I seriously doubt that they wrote 4,740,000 lines of new code.
(average line of code being 80 characters)

That would be a major rewrite!

Sadly this is more proof that modern Programming Developing Tools are horrible at revision integration and distribution (updates). The compilers don't know how to make just update the of the new code. I bet the actually code changed is under 100k 1/10 of 1MB, but no we got to waste hours downloading the whole thing all over again.

Not to mention the wasted Server Resources.

STO should use torrents for anything over 10MB.

POINT 2.
The Servers should never go down, the new updated code is uploaded on other servers/virtual servers in the network domain that new logons are required to use.

Existing users are given notice of old server is expiration date, which will require kick at that time. When that user logs on their account data is transferred/migrated while the new update is downloaded.

There are all kind of ways of keeping a server up while implementing updates, just ask Amazon, PayPay, Ebay, any credit card company, not to mention Hospitals and other life of death ops, etc....

I'm sure their doing the best they can with what the know and have, I'm just saying there is better ways to do updates, especially since it seems to be weekly! :wink:

Seriously?

You are equating a PoS system like Amazon with a much more complex thing like an MMO (which also includes PoS capacity)?

Hospitals similarly can have two system up simultaneously if need be and fall back on the old if something goes wrong with the new system. They can also continue to function if the system is down completely.

Name ANY MMO that never goes down for patches. How do you handle people online mid patch? Middle of combat, oops the rules change on you....

I actually tend to think it's more proof that people will complain about anything. There's a lot of stuff they could be preloading there for future patches (it's such a tiny download that i didn't bother actually checking what files were downloaded, sorry) textures, audio files, it doesn't have to be code.

STO servers are also up a whole lot more than many other MMOG's, heck they're up more than diablo 3's.

Did you know, That it was actually about 60Mb that was Downloaded, and that that 60Mb download patched folders whose total contents were 390Mb?

That's the way it's been since I started looooong ago.

And a big chunk of the larger files were most likely art, not code.

Try updating a piece of an image file.

FYI compilers don't work that way (and if they would, it would actually take more time, than just recompiling the whole pack).

Patches usually include more things than just a tiny bit of code.
This time it includes reworking on Models to fit for the Armitage for example ... taking up more space than [CODE][Please dear Armitage, this thing should fit way better now!][/CODE]

And about server being down: it's normal, it's required (more or less) and it saves up a lot of your precious server resources...

The STO-Updater is quite good at what it does.

And finally let me ask: What has torrent to do with that?

I give an 3 out of 10 ... for trying.

This is also a good point.

Downloading compiled code is much faster than recompiling... not to mention the fact that they do not download source code to our boxes, which is what you'd need to recompile.

The bulk of the code that makes the game work is actually on the server. They don't download that. The only thing that gets downloaded is the client code, and as I said a lot of the larger files are probably image files of some kind. Compilers don't operate on image files.

Patching could involve hex edits of files, true. But that would be even more work for Cryptic to set up properly than just recompiling source into downloadable files.

For the record, I would take a very, very dim view of a game that installed its own compiler on my system.

Hours downloading? You should be angry at your ISP, not Cryptic. It took me less time to write this post than it did to download the patch.

it took all of 3 minutes to update the game on an 8mb connection (I usually get between 4 and 6.5mb). even on a 1mb connection I wouldnt expect it to take any more than 10 - 20 mins. Hours is a bit of over the top.

WOW someone complaining about two hours down time in a MMO... wonders will never cease.