Another Insult to the EU

[imaslapu]

47.87% of all statistics are made up on the spot.

 

I'm almost like pretty much 99.9% sure you made that up.

[Ykalondr]

No matter what they do, someone somewhere is going to be mad because it "effects their game time." I don't understand people like you who don't accept that EVERY MMO has downtime for server maintenance. Why can't people understand that?!

 

Ok please actually READ the frigging posts before replying.

 

We WANT maintenance, we certainly do since we hate bugs just as much as you. we just don't want them to take the servers down during daytime. Instead we want it during night time just as you have it. It's that simple. And before you ask, no we don't want the maintenance time to change for you, we want you to have it just as it is now. NOTHING will change for you, it will be as if nothing happened at all. We just want them to either do our maintenance first during the night and then do yours the following night or the other way around. You would still be happily asleep during maintenance just as you are now. How hard can that be to understand? It's not rocket science just common sence.

[Goreson]

Okay, simple suggestion: why doesn't everybody who is not able to play the game tomorrow during maintenance just use Twitter @SWTOR to point this fact out to BW?

 

Just give country/timezone where you are at and that you are not able to play due to the maintenance that this scheduled to effect the least number of players and then let BW do the sorting.

 

Wouldn't it be fun to see them hit an easy 1,000,000 always having to say that they are sorry but this was considered to be the best possible solution?

[Tahana]

So EU servers are down until 4pm GMT tomorrow, while for North America the servers are down while most are asleep, I really don't care, if it is an American Company, I couldn't care if America invited, computer gaming, electricity, the Internet, computers, life, man the planet earth or even the galaxy, I live in Europe, our servers are in Ireland why not take them down to suit Europe.

 

BioWare Sort out the stupid EU maintenance times.

 

I support this.. They need to learn that they need separate maintenance cycles for the US and EU.. And if they ever decide to add real Oceanic servers they should accommodate that as well.

[msales]

If you have a life then yes. you work or go to schoolor try to get a job or education.

 

I'm educated to post graduate level and I'm in full time employment.

 

As I’ve said previously in this thread the downtime won’t normally affect me but it will occasionally and it will affect many other people on a regular basis. Taking the servers down in the day is poor customer service. Rationalise it all you want but there is not getting away from the fact that the servers are the least busy in the middle of the night. This is why the US have their downtime then.

[msales]

I'm almost like pretty much 99.9% sure you made that up.

 

Yeh, you'd be right about that as well.

[Fraxture]

The fact that it takes them 8 hours is what I find curious.

 

Because they are trying hard to take care of all those issues people are whining about as fast as possible.

 

It is a single day in your life. Get out, do something.

 

I work nights, so my play time is in the AM, so I am suffering just like you.

I cannot play during my peak hours.

 

I pull out movies and start watching some of those.

Knowing that Bioware is doing their damn-est to make this a great game.

 

I can live without a gaming day for that cause.

[Goreson]

Btw: the server 'Axial Park' was down today... while apparently all other servers were up.

 

Somehow this suggests that it is not necessary to service all servers at the same time as long as no patching is involved which supposedly would cause a conflict when server and client don't have matching versions...

 

just a dangerous thing - it's called 'thought'

[lordgracy]

That sucks.

[MEdiKLEZ]

So EU servers are down until 4pm GMT tomorrow, while for North America the servers are down while most are asleep, I really don't care, if it is an American Company, I couldn't care if America invited, computer gaming, electricity, the Internet, computers, life, man the planet earth or even the galaxy, I live in Europe, our servers are in Ireland why not take them down to suit Europe.

 

BioWare Sort out the stupid EU maintenance times.

 

Im from germany and here most ppl come from work by the time around 4pm. Really, do not get your point...

[Katsaurs]

While I live in the UK and am fortunate enough to have minimal disruption I do understand how the rest of Europe feels about this. Sure, its still early days and I'm sure the maintenance times will eventually grow smaller and smaller (at least I hope) but as things stand now it's not looking too good.

 

For those of you who are saying “you should be at school/work at those hours anyway so it doesn’t matter” remarks please see the following; I’ve tried to break it down as simply as I possibly can to get the point across that this maintenance window is not suitable for the whole of Europe.

