3 Nights of Maint in a row?

[Makade]

Is this going to be the norm? I mean Its cool you guys are updating the game and all....but can't you do the normal practice and do it during the regular schedule time frame? Three nights in a row is cutting into the time we paid to play. Or are we being refunded that time?

 

Here, I'll save you some time for when Bioware stops fixing bugs as quickly as you'd like:

 

"Is this going to be the norm? I mean it's cool you guys are updating the game and all, but can't you do the normal practice and do it at an accelerated rate? One night a week isn't worth the amount we are paying per month. Or, are we going to be refunded our money?"

[Xukuth]

Nope. Its your choice if you choose not to play when the servers are up. Bioware can't be responsible for that.

 

Your joking right? People log on the time they are capable of due to multiple reasons. Sure thats not biowares fault but what is their fault is the extra avoidable downtime that happened.

 

Avoidable how? By testing better. Programming better. If this is not possible fire the people doing a bad job and hire people that will do it better. Because I can guarantee you there is plenty of people out there looking for work.

 

 

Also to the person saying "lol servers are up now go play" Are you aware when people wanted to complain about this and discuss it... They couldn't? Because guess why... Bioware knew there would be a backlash for it... Guess what they did to avoid it? They locked the forums making it read only so nobody could complain about it. Thinking they would just log in happily and not complain about it.

Edited January 6, 2012 by Xukuth

[Lazorous]

Your joking right? People log on the time they are capable of due to multiple reasons. Sure thats not biowares fault but what is their fault is the extra avoidable downtime that happened.

 

Avoidable how? By testing better. Programming better. If this is not possible fire the people doing a bad job and hire people that will do it better. Because I can guarantee you there is plenty of people out there looking for work.

 

Wow... you clearly have NO understanding of software development. Please, don't try to think things should be a specific way when you have absolutely no clue what it takes to develop software.

 

I can also guarantee you those people looking for work are not immune to programming bugs.

 

It's like you hollering at the TV, during a Basketball game, and yelling "PASS THE BALL!" or "IF YOU CAN'T THROW A 3 POINTER YOU SHOULD QUIT!". Really? have you played competitive Basketball to know what it takes to score points and get into position?

 

And being a software developer for over 10 years, I am qualified to speak on that behalf. What are your qualifications, sir?

[LyriaFrost]

Look, to say I'm me me me because I expect a quality product is just beyond incomprehensible.

 

No, I'm saying you're acting entitled because you're demanding compensation for them fixing problems with the game -- to make it a higher-quality product.

 

If you buy something you expect certain things from it. Is that being entitled? Sure maybe but guess what... Your suppose to get what you pay for that is what consumers EXPECT.

 

And when I buy an MMO, I EXPECT it to have issues the first month or two. If they're not massive, game-breaking bugs (of which I've encountered zero so far), then I just shrug and put it down to the growing pains of any brand new MMO.

 

Are you going to defend the car company when it gives you a vehicle with bad breaks?

 

Nope. I'm going to ask them to fix the problem. Do I expect them to give me money for it? No.

 

Are you going to defend the fast food place when they screw up your order or they are slow getting it?

 

Nope. I'm going to ask them to fix the problem. Am I going to demand that they give me EXTRA to make up for it? No.

 

Are you going to defend any other company if they mess up the product you paid for? I highly doubt it, you'll likely take it back and say this is trash give me some sort of compensation for this trash your giving me. But god forbid people ask that of a game.... Its unheard of may as well poke the beehive with a stick because it will send all the White Knight sword thrusting defenders out after you for even saying such a silly request as getting what you pay for.

 

So you're saying Bioware "messed up" the product? That it's "trash?" If so, why are you even playing? If something is broken in a game, I expect it to be fixed, or them to aknowledge it's broken and look into it. I don't demand that they give me trinkets for it.

 

And that's why I pointed out you're part of the "me me me, now now now" generation. If something isn't exactly how you want it to be, you stand up and shriek that you deserve EXTRA because ofi t. Your meat only cooked medium, instead of well-done? Well clearly you should get it for FREE then, right? And they should throw in a free slice of pie on top of it!

