Well, to put this one to rest for now : Most of the comments were civil which I very much appreciate. I do have to give credit : 1 hour 15 minute turnaround is not bad for the patch, and is appreciated (I can still get 45 minutes, which is something). Thanks for not turning it into a complaint fest, maybe most of these posts will get read by someone who can come up with some good ideas!!

With regard to not being in a brand new game : I have, far more than I'd like to admit to (read: a lot of wasted money on games that looked awesome but were not very good). Here is the flip side to that argument : Large MMO's have been produced for over a decade now. The idea of taking a single population of your player/subscriber base and repeatedly hitting them over the head is a concept that has been remedied in the past 10 years. Here is another thing that has been developed over the past 10 years : a way to minimize breaking everything when you 'fix' something. When a new problem is introduced every time you try to fix something, QA is not being effectively doing it's job. My complaints haven't even broached the subject of the EU/AUS players who have to deal with this in FAR more populated hours than I'm whining about.

Telling people who don't get the chance to play due to constant patches that your play experience is 'marred' is a little... infuriating?

I understand you think it's funny, and it is a bit ridiculous to expect the servers to be taken down in the middle of the afternoon, but for people who only get to play at the exact time they decide to take the servers down every week get a horrible experience. EDIT - Not the scheduled patches, that's something that we're going to have to live with, the extras are the ones that really start to chap my hide.

I'm not normally one to complain, however : this continual patching at exactly the same time (which happens to be the exact time I'm usually able to log on) is starting to get quite old. I understand that an effort was made to pick a time that was the least populated, however by doing it at the same time every week, the same day every week, when added with the all too common additional time the servers are brought down (so now my chance to enjoy the game is negatively effected twice for every week) is beginning to get to the point where the service level is unacceptable. If it is a two hour patch, why not move it back by two hours. Server populations are still on the decline (anecdotally speaking) until 4-5AM Central. If you were to move it back on occasion, or move it forward on occasion, you would avoid negatively impacting the same players over and over. Some type of rotation or variation for hot-patches would be appreciated. I realize the weekly 8 hour downtime probably has to be somewhat regimented as there is a lot of logistics that goes into it. But losing a full day every week, in addition to the additional 2nd lost day begins to get old. As it stands with a weekly 8 hour patch you're already at ~95% uptime, which is below industry standard, have some understanding for the players who bear the brunt of this.