 

 

The *typical work schedule for Europeans:

9am – 5pm (GMT-GMT+2)

 

*I’m aware that some work different hours and that the typical student has much more free time on their hands. That and my fellow working Europeans in the +1 and +2 time zones may work earlier/longer hours also. This is but a rough estimation on the 'typical' 9-5 working practice.

 

 

Bioware’s maintenance schedule is, at the moment:

In (GMT) zones, 8am-4pm

In (GMT+1) zones, the time would be 9am-5pm

In (GMT+2) zones, the time would be 10am-6pm

 

 

The average peak time window to play for Europeans (roughly):

4pm – 10pm (GMT-GMT+2)

 

 

If Bioware’s schedule does not over run and ends at:

4pm (GMT) – Peak Time starting– Queues possible

5pm (GMT+1) – Peak Time is breached – Queues likely

6pm (GMT+2) – Peak Time is breached – Queues expected

 

 

If Bioware’s schedule does over run like last time and ends at:

7pm (GMT) – Peak Time is breached – Heavy Queues (*add +2h for wait time)

8pm (GMT+1) – Peak Time is breached – Heavy Queues (*add +2h for wait time)

9pm (GMT+2) – Peak Time is breached – Heavy Queues (*add +2h for wait time)

 

 

*While some players will be one of the lucky few to get in right away or within an hour, the common wait time last week seemed to be around 2 hours, bearing in mind here that everyone in Europe would be trying to log on at the same time.

 

 

As you can see from the above break down the current maintenance window affects ALL of Europe, some areas more so than others which means a great deal of people are losing out on a full, paid for day of playing SWTOR whenever the maintenance over runs. The same can also be said for when the maintenance finishes on time due to the fact that, in some areas of Europe, the maintenance runs completely into the peak time period and the likely queues on top of that completely destroy all hopes of logging in to play for that evening.

 

For students/teens/shift workers/early-late workers/unemployed etc. any kind of full day time maintenance will affect their playing time no matter what.

 

This is why we need a separate maintenance schedule completely to that of the North American players. It’s the only way to make things fairer considering we pay the same if not more in terms of monthly subs and the game itself due to exchange rates. It will cause less disruption if our maintenance was carried out during our nightly hours rather than the day.

 

To say that we don’t need a separate schedule because:

a) we’re not important enough

b) we’re the supposed minority in terms of player numbers

c) “You should be at work/school/elsewhere at those times”

d) Bioware is an American company/SWTOR is an American game so ‘Murica tiem only lol’

e) its easier/supposedly cost effective for Bioware this way/the only possible solution

is completely asinine.

 

If that were the case, why bother giving us Europeans a separate server base when it’s already been proven we can jump onto North American servers (albeit with some latency issues)? That way we wouldn’t really have much say on the maintenance times because the servers we play on would be in America, and thus would be completely valid.

 

But the fact is our servers are not in America.

 

They’re in Europe.

 

So why isn’t our schedule tailored to our time zones?

 

To say that they have to bring both European and North American servers down because of cross server access is a silly excuse; look at DCUO- it's the same in terms of being able to choose either EU or NA servers from the client and yet they have separate servers and downtime schedules set in the mornings for both zones.

 

The only MMOs I know of that sometimes have downtime during the day/peak time (which is very rare) are FFXI & FFXIV, in which the international servers are located in Japan and so the downtime they may have is catered to, of course, Japan times. That is the only location of the servers, there are no servers for NA or EU- we all play on the same servers located in Japan, so it’s not surprising we have to abide by their schedule.

 

 

TL;DR – EU Time zones, how do they work?

 

Added note: If they’re worried about Europeans jumping onto American servers during our maintenance hours, why can’t they lock us out from the American servers during said maintenance times and vice versa?

Edited January 3, 2012 by Katsaurs

[Goreson]

Because they are trying hard to take care of all those issues people are whining about as fast as possible.

 

Wouldn't that require uploading a patch?

 

And don't we know what is contained in the latest patch 1.0.2 by looking at the PTS patch notes http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=108551?

 

Somehow I don't assume that BW is either going to release a patch onto the live gaming servers that wasn't tested on the PTS (so no 'well, they've added loads of other fixes to 1.0.2 and that one is now actually '1.0.2 d 0.5 with the happy customer expansion' that were are uploading') nor that this list of fixes is really either the complete list of things that need to be addressed or even the most pressing ones...

