spudbynight Posted February 1, 2012 Share Posted February 1, 2012 When you convince BW to segregate it's customer base and fully split the NA and EU player base, then you can have your separate times. They have done. When you login you will see there are US servers and EU servers. That kind of looks like a segregated player base to me. We also have separate customer care in the EU zone. We get invoiced in local currency. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spudbynight Posted February 1, 2012 Share Posted February 1, 2012 (edited) I live in Europe. I do not get this thread. Maintenance is from 8 AM - 4 PM on a TUESDAY!!!!! I would like to know the following from the people who are complaining: What are you doing at this time? No job? No school? No college? How is daytime peak time when most of the population has other obligations? I understand circumstance may have some people at home, but those people must surely realize that they are in the minority? Maintenance is once a week on a Tuesday. Tuesday is not Saturday or Sunday. I do not get the complaining... You know what the funniest part is: I have Tuesdays off... I work from home and want to logon for an hour at lunchtime. Are you seriously unable to understand that when America has downtime people are asleep, when EU gets downtime people are awake? Edited February 1, 2012 by spudbynight Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aram_Darksun Posted February 2, 2012 Share Posted February 2, 2012 (edited) Reading over your original post and this one i'm not sure I understand what you are trying to say. If i understand you correctly, it is okay for a company, providing a service, to not provide equal service to customers who pay the same or more for said service because of convinienc to the companys work schedule? I'm not sure this would be a wise business strategy. Also your PoV implies that there is no day shift who could do the european maintenance? Thank you for at least responding with courtesy and intelligence. My point is, take away all talk of day or night at the server location, it is essentially immaterial. Currently Bioware's structure and schedual is set to do that maintenance at a certain time period. To do it in ANY other time period would require reorganization, it would require splitting company assets, the work shift, this may mean the same employees have to split the tasks or the tasking of new employees. It is also likely to be less efficient having to do essentially the same tasks at different times instead of all together. When you are vaccuming a room do you do half, put the vaccum away and then get it out again 30 mins later to finish the job? Wouldn't it have been easier to finish the job in one go or at least leave the thing out until the job was finished? Either way it is not an easy or painless task and could depending on how they do it, actually cost a fair bit more. It is far more a monemental task than most people seem to realise. It is more than an inconvenience. Still all things said, it ISN"T discrimination. At worst, it is neglect (and I wouldn't even call it that much), but labelling this as discrimination is repugnant for the unwarrented damage it can do to Bioware and to true cases of discriminiation. Don't get me wrong, I would like to see a more convenient maintenance schedual for Europe but every self rightous cry of discrimination and every demand makes me less and less sympathetic. Maybe when this game is more established they can look at switching the European server maintenance but currently there is a ton of work with a higher priority than player convenience. I have no doubt they are still working furiously on multiple game issues and not sitting around lighting up cigars talking about which endangered animal they killed this week as a trophey like some people seem to think. Edit: Btw, I think it is hilarious and frustrating in equal measure that with the previous thread, I have now been called both a bioware hater and a fan. A sad testament to the rife polarization of opposing arguments in the average debate. Edited February 2, 2012 by Aram_Darksun Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Phuzz Posted February 2, 2012 Share Posted February 2, 2012 (edited) Gotta love Whineropian entitlement . Its hilarious that whineropians try to belittle the Supremely Awesome night maintenance country of Winmerica. As a proud Winmerican I urge all my first class brothers and sisters to flood europian servers when the whiners get what they want my guild of 500 strong are waiting to ambush the servers of Whinerope. Typical boring response. Have another try. Edited February 2, 2012 by Phuzz Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MrOuija Posted February 2, 2012 Share Posted February 2, 2012 Thank you for at least responding with courtesy and intelligence. My point is, take away all talk of day or night at the server location, it is essentially immaterial. Currently Bioware's structure and schedual is set to do that maintenance at a certain time period. To do it in ANY other time period would require reorganization, it would require splitting company assets, the work shift, this may mean the same employees have to split the tasks or the tasking of new employees. It is also likely to be less efficient having to do essentially the same tasks at different times instead of all together. When you are vaccuming a room do you do half, put the vaccum away and then get it out again 30 mins later to finish the job? Wouldn't it have been easier to finish the job in one go or at least leave the thing out until the job was finished? Either way it is not an easy or painless task and could depending on how they do it, actually cost a fair bit more. It is far more a monemental task than most people seem to realise. It is more than an inconvenience. Still all things said, it ISN"T discrimination. At worst, it is neglect (and I wouldn't even call it that much), but labelling this as discrimination is repugnant for the unwarrented damage it can do to Bioware and to true cases of discriminiation. Don't get me wrong, I would like