I’m not even a layman when it comes to IT stuff, but even I have to assume that server migration for a live MMO/multiplayer game has got to be challenging, so I feel for the folks at APB Reloaded when I read that a scheduled server migration has unraveled into a much longer maintenance that has kept the game offline for three days.
The extended server maintenance was announced this past Monday in order to allow Little Orbit to migrate servers for all platforms and bring players a better experience for their sessions. Right at the jump, it was mentioned that an ETA for these migrations wasn’t available, which is good because later that night the team started running in to database restoration issues and a problem that prevented the EU world from being available. It would later be discovered that some bad hardware had to be replaced in order for all databases to be restored. Furthermore, some network equipment and several district boxes for the EU datacenter got stuck in customs, meaning the EU world will have to run on hardware based in New York for a couple of days.
As of this writing, the game is still down, with PC, PS4, and Xbox One environments for NA due to stay offline for another couple of hours if not longer and XB1, PS4, and PC EU likely due to come online shortly afterwards. Players should also bear in mind that all platforms will be running Financial and Waterfront with no threat segregation for a couple days until things are back in order.
This isn’t the first time APB Reloaded has run into network issues. The game was down for a week in May thanks to unforeseen issues that arose during a hardware transfer. The takeaway from all of this is that IT is really freaking hard.