 

So rather than reducing the time players get to experience SWTOR and find that it maybe ain't that bad by doing extended maintenance, got to work on fixing the bugs, testing the next patch, release it on to the PTS for quality control and then finally in 3 weeks time come up with a real patch and just some 'hot fixes' that take care of the least pressing issues...

[msales]

While I live in the UK and am fortunate enough to have minimal disruption I do understand how the rest of Europe feels about this. Sure, its still early days and I'm sure the maintenance times will eventually grow smaller and smaller (at least I hope) but as things stand now it's not looking too good.

 

<snip a lot of good stuff>

 

Agree 100% I really don’t see why so many people from either side of the pond are against separate maintenance times. No one has yet to give a valid reason that can stand up to common sense. I do wonder if they’re just a bunch of fanboys who won’t admit that BW are less than perfect.

Edited January 3, 2012 by msales

[Goreson]

Im from germany and here most ppl come from work by the time around 4pm. Really, do not get your point...

 

Because you are German?

 

Just kidding, still got a German passport myself... somewhere... I think... maybe...

 

Anyway, the point being is that - as you say - most people in Germany come from work at 4PM (which I'm not going to comment on any further considering that there used to be this 'done by 1' attitude on Wednesdays in Germany in certain types of businesses).

 

Depending on how far you have to travel, what else you may have to do en route, etc. you may well be home anytime from just after 4 to 6 PM

 

Given the current maintenance schedule, you have 1 hr before the servers are thought to be up again.

 

Now, assuming that you are not yet fed up with SWTOR but just got it for Xmas (oooh, new, shiny!) there is a fair chance that you may want to start gaming for a bit before having dinner.

 

Which may be possible if the maintenance doesn't run into overtime. Which it did last time.

 

So I hope you now do get the point that for GMT+1 countries BW is playing it very close to what by all means can no longer be consider the time when the least number of gamers (in Germany) are hit.

 

Think of it this way: You are sitting in a bus driving thru Death Valley. The drivers checks the gas and can see that he should hit his favorite gas station maybe with just a few drops to spare. So he doesn't stop at any other station to fill up. So, in the middle of nowhere, for whatever reason, the gas runs out... no other car in sight, not even a rattler showing up in hours. Don't you think the passengers wouldn't have butchered the driver if he just once, this time, not planned to make his stop at his fav rest stop where he always flirts with the waitress with the big... err 'eyes' but instead had gotten filled up in time?

 

Likewise BW doesn't really have a second to spare. Well, actually in countries with GMT+2 and more they do actually hit primetime with their maintenance...

[zImperium]

So EU servers are down until 4pm GMT tomorrow, while for North America the servers are down while most are asleep, I really don't care, if it is an American Company, I couldn't care if America invited, computer gaming, electricity, the Internet, computers, life, man the planet earth or even the galaxy, I live in Europe, our servers are in Ireland why not take them down to suit Europe.

 

BioWare Sort out the stupid EU maintenance times.

 

Entitlement much?

 

If you don't like the EU Maintenance times, go play WoW...Oh wait, they have the exact same maintenance times, so you can't go back to WoW.

 

Just chill and go shopping, see a movie, or something.

[Tarka]

As I said in other threads about this issue, I completely agree that there should be separate downtimes for the servers in different regions (including the Aussies).

[Tarka]

Entitlement much?

 

If you don't like the EU Maintenance times, go play WoW...Oh wait, they have the exact same maintenance times, so you can't go back to WoW.

 

Just chill and go shopping, see a movie, or something.

 

Incorrect. Wow servers aren't all taken down at the same time.

Blizzard takes the WoW servers down in separate downtimes in accordance with the region which each server is supplying its service to. For instance, Tues mornings for the US and Oceanic servers, Weds mornings for the EU.

 

Trion (Rift) also manages to offer region specific downtime schedules, as does Sony (SWG, EQ2, etc), and other dev companies.

 

This is why people are questioning Bioware's "global service" excuse. Because all the above companies are ALSO operating a "global service". Some of the EU servers for those companies are NOT actually housed in the EU, but in the US and yet they are STILL able to offer the better downtime schedules for each region than Bioware can.

 

 

Entitlement? No.

Expectation that Bioware can operate to the same standards as others? Yes.

Edited January 3, 2012 by Tarka

[Dakien]

It's true! They are out to get you!

 

I believe (correct me if I'm wrong) that the maintenance schedule is based on the least number of subscribers being inconvenienced. I also think that North America has the most subscribers right now.