 

You feel ENTITLED to these things. If YOUR online time is interrupted, however breifly, you want to be compensated for it. But only if it's YOUR time that's being interrupted. If the outage was at a time that didn't impact you at all? You wouldn't complain. Because it's not YOUR gaming time being interrupted.

 

You're a typical modern self-centered gamer who feels woefully over-entitled. And I'm done replying to you.

[DarthDemens]

Your joking right? People log on the time they are capable of due to multiple reasons. Sure thats not biowares fault but what is their fault is the extra avoidable downtime that happened.

 

I'm joking just as much as you are. I tell you what, next time you go order that metaphorical cheeseburger you were talking about, tell them you want the price reduced because you don't want pickles on it. See how that works out for you.

 

You pay for what they sell. If you don't want or can't use all of what they sell, then you pay for it knowing that. So, you buy 720 hours of theoretical server time. (reduced slightly for scheduled maintenance) If you can't / won't use all of it, Bioware certainly isn't responsible for compensating you for that. So the average cost is slightly over 2 cents an hour. I (very generously) offered to compensate you for the few hours you missed due to unscheduled maintenance (something you agreed to when you accepted the ToS, and are thus entitled to no compensation for).

 

Like I said though, your sig makes it very clear that you're simply trolling for the sake of trolling. So, have fun. I'm gonna go play my game.

[Kazmtyh]

Well then lets take that 2-4 hours schedule down time and tack it onto that and you'll see why its befitting to give a free day for 3 days of that. Because thats 6 to 12 hours of downtime... Which is roughly 1 - 2 days of the average players play time that is only able to play during that downtime.

 

I highly doubt anyone who plays that little will be so unlucky as to lose the entirety of their playtime due to the maintenance... They are more likely to never see any maintenance then to have what you just laid out happen.

[Quip]

You should be thrilled, Rift patches whenever it's needed and it has gone from a pretty terrible, bland MMO at launch to a slick, refined product. If TOR gets that kind of devotion and resource allocation it is going to quickly become a very, very impressive game. Edited January 6, 2012 by Quip

[Xukuth]

No, I'm saying you're acting entitled because you're demanding compensation for them fixing problems with the game -- to make it a higher-quality product.

 

 

 

And when I buy an MMO, I EXPECT it to have issues the first month or two. If they're not massive, game-breaking bugs (of which I've encountered zero so far), then I just shrug and put it down to the growing pains of any brand new MMO.

 

 

 

Nope. I'm going to ask them to fix the problem. Do I expect them to give me money for it? No.

 

 

 

Nope. I'm going to ask them to fix the problem. Am I going to demand that they give me EXTRA to make up for it? No.

 

 

 

So you're saying Bioware "messed up" the product? That it's "trash?" If so, why are you even playing? If something is broken in a game, I expect it to be fixed, or them to aknowledge it's broken and look into it. I don't demand that they give me trinkets for it.

 

And that's why I pointed out you're part of the "me me me, now now now" generation. If something isn't exactly how you want it to be, you stand up and shriek that you deserve EXTRA because ofi t. Your meat only cooked medium, instead of well-done? Well clearly you should get it for FREE then, right? And they should throw in a free slice of pie on top of it!

 

You feel ENTITLED to these things. If YOUR online time is interrupted, however breifly, you want to be compensated for it. But only if it's YOUR time that's being interrupted. If the outage was at a time that didn't impact you at all? You wouldn't complain. Because it's not YOUR gaming time being interrupted.

 

You're a typical modern self-centered gamer who feels woefully over-entitled. And I'm done replying to you.

 

 

Your acting like myself, and others asking for compensation are asking for a entire month. No, all I personally want is one day credit to make up for time lost. Which is equal to how you put a free slice of pie. Not the whole meal.. But guess what when that company screws up they sure do give you a free slice of pie. Why? because they want to make sure your happy, they want to apologize for how they messed up. Because they understand that is how your suppose to treat a customer. Am I entitled maybe, but guess what... Every single consumer on this game should feel entitled to the exact same thing. Why? They advertised themselves as a company that cares about how the product works for their consumer. They advertised how awesome their launch is going to be. They said this is why they was staggering release. But we are not getting what they advertised... Their customer service or the ability to show the care for their customers just does not exist.

