Store toon data separately.
Close half the servers.
Wipe the blades.
Clone the remaining servers into the new server blades. Those are now your backup blades.
Do updates on the backup blade, then switch them on Tuesdays.
Now the unused blades become the backup. Rinse and repeat.
20 min maintenance
Me speaking with no clue what really goes on … but come on. There has to be better way.
PS: Guild Wars 2 does not shut down for maintenance or updates.
This is bait, don’t take it!
It maybe bait but tommorow is 8 hour maintenance? I was planning on going half day to work but if its 8 hour maint then I wont.
TODAY
7am to 3pm PDT
For me that is both today and tomorrow. Not everyone lives in the US.
Ugh every Tuesday/Major patch day.
How is it that OP has lived this long with the object permanence of a coconut?
What’s all this about coconuts?
“Ugh look at the Mesopotamian making a wheel … how has he lived this long, why can’t he walk like the rest of us”.
Do you think they’ve been doing it this way for 20 years just for giggles?
Nobody take longer than Blizzard and servers are not only used for gaming.
Google has never shut down on Tuesdays for maintenance.
So to answer your question, yes,
Nah servers go down a while for other MMOs.
On GW2, the updates happen while I am playing 
when the new zone drops I just head over
Blade servers, what, is this 2010?
Having said that its kinda puzzling that in 2024 you would need 8 hours for maintenance.
Not many other industries would tolerate a down time of almost 5%. But gamers are easy to treat like dirt.
Star Trek Online has 2+ hour maintenance every single week. At least WoW’s maintenance is usually one hour. And they’ve tried rolling maintenance before, but apparently that didn’t work out so they went back to shutting things down entirely.
They are just being cheap. Blue/green, feature flagging, etc have existed for some time. Like you said, the player base tolerates it, so they dont see value in improving in this area.
I got my spot reserved for the rage posts on GD when they inevitably extend maintenance, lmao.
It’s not treating players like dirt. The game is just massive with a lot of code. They are adding story, heritage quests and the Pandaria remix stuff on the backend. They have to make sure to add that and not create any problems.
Rise up!!
In defiance of the tyranny of Tuesday maintenance in our gaming realms, we, the players, declare our independence. We assert our right to uninterrupted play, pursuit of loot, and epic victories. We will no longer suffer the inconvenience of imposed patches. In the name of gaming freedom, we stand united, pledging our skills and honor to this cause.
You know what a dev server is?
Tell me you’ve never worked in IT without telling me you’ve never worked in IT.
Oh everyone in these threads has worked for IT. If you can shorten the maintenance time then go do it, lol. I’d rather not have all of the bugs.
Btw, you can test something somewhere else, patch it on to live servers and still have things go wrong.