24 Hour Maintenance? Why?

Many noticed yesterday when they logged in that a slew of servers where getting their turn at a 24 hour down time for maintenance.  A few in my guild, my daughter included, were very disappointed at the loss of being able to play.  She just got to Northrend for the first time and is excited to get to 80.

The question was asked as to why these servers where down for 24 hours and why this set?

To answer that lets look at why this is happening.  Unless you have been living under a rock somewhere everyone is aware that Blizzards third expansion, Cataclysm, to World of Warcraft is in the works and more than likely going live around October.  This new expansion is adding lots of new features and expanding some things like phasing that we saw added to the game for Wrath. 

New features means new demands on an already aging server infrastructure and code base.  Upgrades are inevitable and needed to make sure we have a smooth gaming experience.  To do this they have to take live servers offline to either upgrade software, hardware, network hardware (Oh I hope the Boston data center gets a much needed backbone upgrade!) or all the above.  A few weeks ago a slew of servers had their turn and now its my servers turn.

So the next question is. . Why these servers?

That is simple.  Batlegroups.  Huh?

Blizzard uses Battlegroups to divide servers up into groups.  The most visible use of these battlegroups is when you que for a Battle Ground.  You will be placed into a BG with people from other servers within your battlegroup.  Now with the inclusion of the new Looking for Group system you can enter an instance with someone from your battlegroup just like you did in BG’s.  But did you know that there is a reason behind the servers in a battlegroup?   Its not random, its about where the hardware that your server sits on is located.

Battlegroups are clusters of servers that all reside (presumably physically) on the same server hardware box at one location.  These locations are called datacenter’s.  For the US market Blizzard uses four datacenters spread across the country.  Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles and Seattle.  WoWWiki has a wonderful page showing the datacenter and battlegroup break down. 

If you look at the list of today’s 24 hour downtime and compare it to the wowwiki list you will notice that it’s the Boston Datacenter’s turn for this downtime.  The Boston DC houses the Nightfall, Retaliation and Stormstrike battlegroup.  June 8th saw 24 maint for the Los Angeles datacenter while Chicago followed suit on 29th of June.  With today's that leaves the Seattle DC left and all will be upgraded. . to this point.

This is a good thing.  As I told my daughter and guild mates, its better to have 24 hours down now than 2 to 3 days down due to issues that we have seen in the past during other expansion releases or major patch roll outs. 

Personally I still hold hope that network bandwidth is increased to the ageing Boston DC.  Looking at another link on the wowwiki site you will notice that a good number of original servers are on the Boston DC.  West coast players, especially California, has a rather high ping traveling across the country to the Boston center.  Sure you can play on a LA or Seattle realm but for some of us the old servers are home. 

So in the end 24 hours will give you time to. . .

• Write a blog post
• Reorganize your social media presence
• Take out the trash for your wife
• Work on your UI (once the other servers come back up)
• Or just spend time with ones you love.

See you all soon

RealID, The Aftermath or is it?

I am still working on a way to put down how I think the RealID on Official forums debacle thing played out.  Some will know that I was in favor of the "idea" of the system and even went so far to post comments on fellow bloggers blogs.

My biggest concern, and remaining nagging feeling, is the signal to noise ratio of the debate, or rather, scream fest.  I still firmly believe that the baby has in fact been tossed out with the bath water and that as a community of social beings we still have a lot to learn about the "bigger picture."

But it will be some time before I can honestly put down all my thoughts on this subject.  Instead allow me to link a few great posts that have allready been made on the subject.

First be sure to head on over to The Instance Podcast and listen to Scott and Randy discuss the issue on the topic.

The Instance #196 – The Rage! It Burns Us, Precious!

Leafshine: Lust for Flower
Adam over at Leafshine has a great post about the subject.

RealID, Social Theory and Blizzard's Community Problems

I will continue to add posts and content with good material.  WARNING, I going to do my best to not post whine or QQ fests.  We need more than anything good open conversation on the subject.