 

You try to call them for customer support for anything? You know what says we don't care about you? A machine you get a machine. If you get past the machines guess what you get? Some outsourced Customer Service rep you can't understand. But that is beyond the point. What is the point is we should feel entitled to compensation because that is what is suppose to happen when a company makes a error. Its how PR and CR works. Or how it should work with a company that actually cares about its consumers.

[Revelationjp]

The 12 cent argument doesn't make sense. You dont pay for 720 hours of game time. You pay to access the game when its convenient for you.

 

If my playtime is 11-2am daily, they effectively kept me from playing at all for 6 out of 30 days. (4 weekly scheduled maint, 2 emergency). And that's before the month is even over. How many more emergency maintenance windows are we going to have that will eat up more days?

 

So for SOME people, 20% downtime is what is making them upset and that's why we feel that a company which cares about customer service would grant some form of compensation.

Wrong. Sorry, but your schedule is your choice. you make your own choices. You pay to play an mmo. They inform you in advance when they're going to shut down servers. If you decide it's worth it to call in sick to work or ditch school, or tell you're mommy you'll take out the trash later is all your call. See, I pay for Internet access. the other night, a lightning storm caused caused my access to be out. I got no warning. It was during my SWTOR time. I was a little cheesed. But I played Sorry with my daughter and had a lot of fun. What an amazing thing. Being mad gives you cancer. Being happy gives you cookies.

Edited January 6, 2012 by Revelationjp

[Xukuth]

Wrong. Sorry, but your schedule is your choice. you make your own choices. You pay to play an mmo. They inform you in advance when they're going to shut down servers. If you decide it's worth it to call in sick to work or ditch school, or tell you're mommy you'll take out the trash later is all your call. See, I pay for Internet access. the other night, a lightning storm caused caused my access to be out. I got no warning. It was during my SWTOR time. I was a little cheesed. But I played Sorry with my daughter and had a lot of fun. What an amazing thing. Being mad gives you cancer. Being happy gives you cookies.

 

Last two down times.. The ones I am complaining about had very little warning might as well not even had any.

[GumBoil]

People's memory of any given MMO is about the last two weeks. They feel any new MMO that gets released should have 7+ years of bug fixes and polish already completed.

 

 

Trion is the obvious comparison seeing as Rift was the last AAA to market. Bioware do not compare particularly well whatever metric you want to use.

[Revelationjp]

Last two down times.. The ones I am complaining about had very little warning might as well not even had any.

 

I get that, i do. Mostly, i'm just poking fun, because i'm a fungi. My larger point is that what they're doing is not to personally piss you off, it's to try and make the game better. So let's relax. Go have a beer, throw the frisbee, or if you're not that type, fire up skyrim. I'm sure it's feeling neglected. Those dragons aren't going to be poked into submission by themselves. Everyone needs to vent, but if you truly look at all this objectively none of us of been anything but mildly inconvenienced, and most of those simply out of sheer coincidence. BW wants to make money, and they want you to keep playing. It's lunacy to think that they'd sit in some dark room and say "hey, let's see how far we can push Xukuth untill he cancels his sub then fills a hot tub and offs himself! hahahhahaaha"

[TheACow]

Your acting like myself, and others asking for compensation are asking for a entire month. No, all I personally want is one day credit to make up for time lost. Which is equal to how you put a free slice of pie. Not the whole meal.. But guess what when that company screws up they sure do give you a free slice of pie. Why? because they want to make sure your happy, they want to apologize for how they messed up. Because they understand that is how your suppose to treat a customer. Am I entitled maybe, but guess what... Every single consumer on this game should feel entitled to the exact same thing. Why? They advertised themselves as a company that cares about how the product works for their consumer. They advertised how awesome their launch is going to be. They said this is why they was staggering release. But we are not getting what they advertised... Their customer service or the ability to show the care for their customers just does not exist.

 

You try to call them for customer support for anything? You know what says we don't care about you? A machine you get a machine. If you get past the machines guess what you get? Some outsourced Customer Service rep you can't understand. But that is beyond the point. What is the point is we should feel entitled to compensation because that is what is suppose to happen when a company makes a error. Its how PR and CR works. Or how it should work with a company that actually cares about its consumers.

 

You havn't played many MMO's.. I'm going to assume WoW only..