 

As for separate maintenance for each region, that means that they would have to pay staff three times for doing the same thing. Nah, they are going to do it a single time.

 

Personally, I think they should do it when the impact is the least, say, 11PM - 7AM CST which would be what, 5AM - 1PM GMT. Once a week, let's spread the wealth!!!

[Tarka]

It's true! They are out to get you!

 

I believe (correct me if I'm wrong) that the maintenance schedule is based on the least number of subscribers being inconvenienced. I also think that North America has the most subscribers right now.

 

As for separate maintenance for each region, that means that they would have to pay staff three times for doing the same thing. Nah, they are going to do it a single time.

 

Personally, I think they should do it when the impact is the least, say, 11PM - 7AM CST which would be what, 5AM - 1PM GMT. Once a week, let's spread the wealth!!!

 

You DO realise that the EU servers are housed in Ireland (the GMT time zone) don't you?

 

My point is that they are already (presumably) paying people to specifically look after the EU servers. So unless those servers are running automatically without any actual personel looking after them, then that blows all arguments about paying staff clean out of the water.

 

The fact is that Bioware have not given payment of staff as a reason. They just state that it's because they are offering a "global service". Which is a lame excuse considering EVERY major MMO is offering a global service too, and yet THEY manage to have region specific downtime schedules.

 

This is Bioware and EA launching an MMO that has more than a million players currently. If Trion, Funcom and others can do it, then so can Bioware / EA.

Edited January 3, 2012 by Tarka

[kharnynb]

The European servers are in Ireland, and they have their own admin team, because no company would be stupid enough to not have people onsite.

 

There is NO reason to do the maintanance during these times at all.

[Samvan]

Give up EU.

 

Our chances and hopes went down when it took them over a year to give us beta.

[msales]

Entitlement much?

 

From this statement I assume that you were given your retail copy free of charge and in future BW will be footing the bill for your monthly sub.

 

I paid for a retail copy and I’ll be paying for my sub, as such expect an acceptable and comparatively equal level of customer service.

[Goreson]

It's true! They are out to get you!

 

I believe (correct me if I'm wrong) that the maintenance schedule is based on the least number of subscribers being inconvenienced. I also think that North America has the most subscribers right now.

 

As for separate maintenance for each region, that means that they would have to pay staff three times for doing the same thing. Nah, they are going to do it a single time.

 

Personally, I think they should do it when the impact is the least, say, 11PM - 7AM CST which would be what, 5AM - 1PM GMT. Once a week, let's spread the wealth!!!

 

Right, so North America has the most subscribers... and yet both you (with your maintenance schedule) as well as BW with theirs fail to consider everything in the PST zone and further west - and yes, in case you don't know there are states like Alaska and Hawaii that are not on PST! Not that I really expect you to know that... *shrug*

 

Pretty much, according to your system, only EST counts as 11PM is actually also cutting into what most hardcore MMO gamers will consider primetime.

 

Are you sure that the Eastern seaboard of the US and CA has the most subscribers?

 

And yes, of course they'd have to pay 3 times for the same job... which oddly then maybe only takes 2 hrs per region... which may save BW 2 hrs worth of money...

 

Alas, I doubt that the maintenance guys are service contractors but instead actual BW employees who I'd assume have a fixed salary

[Gealbhan]

I shall go fishing for the day. I shall have trout for supper. This is my plan.

 

ttfn.

[RuQu]

So EU servers are down until 4pm GMT tomorrow, while for North America the servers are down while most are asleep, I really don't care, if it is an American Company, I couldn't care if America invited, computer gaming, electricity, the Internet, computers, life, man the planet earth or even the galaxy, I live in Europe, our servers are in Ireland why not take them down to suit Europe.

 

BioWare Sort out the stupid EU maintenance times.

 

Peak times are in the evenings, after people get off work/school until they go to bed. That is ~5PM to 1AM. The servers are down from 2-8AM Central Time, so that is 10AM-4PM for you, ie when most people are in school or at work. The people most impacted are West Coast or Oceanic players because the servers go down in the late evenings for them, midnight for West Coast of US and 9 or 10 PM for some oceanic players.

 

It is a global game. They picked the time when most of their players are either asleep (US) or at school/work (Europe). Their metrics support this.

 

Scheduled maintenance during off-peak hours is a slap in the face to no one except the over-entitled unemployed.