yeah, that server normally has over 200 people on the fleet during the regular maint time (2am - 6am CDT), but last night I saw maybe 30 players when i popped in. Hopefully you're correct about people making other plans not realizing the DT was postponed. Otherwise I'd be scared people are sick of getting boned everytime BW screws up and just leaving.

That's the part I simply can't understand. Everyone wants it fixed. Everyone would be fine with them taking the servers down right this minute to fix it. Yet they decided to wait and annoy the same group of players that get screwed over with extra downtime every single time BW messes up. Why is that?

umm, dude.. the first rule of companion fight club

oh, well if it's just a couple of hours, then there should be absolutely no problem with them applying the patch at 6pm CDT, right?

I simply do not accept that as an answer. The 2am CDT DT has been in place since before the game was officially released, so there was absolutely no way to base the time on amount of players, as there weren't any besides beta testers. From my own personal experience, playing on multiple servers(yes, east/west, UK & Apac), both factions and at all times of the day, I'd say that 10pmCDT - 4am CDT seems to be the most populated time on any given server. I've noticed an almost complete lack of players on most servers from 5am CDT - around 10AM CDT. I'd love to see some sort of research that was done to come up with the 2am CDT time, but I'm fairly certain none exists other than "That's when we've always done it." Regardless of when the least populated time/Scheduled weekly maintenance is, there's absolutely no reason to use a "set-in-stone" Time to do emergency fixes. If an emergency fix is necessary and can't wait until scheduled maintenance, then it obviously can't wait til 2am CDT. Here's the test: 1. Is it an emergency? if the answer is yes then: 2. Does it need to go out on the servers right this very minute? if the answer is No, then it's NOT AN EMERGENCY and can wait until the next scheduled maintenance window.

100% agree that the extra maintenance is acceptable to fix something like this, regardless of how it occurred. However, if it's so important, why isn't it happening at 11am CDT, or 3pm CDT, or 7pm CDT? Why does it have to happen at 2am CDT? Why does the same base of players have to repeatedly get the shaft whenever BW screws up?

Or at the very least, let us test things on the Test Server which has just been sitting idle since 1.2 went live. The players found these issues minutes after the patch went live today. How much time would BW have saved if they had just let us test it on the PTS first?

Agreed.. I'm at the point where I don't even bother submitting bugs in-game. Everytime I do I get a nonsensical reply that either has nothing to do with what I reported, or is something a massive amount of players have reported on the forum, yet I'm asked by the responding CS droid to defrag my system, or delete temp files.

That is the thing that annoys the hell out of me.

The crystal shards for the cubes people lost are already in their Mission Items inventory.. once they apply the patch, all anyone needs to do is go back and re-assemble it.

it's probably one of those situations where some focus-group marketing team has asked a bunch of random "gamers"(housewives and hipsters who play farmville and draw something) misleading questions in order to drive an agenda. EA is just the sort of company that gobbles up that nonsense and destroys games in the process. This while thing reminds me of how things were just before the CU and NGE.. There was a huge focus group thing that happened a month or so before the garbage happened where groups of players were asked misleading and loaded questions in an attempt to show how the players specifically asked for everything included in the CU and NGE.

I'd like to see a Dev response to this.

I personally think the amount of hate revolving the "LFG Tool" issue is that BW has already stated that they're working on one, and that it will be implemented soon. Yet there's a very vocal group of players who Won't Shut Up about wanting an LFG Tool. We get it, you want one, they said they're implementing one. There's no longer a reason to clog up General chat with a 4-hour long discussion on the History of MMOs and which ones had LFG tools or Dungeon finders or whatever, or how they will destroy/enhance the community.

Thank you so much for fixing this!

Yet instead of just taking down the servers and fixing the issue, they piss off the same segment of the user base week after week by waiting until 2AM CDT to avoid pissing off players who rarely ever have to deal with unscheduled downtimes?

It wasn't immediate though. They posted the announcement at 2:34PM CDT. They took the servers down at 2AM CDT. That's 11 hours, 26 minutes. That's not "Immediate". Immediate would have been at 2:34PM CDT.

Agreed, 2AM CDT on Monday evening/Tuesday morning minimizes the number of players impacted as it's the scheduled maintenance window. Posting a notice of "unscheduled" maintenance to fix an exploit 12 hours prior to 2AM CDT is nothing more than telling a certain group of customers that their time/money isn't as important as the time/money of other customers. Again, if it's not important enough to take the servers down immediately, it can wait til the scheduled maintenance window, period.

It took less than 20 minutes on Friday the 13th when they took the servers down to re-patch them after the 1.2.0a patch didn't work. Yeah, it is like they sat there ready to go waiting for 12 hours. It's the stupid "We always patch at 2AM" mentality that accomplishes nothing other than pissing off the same group of customers every time it happens.

Why not? they held off on fixing it for 12 hours.

They *DID* leave in an exploit. When the announcement was made at 2:34PM CDT, they essentially told the exploiters that they had almost 12 hours to take advantage of that exploit before it possibly got fixed. What they should have done at 2:34PM CDT was TAKE THE SERVERS DOWN AND PATCH IT THEN! They should not have, once again, Scheduled an "Unscheduled" maintenance and screwed the same group of players they do this to every single time there's unscheduled maintenance.

I've seen the Potato. I think I'll understand if they just explain.

If it's such an "emergency" why are they waiting til 2AM CDT to fix it?

Which just reinforces my point. The 4/13 fix was obviously important enough to immediately take the servers down, which shows they can and will do so. The patch on 4/13 was another one of these "important" unscheduled patches. According to the patch notes all it did Fix an issue with not being able to delete a character, and improved CS ticketing system. Neither of which is game changing to the point of breaking the maintenance schedule. The 1.2.0a patch caused all of the 1.2 content to be reverted to pre-1.2 and I agree, was breaking the game enough to immediately take the servers down. However, if they had stuck to the maintenance schedule, perhaps none of the events on 4/13 would have happened. You'd think they'd learn from that harsh lesson and stop doing unscheduled maintenance for unimportant patches.

They did an immediate patch less than 30 minutes after deploying patch 1.2.0a on 4/13/2012. You might recall that was the one where they gave us all a free day because they improperly deployed the 1.2.0a patch on friday the 13th. So, they have indeed done it before, 4/13 was just the most recent one. There's no reason why they couldn't do it now for something truly earth-shattering. My question is about their decision making process when it comes to these "unscheduled" patches. If it's not important enough to do it RIGHT NOW, then it must not be important enough to disrupt the maintenance schedule.

If they were truly fixing something that's exploitable, why aren't they deploying it immediately? They obviously gave it enough thought to determine that it's not important enough to deploy immediately, delaying it until 2AM CDT. If that's the case, and it's not important enough to deploy immediately, then why not wait until the next scheduled maintenance window instead of annoying the same group of customers week after week?