 

Sure the downtime is really sucking and I would love for them to just make a LARGE patch every patch tue / thur w/e there day is and fart them all out but I remember plenty of MMO launches ( including WoW ) where the servers would randomly crash and be down for a long time. Where the bugs where everywhere and the only thing you could really do would be to reroll.

 

Also as for customer service, I havn't had to call.. Why? because I'm not complaning about the fact I have lost 3 days of playtime ( my playtime is 11:30-12PST till about 2 or 3am PST.. ) the game works fairly well so far i've ran into a couple hickups but nothing that couldn't be ignored And I also know that for now this game is "free" because its still during the first month.

 

SCREW your free day credits thats just stupid.. "YAY I GOT A DAY FREE.. that comes out to $0.43"

SCREW your "i wana play now.. " attiude

SCREW your "FIX THIS FIRST MOST IMPORTANT BECAUSE IT AFFECTS ME" complaints

 

its an MMO

It was just launched

IT HAS BUGS ( OMG! )

 

If you can name 1 mmo that did not have hundreads if not thousands of bugs on launch I will eat my own shorts.. But I have yet to find one.

 

O and as for "very little warning" at least its not as bad as when SWG first came out. My server was misslabled and a newbie tech PULLED IT OUT OF THE RACK. ( I had a friend who worked for SoE at the time.. it was quite funny actually to read some of the emails he sent me about it )

 

How about that for unexpected downtime.. one minute your playing the next the server is offline for 6hours while they figure out what happend and where it went.

Edited January 6, 2012 by TheACow

[Zhit]

Folks do realize the last two patches were "emergency" patches, right? The first one fixed the /getdown exploit. The second one fixed the stack splitting exploit. I'd expect a few more "emergency" patches too--there are still a few exploits left to fix.

 

The good news is BW is fixing the exploits in super quick time. The stack splitting was getting ridiculous. If BW had let the bug continue until Tuesday, every player would have had 100million in credits.

 

Edit: As for free time. There is a precedent. Blizzard compensated players for a week of game time if memory serves a month or so after everything was stable. And depending on your server you also got a few odd days extra as well for some server specific extended outages. I want to say I got just shy of two weeks credited to my account.

Edited January 6, 2012 by Zhit

[Amdarius]

For crying out loud, fix your grammar at least if you want to be taken seriously. A few typos here and there is one thing, but consistently not understanding how to use words properly is another.

 

It's COULD HAVE or COULD'VE, not COULD OF.

 

And Read the TOS as another poster has mentioned. It falls in line with what BW has the right to do, and you agreed to it.

 

Adhesion contracts are not as ironclad as you might think..

[Amdarius]

Perhaps.

 

Still, it would be a mark of a better person to simply deal with the fact that life is not fair, and that some time frames are going to be shafted.

 

To ask for a delay in patching would of meant that more players would of used the /getdown or commendation duping exploit. While yes, this is generally unseen by the vast majority of players, it is a direct assault against the integrity of the game, and should be fixed immediately. Waiting to fix either of those issues would of resulted in a need for further bannings. It is a mercy to us that they patched it as quickly as they did.

 

Saying that "life is not fair" has no bearing on a commercial arrangement - which is what we have with Bioware. If they're going to charge everybody an equal price, they better offer equal access. The TOS isn't something you agree to before you purchase - you agree after you purchase and you have no option to disagree at that point given you've already paid. Their TOS are about as binding as the toilet paper I wipe with. Nobody bothers to sue because the $$ involved are so miniscule (2 years of subscription at $360 - well that'll pay for one hour of a lawyer's time and no lawyer will take that on a contingency basis).

 

However, one of these days somebody will put together a very nice class action lawsuit and demonstrate the worthlessness of these TOSs. The gaming company will smartly settle it as quickly and quietly as possible to keep the veneer of an effective TOS.

[Amdarius]

People complain when Bioware doesn't patch.

People complain when servers go down for frequent patches to fix game.

 

Bioware can't win.

 

They can win. Patch every couple of weeks. Make them big patches. Test them thoroughly before implementing them.

 

if you need to patch more frequently than every couple of weeks (because of exploits, major game breaking bugs introduced into the game), then don't bring the servers down for 8 hours. Find a quicker way to patch. Or, if you can't, then rotate the downtimes so you're not only impacting the same customers over and over.

 

See how easy that is?