The limited availablity on release

I'm sorry but in my mind an announcement that says they will be up 22/7 is equivalant to one that says they can't be up 24/7. And I'm sure I'm not the only one who sees it that way.

I'd vote for... daily (optional) downtime... this is what we use at work ( in FL ), so that people expect a possible period of unavailability. We get a few hours notice whether or not the "scheduled" downtime will or will not be used, so people can make schedule adjustments if desired.

Course, the other alternative is to write bug-free code, gosh-darnit. Just like mine.

=SV

I agree it is a long downtime, but what am I doing in the am hours of the day? Either sleeping or at work, certainly not thinking about playing SL. I really lie awake in the wee hours of the morning griping cause I can't sleep and wanna play SL but the game is down for some reason. I admit this is a long downtime, I know many other games that either choose 1 particular day for maintence and take 6-9 hours to patch up, this is really uncool. Another game MMOG that I used to play used to be down from anywhere from 1 1/2 hours to 3 every day because I chose the most popular server. This has now been fixed and the downtime is 15 minutes max, much better. All servers need maintinence times cause if ir ran perfectly 100% of the time without bugs we wouldn't need to pay for it or it would cost very little. That will never happen unless we come up with some amazing technology so for now it is something everyone will need to deal with. New games require more downtimes to get used to the problems that occur. Once the problems are reported or are found and recognized the elimination process goes like clockwork. That's what patching is all about.

I don't think SL is going to appeal to the mmorg-know-nothing I'm-comparing-them-all sort; maybe some, but not in general. We're going to find people that come because they are sick of the cookie-cutter style of other mmorgs, or are looking for a different "second game"..and they'll provide the word of mouth to the new online gamer making a first choice. Really the best comparison that your new-ish gamer has is, "it's like the sims online, but you can actually do stuff."

That's why I'm here anyway...I couldn't stand to sit down to another pointless 16 hour EQ raid (oh god the days spent in ToV, PoA, Ssra, PoE...), and SL didn't seem to fit into the standard mmorg mold. I figured I'd fill in with SL until EQ2 and all hits. Little did I know how hooked I'd become.

And I got to hand it to the Lindens, they are honest about their uptime. The other games say 24/7 but any experienced gamer knows that's a joke. I have yet to find a mmorg that runs 24/7 even though they all say they do.

I agree with Tcoz, I happen to be one of those tired of "cookie-cutter" MMORPGS and his logic stands true for us. Second Life adds variety to gaming lost in most other MMORPGs. And yes most MMOROPGs claim 24/7 but it doesn't work out. There is downtime, which would you like less: a timeframe when you can expect a server to be down so that you can plan around it or random downtime?

Alright, now I can give a little more information about this stuff - our downtime strategy will look like (B), optional downtime every day. We'll probably put the two hour window early in the AM but that's not final yet. When possible, we'll also give advance notice if we're actually going to take the system down.

We'll have to use this downtime for a number of reasons - patching is the most obvious, but say we we're adding a whole bunch of new regions? We'll want to start them up in their final locations to test the terrain stitching before actually letting people in. New releases (w/ a new client download) will also be posted during this window.

Of course there will be exceptions to this - we hope to avoid unplanned outages of the entire system but they've happened before and may happen again. Individual regions may continue to have problems and in general we won't wait until the maintenance window to deal with them.

So the upshot is, we're not going to shut the system down to cool off for two hours every day. (if you stood next to the 35-amp heating unit that is a rack of SL servers, you might think that's a good idea) But we are going to reserve two hours every day when we *might* take it down, and we should always be able to give a good reason for doing so.

This option sounds like a good one to me

I think that's the ideal way to do it Ian

i can see everyone pionts of view... and for me 22/7 isn't bad.. considering how right now we only have what 9 hours of game play a day thats open ..and usually i don't log in till around 11 est... so i don't have any problems with not being able to play 2 hours a night if it means the servers run smoothly and it helps with bugs and lag issues..i guess it really all depebds on how much you want to stay in SL when it all boils down to it... because if you want to be here 2 hours isn't a whole lot of time to be out of world..take a nap..do some housework...run to the store. <--that one should take about 2 hours depending on where you live ...

I also say B
I would rather have it be 24/7 Most of the time.
I also feel it would be better for thouse unforseen bugs.
for example "some wierd thing is going arond deleteing everyones stuff"

i'd rather hear "ok in 15 mins servers are going down they will be back up asap"

then 10-12+ hours later after it's deleted alot of stuff that it gets fixed on the 2hr window.

Also as a side note i'd like to know when these 2hrs are gonna be. for example i'm gonna really hate if it's midnight to 2, less mad if it's 2-4 and happy if its 4-6 (all pst of corse)