to see a more convenient maintenance schedual for Europe but every self rightous cry of discrimination and every demand makes me less and less sympathetic. Maybe when this game is more established they can look at switching the European server maintenance but currently there is a ton of work with a higher priority than player convenience. And you don't understand that their work schedule and organisation is of no concern to me. The only thing that concerns me is the game. And now I cannot said game when I should be able to. I'm wide awake. Urge to everyone out on a mission to defend BioWare's neglect: Stop that! If this is out opinion, let us voice it without you people trying to diminish what's worth something to us. Seriously, how can you complain at people complaining? What kind of little person are you? Many of you insult us, saying that: "Get a job, go to school, enjoy life" - well answer me this: What the hell are you doing then? Instead of working at your job, going to school or enjoying life, you're here as well, whining at forums. So think twice before you that and go enjoy that lovely life of yours. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aram_Darksun Posted February 2, 2012 Share Posted February 2, 2012 And you don't understand that their work schedule and organisation is of no concern to me. The only thing that concerns me is the game. And now I cannot said game when I should be able to. I'm wide awake. Urge to everyone out on a mission to defend BioWare's neglect: Stop that! If this is out opinion, let us voice it without you people trying to diminish what's worth something to us. Seriously, how can you complain at people complaining? What kind of little person are you? Many of you insult us, saying that: "Get a job, go to school, enjoy life" - well answer me this: What the hell are you doing then? Instead of working at your job, going to school or enjoying life, you're here as well, whining at forums. So think twice before you that and go enjoy that lovely life of yours. For the record I posted a thead not long ago defending peoples right to complain, asking people not to ouright dismiss complaints as invalid, except to take them on a case by case basis (as there are both valid and invalid complains in abundanace here). I'll thank you not to tell me what I do and do not understand. Whether it is your concern or not it doesn't matter. It IS their concern for good reason. Are you one of those people who go to a foreign country and demand they speak your language? I didn't insult you but that didn't stop your petulant snide insulting reply to me. Wait a minute.. Does that count?? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
svenholio Posted February 2, 2012 Share Posted February 2, 2012 Whatever you want to label the system as, its not right. Seperate down times please. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PoPPaDoM Posted February 2, 2012 Share Posted February 2, 2012 I live in the the EU server area and they take the severs down for half a day if that and they do it once a fortnight seems like such a small price to pay to get are game updated how about go out side and play instead of just whining over nothing /thread And when they do it 4-5 times in a couple of weeks coinciding with the only times you can play? Here's your sign. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
anntintin Posted February 2, 2012 Share Posted February 2, 2012 Just cause they closed my little thread..: I gratulate you on a wonderful game, a fantastic storyline and the ablility to make me giggle while i play (long time since that happened last ) But... (yes theres almost always a but..) Your maintain schedual is awful for us European players. And the long downtimes doesnt make it any better. I'm very well aware of the need for them, but the schedual have to become better and perhaps tweaking the downtime is needed. I have had some extra playtime during the days this month, and havnt been able to play more then maybe 50% cause the servers been down. And this is in a very short period of time. So IE having maintains 8am gmt to 12-16pm gmt is destroying the fun, at least when its 2 or more /Week. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BiGG Posted February 2, 2012 Share Posted February 2, 2012 We really need an EU website with information relevant to us, and we need an EU off peak time window for scheduled maintenance. It is utterly disrespectful to assume that we can just put up with it because you wish us to do so. From the list of EU servers i'm sure that there are enough people in EU to make it viable. I hate to say it, but i honestly think that this game was launched too early. It needed another year of testing and fixes. The launch has been on the bad side of things. The game is missing a ridiculous amount of features that should be in a game at launch, EU players are second class citizens due to lack of own site and hours. With so many small bugs that really push your patience, i hope Bioware manage to pick themselves up and fix stuff quickly. so far, disappointed. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dosadnik Posted February 2, 2012 Share Posted February 2, 2012 Im sorry, but this seems really strange to me... In the thread made yesterday http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?p=691258#edit691258 bioware announced the weekly maintenance and that they would try their best to keep these weekly maintenance's on off peak-hours. And that seems correct in the US, but in europe the time is 10AM to 4PM.... How is that in anyway during off peak-hours. Its in the middle off the day. They even have physical servers in europe so why cant we have maintenance on those servers when its the best time for us and not when its the best time for the US? I really dont understand their reasoning for this and its rather annoying knowing that the servers will be unavailable every tuesday afternoon. Hopefully we can get some clarification on this or maybe its just me overreacting? It is off-peak because people are either at work or at school during that time. