Arguing about what might be fixed, or what should be fixed, or what definitely will be fixed in these unscheduled downtimes is pointless. History (for this game) has shown us that it's most likely going to be something irrelevant or associated with Free-weekenders. The point should be that if there's something serious enough to deploy that can't wait until the next scheduled maintenance window, why isn't it serious enough to deploy immediately? I mean, if they can wait until 2AM CDT and piss off the same group of people they do this to every single time this happens, why can't it wait until the next scheduled maintenance? It's clearly not important enough to disrupt the people playing right now, so why can't it just wait?

It wouldn't be so bad if it was just one day out of the week. People can plan around that and find something else to do. It would be nice if DT was tiered around a timezone schedule, but it's understandable that it needs to be on a routine. However, whenever there's an "emergency" fix on unscheduled days, why is there a need to wait until 12 PST/2am CST? The only thing you accomplish by waiting until then is pissing off the same group of players every single time you do an "emergency" fix. If the "emergency" fix is truly so important that you can't wait until the next scheduled maintenance window, then it's surely important enough to take down the servers at 2PM PST, or 6PM PST, or just as soon as you've created the patch that fixes whatever the problem may be that warrants taking the servers down on an unscheduled day?

Yes, please change this! It not only affects keyboard navigation, it also affects general navigation in regards to previous screen scrolling. If you're reading the forum, and you're scrolled down to the lower portion of the lists of posts, when you read a post and click back to the forum list, you're no longer sitting at the position you were previously and have to navigate your way back down. It's extremely frustrating when reading lots of new posts.

TBH, we aren't saying that all the level 50's spacebarred it.. However, someone who bought the game and spacebarred to 50 in a week then quit is getting this whole "You've one of our most valuable players, here's a reward for your loyalty if you reupped before 1.2 went live" I know it's not fair to lump all level 50's into the same basket as those players, but sadly, all non-level 50 players have been lumped into the "nothing for you disloyal, unimportant players" basket by BW

And I would 1000% disagree with you. a Rushed Level 50 can provide feedback on endgame content. Endgame content as a whole does not surpass overall game content, meaning sidequests, space missions, crafting, gathering, dialogue errors, etc.. Someone with 2 or 3 level 40s from differing storylines has far more information to provide feedback on than a person with a single level 50. Someone who leveled a single character to level 45 by taking their time and doing all the side stuff, plus leveling a crafting skill to 400 along with the associated gathering skills has far more feedback to offer than a typical spacebar 50.

In your example, you're making an assumption that the person who rushed to level 50 has been providing feedback to the devs. In the real world, we have this scenario: someone who rushed to 50 in the first month, then quit, never providing any feedback beyond a forum post saying he's bored. another person who plays with alts, gets a handful of character to level 40, then moves on the the PTS to help test 1.2, knowing that his testing will benefit all players and make his own end-game experience more enjoyable when he goes back to his live server characters. He enters bug reports, participates in forum discussions about changes that will benefit everyone and offers tips to those who want to know how to prepare for the update. The guy who rushed gets rewarded, the guy who actively support the game and the update gets squat.

I have a theory. When this PR thing went down, there were probably thoughts among the BW devs/csrs that something like this might happen, so they came up with a backup plan. During the downtime for the non-patch we get this morning, they closely monitored the forum looking for a thread like this one. When the whole thing blew up in their face, they put the plan into motion: 1. bring up the servers with a seemingly screwed-up patch that basically broke the 1.2 update. 2. bring the servers back down and initiate a maintenance period that's extremely long and during a time which players aren't accustomed to. 3. Let everyone rage and suffer withdrawal. Continue monitoring this thread(and others like it). 4. Bring the servers back up, fixed and all shiny. Include a Launcher message about how important, valuable and loyal ALL the players are. 5. Give all players a 7-day gift for loyally putting up with the Friday the 13th patch debacle because we're all equally valuable to them. 6. Never mention the 30 days they gave to level 50s or the week they gave to former subs.

is my favorite scene.

