was faster, Baal running was faster too, noticably. If you continued on that path for too long though, or especially if you logged back to the char screen and then back into BNET too much you'd get realm down, lock you out for a couple mins, don't remember the details.

In D2R the game creation/join limit is extreme though, to the point where it has a big impact on gameplay experience for just regular players not even doing things like pindle farms. It's not really at all acceptable that we have servers/infrastructure completely incapable of handling the same gameplay that we did 20 years ago with a larger playerbase. And I know some people might not realise this but the active playerbase in open games in D2R is miniscule compared to in the prime days of D2.

A queue is not acceptable, the game limitations are not acceptable and really it's on Blizzard again, it's a shambles.

[Vespian]

In 2003 I used to either run pindle and then remake or run pindle + frigid and remake, and I'd sometimes do that all night. And the leaving games/joining games was faster then too, no heroic loading screens like we have in D2R. Farming was faster, Baal running was faster too, noticably. If you continued on that path for too long though, or especially if you logged back to the char screen and then back into BNET too much you'd get realm down, lock you out for a couple mins, don't remember the details.

In D2R the game creation/join limit is extreme though, to the point where it has a big impact on gameplay experience for just regular players not even doing things like pindle farms. It's not really at all acceptable that we have servers/infrastructure completely incapable of handling the same gameplay that we did 20 years ago with a larger playerbase. And I know some people might not realise this but the active playerbase in open games in D2R is miniscule compared to in the prime days of D2.

A queue is not acceptable, the game limitations are not acceptable and really it's on Blizzard again, it's a shambles.

The distinction is, that the queues and the game create/join delays have been purposely introduced to keep the servers going. So in other words: The legacy code couldn't maintain the volume of game creation and broke down. To fight the downtime, they introduced temporary queues and temporary increased delays between game creation. This is, I repeat, temporary. It's a measure, that is being taken, so that you can play the game, instead of not at all.
They will then fix the issue with the legacy code and remove all these temporary restrictions.

This is not higher math.

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Jesus...please tell me you do not really believe "hundreds of thousands" people playing and doing exactly the same thing in the same time in the same region within the game.../facepalm and silent cry...

Yeah..codes works in a mysterious way....again.../facepalm and silent cry....It was the most pathetic white knight try since ages...

So, what in this argument is supposed to convince anyone that you are right? Besides the argument from an authority you do not have, you fill all the gaps in perceived authority with ad hominem. Not exactly a solid argument to find anywhere and the reason is simple. You, are wrong.

Doing the exact same thing over and over is literally how Diablo 2 is played. The only variable is the hundred thousand. We don't know how accurate those numbers are. However, judging from the fact that gaming as a whole has increased its market share hundred fold, it's not unlikely that there are actually hundreds of thousands of people creating games at peak hours.

[Wilian]

Literally hundreds of thousnds of games being created at the same time up to over 700k on the same server. . You can try to be all high and mighty but the old game could not even handle 1/5 of that back in the day

The old game allowed to make own multiplayer games tho' so even if Bnet services were down you weren't locked out of playing with your friends.

That doesn't look good for MAU though so gotta keep things like that away