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dosadnik Posted February 2, 2012 Share Posted February 2, 2012 Whatever you want to label the system as, its not right. Seperate down times please. If the downtimes are separate that means that the clients will be separated. If the clients are separated the Servers are separated. If the Servers are separated then you can't play with someone from the US if you wanted to. Also either we or the US will get the patch later and then people won't be happy. Also they even sometimes finish the maintenance earlier then they have said. Also you can do something else during those five hours. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spudbynight Posted February 2, 2012 Share Posted February 2, 2012 If the downtimes are separate that means that the clients will be separated. If the clients are separated the Servers are separated. If the Servers are separated then you can't play with someone from the US if you wanted to. Also either we or the US will get the patch later and then people won't be happy. Also they even sometimes finish the maintenance earlier then they have said. Also you can do something else during those five hours. Zero need to separate the clients. You just take the servers down separately and don't let anyone login unless their own client is up to date. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spudbynight Posted February 2, 2012 Share Posted February 2, 2012 Off-peak in Europe is during the day. Look at any gym membership and off peak will be 9-5 as this is when most people are at work/school/college. I was just reading this post again. And, to be honest it is bang on the money. Gyms are normally setup with peak and off-peak periods. They are also closed at night. So three windows - peak, off-peak and nighttime. US maintenance is at nighttime. EU maintenance is off-peak. Seems pretty clear why the EU players feel hard done by. The gym I go to does it's maintenance when it is closed. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mandrax Posted February 3, 2012 Share Posted February 3, 2012 My net has been down for a few days. Stephen Reid promised some news on EU maintenance, I checked Dev Tracker and didn't see anything, but was anything actually said on this matter that I might have missed?? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Monkeypuzzle Posted February 3, 2012 Share Posted February 3, 2012 (edited) What a mess. In a similar vein to this topic, I had a recent issue with this game. My phone was damaged so I lost the security key app. Meaning I could only log into my account/game if I rang up the support line. But I'm getting ahead of myself. I couldn't log in because swtor.com was once again, down. Yet its child pages were fine, forums, game info etc. But you weren't to know this until you manually typed in the url or googled it. Most of us, took the front page at face value, down for maintenance. I waited and I waited, in fact I only knew the forums were working when I got an email about THIS thread. I then managed to find a number for customer support, when upon phoning the support line, they removed the security key and I could login no problem. I asked the guy on the phone why the site was having more maintenance all day long when the game was working. He told me that this is when there is a high volume of traffic to the site. Oh ok, so in other words, the holding page is MISLEADING. Loads of sites can manage a holding page when the site gets busy, even this one! I remember it putting me in a queue just to enter this site due to high volume, but this time around it was a flat out lie. The issue is a simple one, when you try to play the game and all servers are offline, some of us might want to get more information on this (regardless if this information is available in the launcher). Or, what if you wanted to ask for advice, like I did when my phone broke and couldn't access the game. Where do you think we all go? swtor.com, thats where and if the main page is not working, then that's it. The advanced amongst us will google the information or find alternative means to access the forum, but brand new players to not only swtor but mmorpgs in general, will be seriously confused. This seriously needs fixing, even if its just to modify the maintenance message to read something more accurate. Edited February 3, 2012 by Monkeypuzzle Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Emshwiller Posted February 4, 2012 Share Posted February 4, 2012 And you don't understand that their work schedule and organisation is of no concern to me. Cannot agree more. We have a grievance. Saying it's a hassle to change the business routine is neatly sidestepping the issue. A bit like telling a recently fired employee that the cutbacks are good for the company. Similarly, Bioware stating that maintenance on EU servers is on off-peak hours is textbook framing the issue. It implies that there are only two possibilities for maintenance: peak and off-peak - and Bioware did us a favor by chosing off-peak and we should not second-guess that. Secondly, using the term off-peak is genius. Bioware can declare any hour of the day "off-peak" just because there are less players online at one moment than five minutes ago. And obviously, since noone knows the real numbers of players we are not in any position to refute peak and off-peak hours. Finally, someone ran with the word 'off-peak' and hijacked the thread. Props to you, sir. But off-peak is not relevant to our grievance. The time is. I sometimes have mornings or days off. In december I took some days off to start playing. Imagine my annoyance that the first day I had set aside to play, I couldn't. At least until 5pm. That I could watch TV, that I could take a walk outside and enjoy the fresh air, that I could be making friends in Real Life or do any other activity during that time... is irrelevant. I bought the game. Money changed hands. That I clicked through a EULA that specifically removes my right to complain about just this sort of downtime... is irrelevant. That my friends in the USA are in the same position as me but never