6 Random Gamerz Things (Got Tagged)

Got tagged by Taylor Kent
http://thesnarkyavenger.com

Here are the rules for those I’m tagging. Check the list after my 6 Random Gamerz Things to see if you’ve been tagged.
1. Link to the person who tagged you.
2. Post the rules on your blog.
3. Write six random things about yourself.
4. Tag six-ish people at the end of your post.
5. Let each person know he or she has been tagged.
6. Let the tagger know when your entry is up.

6 random things about me, Mike Norton

1. I collect bald eagles, not the real thing, but anything with them on them.


2. I met Tanya in college.  The very same college Bethany will be going to this coming fall O.o


3. My first video game addiction was "Return to Castle Wolfenstien"


4. I can balance a spoon on my nose.


5. My game tag ManO comes from my first clan mates in Team Fortress Classic shorting my name MANorton to ManO. It sort of stuck.


6. I'm an ubber Geek.  No . . really.

Six tagged people

Scott Bridwell (http://blog.scottbridwell.com/)
Carey Norton (http://yarnpaperscissors.blogspot.com/)
Warren Kelly (http://pewview.mu.nu/)
Rick Presley (http://www.ill-legalism.com/)
BigRedKitty aka Daniel (http://www.bigredkitty.net/)
Phaelia (http://www.resto4life.com)

Casual Raiders Unite

Over the past couple of years I have had the great pleasure of being the GM of some awesome guilds, filled with some awesome people.  One thing that has become very clear however in the past year.  

*holds a candle and stands slowly to his feet*  "I am a casual raider"

That's right, you heard me.  For a long time it was enough to level and hang out with friends.  I came from an RP server and enjoyed RP and events as well, as much as they can burn you out at times. But it was not enough.  When Bricklethumb, my first 60 and then first ever to make it to 70 got there, well, I ran out of things to do alone with a small group of friends.  

So I did what most non-raider, or non-pvp addicts did.  I rolled an alt!  To cut to the chase . . at this point I have 4 70's, 1 64, 2 40 somethings. . .well. . you get the drift.  I would run into people that would say "wow you have 4 70?  That must be tons of fun?"  Well, yes and no.  What it does mean is I now have 4 toons to spread across my limited time and get stuff done.

I was bored.  Puging was for the birds, allthough Im not against it as much as some others are.  I find you can meet some really good people and players in a random pug.  I left wow for a while to try some new content in LotRO. You can read about that here on PastoPlayz.  It was great, it was fun. . But . . ran out of things to do at the time and sucked back into wow.  

Then it happen.  I got my paladin into Kara and I was like. . This is cool!  So I got bit by the raiding bug.  Working with new content, seeing new bosses, learning new tactics, and enjoying the game. . . oh and  . . loot!  Only problem was that most of the guilds that wanted to run Kara all the time a)  wanted to run it all the time, especially at times I could not go due to family, church, or what not, and b) did not want anyone from another guild in a run with them.

This went on for several months.  Untill I moved to Earthen Ring US.  There I discovered a raiding alliance that worked.  It is called SASU, and it is like most large groups of people. Some are cool, and some are jerks.  Thankfully due to the structure and history more cool than jerks *smile*

Paravel Communications is Up.

Well, after several months of trying to get bearing after resigning at First Baptist I have begun to take to heart the comments my friends have been telling me for years.  I have been developing web sites for guilds, churches, personal use for a long time.  Every time I finish a job someone would comment how they liked it, or how cool something was on it.  Soon the conversation would turn to "You should do this for a living."

Well, it is now time to see if they are right.  My deepest desire is to help others use the internet to reach out to the masses.  Weather it is a church or ministry, a local company, or someones private blog, they deserve to have a great web presence.

All I ask of my readers and friends is you pray for us as we try to get the company off the ground.  If you know of someone or you are in need of a custom site, give me a call.  *smile*

http://paravelcomm.com