Server Issue Update

i dont think getting a video game online would be a top priority if there was a major earthquake or power outage.

Yes, they'll hire Al Gore

Well, after numerous attempts and several err 40s, I managed to log in and am playing w/o a problem...hopefully, it'll stay this way...

oh shitz my house is collapsing around me and my room is on fire

must..... keep... playing..

I think I would know first hand anyhow, since I live close to LA (experience first hand). I would take things like that, very seriously first before anything else. However I just wanted to know the fundamental question of what if?

Well this explains all the damn lag and frequent disconnects from friends list and the game itself. Yet support couldn't figure out the problem......

they would siphon electricity from nearby hospitals to keep the servers running

i've been having some bad disconnection problems for the last week or so aswell, hasn't been fun.

When things like this happen the rest of the world doesn't stop turning you know.

I was almost done vanquishing the Eastern Frontier when I (along with my entire guild) got disconnected. I only needed to locate and kill a final few devourers. Reconnecting didn't work... I was getting really, really annoyed. Until my 6th reconnect attempt final worked. Such a relief not having to do that one all over.

Ok, we have the official "All Clear" from the data center. As I was joking with players in the game, the server hamsters all had a glass of lemonade, took a swim in some ice water, and they're back at work now.

Should have drafted in some mini-pets to keep the wheels turning Gaile?

Maybe put a few Asura on the treadmill and as an incentive to run a bone dragon over their shoulder

Good to hear that everything is back to normal...
It just shows how well you're setup if you have a glitch (very rare) you can get it resolved in an hour or so.

Anet IT FTW! (the unsung heroes who keep us playing)

Well what do you expect them to do? Buy all the servers in double and set them up in a bunker so that whenever hell break lose Bob can still play GW on the other side of the world?

Shit happens and you just can't predict and prevent everything.

I hope my banks and the government has back-up for sure. As for my gaming provider, well, lets just say that I'll be 100 times more pissed off if I had no service while paying $15 a month subscription.

Actually, this is how a great many companies solve redundancy. It's not unfeasible, but rather industry standard. Of course, this pertains to businesses where continued accessibility has a great impact on the bottom line - A case could certainly be made that the costs for ANet to do something like that would far exceed the profits.

Fires, earthquakes, floods and power outages are not unpredictable - Given enough time you'll suffer them all in a place like LA. Preventing them is beyond pretty much anyones capabilities, but planning for them is certainly possible.

Good to hear that the game is online again!

Actually, I'm sure they do have redunancy. I work as a programmer for a medium to large size insurance company. If something happens to our Data Center, our computers will all disconnect and we call the Data Center to find out what happened.

If the answer is something like "Ouch, lightning hit the power pole outside and our generators are running emergency systems only. The power company estimates that everything will be restored in 4-6 hours.", then we'll just lump it out for 4-6 hours. We send all non-essential employees home for the day and use paper and pen for our customer calls, telling them the situation and we'll have their latest data as soon as possible.

If, on the other hand, something REALLY REALLY serious, like a plane just crashed on our Data Center (don't laugh, it's in the flight path of a major airport) or the Data Center just disappeared in an earthquake then we have a contract for a "hotbox" in another state. We call the hotbox site and all our backups are loaded onto the computers in the new data center a few states away and we continue business as normal.

We also have contracts for 24 hour emergency service with IBM and HP. They would be shipping us new servers within 24 hours which we would house in temporary locations until a new Data Center could be built.

I'm sure that a company the size of Arenanet has a similiar plan in place. If the LA center was unavailable and estimated to be unavailable for an extended amount of time due to an Earthquake or other disaster, the company would start re-routing data elsewhere.

Waaaaaiiiiiit a minute... since when are there servers in Lions Arch?

yes they were right next to the frog, he looked after them I heard...

Just out of curiosity, was that 115 degrees celsius or farhenheit?

Watch out! The people from PETA could be watching.

That's what I'm interested in. 115 degrees Fahrenheit really isn't a big deal for computers; that's a very comfortable temperature (in comparison, my video card runs at 136 degrees Fahrenheit with no problems, and my computer's ambient internal temperature is around 100, no problems). I don't know anything about dedicated servers, though, so perhaps they're more sensitive.

Water boils at 100C (at one atmosphere of pressure). This is the same as 212 Fahrenheit.

I'd be willing to wager they're talking F, not C.