experience maintenance-related downtime during their daytime... is surprisingly relevant. Bioware, I hope you realize this isn't going to go away until you've addressed this issue. And by addressing the issue I don't mean the boilerplate statements that sound like they were parsed by your legal department, but something written by a human being. As an aside, I just wonder how this whole maintenance process works, if, after a 6 hour maintenance the downtime is extended by 90 minutes (unforeseen difficulties I suppose) and when the servers are back up, the patch notes state only one bulleted item. Is it that complicated to patch the game? Emshwiller on Red Eclipse Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Griftefrida Posted February 6, 2012 Share Posted February 6, 2012 Put the bloody daily reset time in EU at 4 in the morning. nuff said +1 boom shakalak Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hosoi Posted February 6, 2012 Share Posted February 6, 2012 I have to say I'm getting pretty sick of this, I work evenings mainly so I loose 1 days playtime every week. I understand maintenance is essential, but at the same time it is a source of irritation to me every single week. At first I accepted it as I thought it would be temporary, it is becoming increasingly a reason to play another game. Gaming is my main hobby, if you think I am sad because I do little else with my free time, then that's your opinion, but loosing a days playtime per week to me is quite a big deal. I have been a starwars fan since the early 80s so I am finding it hard to leave a game I have wanted my whole life, but the gamer in me is angry and does not really care if I pvp in a starwars universe or any other for that matter. The gamer side of me is starting to win. I really wish bioware would at least engage with us EU players on this issue as the silence and lack of commitment to a large section of the player base is frankly insulting. We pay for the same service as our American cousins yet we do not receive anything like the same service! Not to mention the fact that at current exchange rates they are paying slightly less than we pay in the UK at least (I cannot vouch for the rest of Europe). I would put up with these downtime issues if the game was perfect, but the gamer in me keeps telling me that the lack of respect from BW to EU customers, the fact I still get CTDs and the numerous gameplay and graphical bugs should be pursuation enough to play a different game. There are many other games on the market which have less of the above issues. Bottom line is I don't want to leave I want Bioware to recognise, at the vey least, the problem. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Oneirophrenia Posted February 6, 2012 Share Posted February 6, 2012 (edited) Maybe someone who lives in Europe can confirm this next part (which I already know the answer to): Don't Europeans (Western/Northern at least) regularly take 2-4 hour long lunches as opposed to the customary 1 hour lunch here in America? If so, it is indeed conceivable that a lot of Europeans do in fact play during the day time, if only for shorter periods when compared to your average night time sessions. This is why a lot of people around the world dislike Americans. So many of us can be completely ignorant of the culture and societal behaviors of other nations. Hell, we can even be completely oblivious to our own culture as east coasters seem to think that they are the center of the world and can't seem to comprehend that midnight is actually still peak time for a lot of PSTers. Even worse, we sometimes are actually arrogant enough to automatically apply our standards onto the rest of the world as if our way is the best or only way. *Rolls eyes at American Exceptionalism* The era of American unipolarism is over, get used to the idea. And yes, this does transcribe to the gaming world as well. Edited February 7, 2012 by Oneirophrenia Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Monkeypuzzle Posted February 7, 2012 Share Posted February 7, 2012 I know you will never please everyone. But in WoW you always knew the maintenance was at 3 am until about 10 or so, I forget the exact times. True you could argue that will have to pay people extra to work that early, or find people to work that early, but Blizzard do it and do it well. Issue is that I know at 8am the game is offline (and the website for reasons UNKNOWN), and not be back until late afternoon. The entire day is written off. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Emeda Posted February 7, 2012 Share Posted February 7, 2012 BioWare just hates the European players, we got late into the beta, we get terrible maintenance times, I wonder what comes next. We both get the same product so its not all roses over here in the US. But really there is no reason that they cant change the times for the EU that would accomodate most of the EU players. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Iiyria Posted February 7, 2012 Share Posted February 7, 2012 Its an American game. based in America and opperated on the timezones convenient to American workers. You dont see us QQing that we cant have EU television at the same time as you all. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ikkio Posted February 7, 2012 Share Posted February 7, 2012 Its an American game. based in America and opperated on the timezones convenient to American workers. You dont see us QQing that we cant have EU television at the same time as you all. Then that American company should not sell it as a full product to a non-American audience. Or at least come out and say "we have a huge American bias and we don't care about the rest of you." Non NA gamers are paying full price but not getting a full service. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Iiyria Posted February 7, 2012 Share Posted February 7, 2012 We're getting the same service at least in my case. I work 7 Am-1Am MST I'd pay them to make maintenance later in my timezone. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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