An open letter and challenge to EA/BIOWARE
First and foremost:
1. I love the game! (When the servers are up)
2. You have done a great job at making it a VERY enjoyable playing experience! (When the servers are up)
3. The content evolution has been great so far, keep it up! (When the servers are up)
4. I have never wanted to pay monthly for any game/game service before and I do want to continue doing so with this game! (When the servers are up)
Losing Customers:
1. The one thing that is going to kill this awesome game and run off some good people that are good paying customers is DOWNTIME!
2. The complete lack of response to feedback by Asia Pacific customers and the other customers that regularly play during the hours when these maintenance windows occur.
3. Time to step it up Bioware. Diablo 3 launches in 5 days. (I am not personally a fan of the series, but every gamer I know is) As far as I have seen it is not an MMO, but it is going to eat away a massive amount of customers for at least a little while.
The NOW Solution:
1. Keep the Public Test Server on a COMPLETELY different schedule. Run 2 if needed to handle the load of players during downtimes. Update/Patch/Maintain that/those server(s) 3-10 days before doing anything on the main servers.
1a. You will find that more people play on them more often if they are up during main server downtime.
1b. You will find more problems more quickly when you let people play on them during main server downtimes.
2. Make the maintenance window at a completely different time. So not only is the Test Server down on a different day, but at a different time. Maybe 12 hours different. 2pm Central instead of 2am Central.
2a. Refer to 1a.
2b. Refer to 1b.
The Future Solution:
1. Divide all servers into 2 groups. Group A and Group B (for customer service reasons).
2. Have maintenance for Group A servers the same as they are now, weekly on Tuesday at 2am Central. Have maintenance for Group B 24 hours later. Weekly on Wednesday at 2am Central.
3 You can divide the 2 groups as just every other server, or East coast + Asia Pacific and West coast.
The Ultimate Solution:
1. A combination of both solutions.
2. A separate time for each time zones set of servers. 2am LOCAL time instead of a global 2am Central.
3. This insures that there is always AT LEAST ONE server that people can play on! Everyone wins!!!
In Conclusion:
1. I am sure you have employees that are sick to death of people complaining about downtimes.
2. I KNOW there are customers that are sick to death of the game being offline.
3. If you keep things the way they are, then the customers are going to continue leaving in masses.
4. Make these changes/fixes and you will keep what I believe is a GREAT GAME running strong with a VERY large fan base for MANY years to come.
Thank you for your time!
-----The SWTOR community