Server Maintenance... (mini rant/question)

[AnimalCrossingPerson]

Does anyone else get frustrated with how often the Nintendo servers go down for maintenance? Like, seriously, it's just Nintendo that go down for long, planned maintenance on a regular basis.

The latest Nintendo Badge Arcade maintenance was seven hours, apparently! Other titles that don't even get new content such as New Leaf and Rumble World seem to go down fairly frequently too, which is just absurd.

I remember back in the day RuneScape and FunOrb would get frequent system updates, at least once a week. However, this would have been around 2009 or so and each update took a minute at most, not hours!

 

[Trent the Paladin]

Nintendo does maintenance weekly every Monday. Any other unscheduled maintenance is because their ****ty potato servers died. Maintenance is different for everyone, do not compare it to other companies.

 

[AnimalCrossingPerson]

Nintendo does maintenance weekly every Monday. Any other unscheduled maintenance is because their ****ty potato servers died. Maintenance is different for everyone, do not compare it to other companies.

Eh, the maintenance still seems random to me. I'm only comparing to other companies because I've never heard of anyone else scheduling the servers to be down for hours on end. Imagine if Google did that, lol.

Here's what the general trend seems to be from personal experience and from others (same town, same timezone):
Badge Arcade - Night/Morning
New Leaf - Night
Rumble World - Morning/Afternoon
Splatoon - Afternoon
Mario Kart 7 - Never?!
eShop - Afternoon

 

[Tao]

Nintendo isn't the only one who does server maintenance and most 'things' that do take a while.


Sony do a 'general' server maintenance pretty regularly and it's down for a while when they do, at least so I've seen. I don't really play online though, so I've never really noticed how much or how long that happens for.

World of Warcraft do weekly maintenance every Tuesday (IIRC/if that information is still correct) and that lasts for hours. They had the common decency to do it regionally for each server group though, that way the maintenance happened in the early morning for everybody (like 3AM) so that it wouldn't actually effect the majority of players, rather than in the middle of the friggin' day when you want to play.




At any rate, comparing Nintendo's server maintenance to Runscape's is comparing apples with oranges.

 

[AnimalCrossingPerson]

Nintendo isn't the only one who does server maintenance and most 'things' that do take a while.

Sony do a 'general' server maintenance pretty regularly and it's down for a while when they do, at least so I've seen. I don't really play online though, so I've never really noticed how much or how long that happens for.

World of Warcraft do weekly maintenance every Tuesday (IIRC/if that information is still correct) and that lasts for hours. They had the common decency to do it regionally for each server group though, that way the maintenance happened in the early morning for everybody (like 3AM) so that it wouldn't actually effect the majority of players, rather than in the middle of the friggin' day when you want to play.

At any rate, comparing Nintendo's server maintenance to Runscape's is comparing apples with oranges.

Oh, fair enough then. Perhaps Nintendo should have at least two servers to have minimal downtime?

 

[Trent the Paladin]

Oh, fair enough then. Perhaps Nintendo should have at least two servers to have minimal downtime?

That's not how that works

 

[Ayaya]

While it's annoying to wait, it's better than having to deal with lagging servers. Maintenance is there to fix problems so you can have smooth online experience, though if the maintenance is long and frequent, then that is worrying.

Just prepare something to do while waiting for maintenance. It won't bother you that much if you're distracted

 

[AnimalCrossingPerson]

That's not how that works

Why not? It's common for big companies to have three servers: Two to switch between for when maintenance and such is being done and a backup server. That way, there should never be a situation in which there isn't a server to respond and the cost of upkeeping all three is worth it since downtime can have a massive impact on revenue. If my email provider went down every week I'd quite frankly move to another one.

While it's annoying to wait, it's better than having to deal with lagging servers. Maintenance is there to fix problems so you can have smooth online experience, though if the maintenance is long and frequent, then that is worrying.

Just prepare something to do while waiting for maintenance. It won't bother you that much if you're distracted

Not such a great idea when it's the middle of the night. Best to just get the daily freemiums done and get some sleep.

I've never really seen any issues with laggy servers. Ubisoft are currently running a script on their Trials Frontier servers to fix an issue where people weren't rewarded properly and they seem to be running smoothly. Lag would matter even less with Nintendo stuff since New Leaf is peer-to-peer and other titles like Rumble World just have to download a couple things. Might matter on something like Mario Kart, Splatoon or whatever other fast-paced things they have that rely on servers!

But hey, all companies are different and perhaps they just want to play it safe.

 

[Tensu]

I feel you. The servers suck. However, I agree with Ayaya about the lagging. It would be a lot ****tier without the maintenance. You can just play other games that don't require online during maintenance. Take the time to fix up your town or do something that you never have time to do. Or go take a hike, read, watch TV, or something.

 

[Flop]

Why does everyone get so worked up about maintenance? Jeez. Trust me, it's better than laggy, cluttered servers.

 

[Belle of Pripyat]

I rarely ever notice it being down, to be honest. Monday evenings are to be expected, but a lot of the time, it doesn't last for very long.