It's not the reward they were given. It doesn't matter if it was 30 day, 60 days, $500, or a new shiny mount. It's *how* they did it. They singled out a group of players, because they have level 50 characters, and told them that they're the most valuable, loyal players and because of this, they get a prize. All this does is tell anyone who doesn't have a level 50 character that, regardless of how long they've supported the game, they are less important than someone who's been here a couple of weeks.

My point wasn't to label all players who have level 50s as spacebar players... My point was that someone who bought this game a few weeks ago and spacebarred to 50 in a week is rewarded by BW for being a loyal and valuable player over players who've been playing since day 0 without a break in subscription.

mine was better here

This is the only analogy that works: 25 people all work in a shop that makes cupcakes. The company encourages employees to make batches of 8 cupcakes at a time, but it's not a requirement. 23 of the employees are capable of making between 6 to 8 cupcakes at a time, taking care to make sure they're all perfectly baked, perfectly shaped. They also enjoy decorating them with a vast array of icings, toppings, etc. They are capable of completing 6 to 8 cupcakes in about 5 hours. The personalized cupcakes are what the company is known for and the managers are happy. 2 of the employees rush through the mixing, baking and decoration process as quickly as possible. The cupcakes are bland, boring and misshapen, but they meet the requirements of being a cupcake. These 2 employees typically finish a single cupcake each in about an hour, then they leave for the day. Once they get home, they call their managers and complain about being bored since they finished their work so quickly. The next day at work, the CEO of the company decides to reward the employees for being such loyal and valuable workers. He rewards the 2 employees who finish their single cupcakes in an hour with their choice of cupcakes made by the other, less loyal and valuable employees. The other 23 get nothing. TL;DR: Butterflies taste with their hind feet.

Agreed, and now that I know the schems definately come from tech missions, I'm anxious to get back online and start running rich techs in all the ranks.. And yeah, the same thing is going on in my server.. a couple of green schems up for over 200k(insane) and TONS of rank 5 mats for sale for less than mission cost...

Thanks! That's good to hear.. Now I can safely ignore the lockbox missions.

The only problem I'm seeing though, at least on my server, is that nobody's buying the tech parts. Mainly because there's hardly any Augment schems for sale. Nobody can figure out if you get augment schematics from box missions or tech mission. We're all hesitant to test box missions because of the huge loss in credits.

Man, today is a bad day to be a BW employee... The PR stunt backfires The 1.2.0a patch reversed a bunch of 1.2 content.. Friday the 13th

We know that. We understand that. Many of us don't even care about the 30 days. We just want BW/EA to be honest about it and rectify the situation. It doesn't require a staff meeting or another PR stunt. The longer they take to address this, the more it feels like they really do consider the players with level 50s more valuable and loyal than everyone else.

ewww! you did?

It's unfortunate that you're being clumped in with the "spacebar" players, and unfair. Earlier in the thread people were bragging about how they subbed 2 weeks ago and spacebarred to 50 in a week, meaning that spacebar players are more loyal and valuable to the game then day 0 players without 50s.

I understand what you're saying, and mostly agree with you. The part that convinces me that they really don't consider non-50s valuable and loyal is because of how they spun the 30 day thing. If they had been honest about it, explaining that due to 1.2 WZ screw ups and overall lack of lvl 50 content, here's 30 days for those with a 50, I think a large number of people would be perfectly fine with it. Sure, people would still complain, but they'd just be complaining out of pure greed. When companies like BW/EA start to understand that being honest with us goes a whole lot further than PR stunts like this one that always bite them in the ***.

Yeah, the Balmorra story is blatantly obvious.

Note that you're quoting the email that went out to only the recipients of the free 30 days. The "one" that you're highlighting is in references to YOU being one of the many players that received the 30 days. It's not in reference to the player base as a whole. If it were, they would have sent that email out to all players to let them know about the Pet. They didn't.

It's not about the money, it's about them telling players that don't have 50s that they aren't Loyal or Valued players.

Most of the characters I had when I moved servers were in their high 40s and done with the story when I switched. The first time I switched servers I went from Imp to Repub, I tried all 4 base classes before choosing Trooper to be my main and then we switched again due to lag issues with an East-coast server vs West Coast.. Right now I have 6 repub chars that are in the mid-high 40s and have experienced most of the story.

well, patch notes are up.. *sigh*