[2021] Dev Insight - This week's down time

Hey there, SMITE players.

We know this week's down time has been frustrating for y'all, so we wanted to touch base to give you some insight as to what has been going on this week. This might seem like server issues, but all of it was us testing/rolling back code changes to improve game stability for future launches (including Mid Season next week):

⚡ On Tuesday, we brought SMITE servers down in an attempt to test the new core programming services update before Tuesday's upcoming Mid Season Update to find and track any issues and resolve anything that may come up on Mid Season launch day (one of our busiest days of the year).  We did find issues, so we had to roll it back to a temporary core programming services build that had some potential fixes from the Match Manager (the code that manages queues, matchmaking, lobbies) crashes we'd seen pop up in the last couple of weeks. 

⚡ Then on Wednesday, we found that that build had a deadlock issue between some Match Manager threads which helped us understand what the issue with the Mid Season build was.

⚡ On Thursday morning, our teams worked on these issues and needed to find a time to deploy the new core build before Friday, so that we could try to observe any more issues before the weekend.

⚡ Friday morning, we found that our new core build had some incompatibility issues with our existing client, so we will have to roll back that change until Tuesday's release.

The tl;dr is that we have applied a series of code updates since 8.1 that has our patch days running smoother and smoother, we expect Mid Season to be the biggest since 8.1, so we are being overly cautious in case any issues occur. We will try to ensure we communicate with all of you any expected down time going forward.

(Edited for formatting)