Why do you only keep the server up during limited hours?

Curious what the logic behind that is...

Because it's Beta and they need some downtime to be able to work on bugs and upgrades and what not.

They're not even down!! you can stay online 24 hours I think (never tried it) you won't get kicked off at closing time, only login is disabled.
So that's kind of weird. I would say kick everybody out and really take the servers down. Or do not limit login at all. This kind of doesn't make sense to me.

yeah.. i thik you are right.

I was one till like 4 or 5 in the morning yesterday.. never got kicked.

I just CTD'd and now I can't log in

That is even more odd... Why disable log in but not kick everyone out?

The worst thing is that the time the server is on is horrible for me...it opens @ 11 pm and ends at 8 am. Thats the time I sleep for school/work. Really hope they can adjust it a little.

-Soll

When you stay on past log in time consider yourself lucky. Anytime past login means they don't gaurantee the servers will stay up for the following reasons:

- If for some reason it crashes on its own, after the login server closes no one at Linden Labs will know until start of business tomorrow. There are no on duty or on call techs.

- If they have to take it down for any reason whatsoever, they can do so without warning or feeling like they need to rush things to get the server back up because people are playing.

To my understanding those are the two reasons. And when you think about it you will realize that you aren't giving them any money to pay for the 24 hour tech support that would be needed to keep the game open 24 hours. Yes they probably will move to 24 hours before release, but they aren't yet to the point where they are beta testing tech and other support options, they are still beta testing the game. And thus that is where their current resources are allocated.

And they just did adjust it, added two hours before and one hour after the times it was open 2 weeks ago.

to be honest i think it is so new players come into the game during times where linden's are online how ever i could be wrong. i don't think they have the man power at this moment to keep linden's online 24 hours a day so lets be happy with the curent log in times and not get so hastey when asking questions of this sort it is Beta and things like this is to be expected. =)

Sure i understand they cant be open 24 hours a day yet but for the european people it isnt nice the servers are only open in the middle of the night

-Soll

I would definitly vote for earlier opening times. I don't now where the center of lindenlabs is, so what time it is for them when they open, but if it's 14.00 they could open a lot earlier. As many people said from europ: one or two hours earlier would be great!!!

San Fran. It's 2pm for them when the server opens. You know those programmers need thier beauty sleep!

I hate to say this but the time currently works GREAT for us on the east coast (Yea Boston!) We can go in at 5pm (and I get out at 3:30! Whoo!). I'm sure the open time will expand as the game expands. I play a game where the Ozzie's have taken over the night and made it their own game. Never never know what going to happen.

...we are aiming to expand hours deeply...

Gee Haney, thanks for that wonderfully vague answer.

i think the time is good thats only cus im on pst but i feel bad for those who are not

Wil that be Soon(TM)?

It's BETA! Isn't that reason enough?

We should be happy we were amoung those accepted to participate. The hours used to be 4p-10p PST.

What Haney was saying was something that you could probably find out by reading our website and tons of other posts, so I'll give a short version here.

We want to expand hours, and we want to add more simlators to the system, and we need to do some other work before we do this.

We are moving our servers (near the end of next week) and assuming all goes well, more time and more sims will be available. Taking in account murphys law, heisenberg's uncertainty principle, the price of tea in china, and our ability to make the move as effortless as possible, a few things may go wrong. (Have you noticed my uncanny ability to add as many caveats as possible?)

Once that happens, we will be in a better position to expand hours.

Best wishes,

-Peter

Thank you for the clarification, Peter.

I just wanted to echo Misnomer Jones' comments. It's Beta, folks. In exchange for a free preview of the game, we're supposed to be helping them find bugs and test the system. Let's try to remember that.

I can't wait till those extra hours come in, then i finnaly can play AND get out of bed normally the next morning . Really great, thanks allot



Lol, how can i test when the beta is in the middle of the night while im asleep??

-Soll

/e applauds Peter's shamless use of caveats

Like Haney said, we'll be progressively opening the hours over the next couple months.

What everyone is saying is more or less correct:

We need some during-the-workday time to fly around and test new code and deploy patches when noone is on.

Additionally, we like to have Linden liasons in-world as much as we can.

Finally, we actually do monitor the grid at all times it is officially open (we carry pagers, etc), so that we can respond very fast if machines go down. So we need to staff up to be able to extend that.

But, as I said, we will be gradually expanding the hours.

Glad so many international users having fun!

What will be very cool about Second Life (read the technical section on the site) is that international simulators will ultimately be located in their appropriate countries. So it will be very cool... if you travel east you will get to Second Life Japan, etc. This will be fascinating, as everyone will have their 'home country' (with lowest lag), but will be able to travel everywhere!

oooooo, i've always wanted to go to Japan

Woot!! That is cool!

I would expect tyhe areas to naturally develope with cultural differences then.

I remember the Japanese UO servers seemed a bit different (in play style and attitudes) than the US shards.

It will be even cooler since there is no zoning or seperation of shards.