4h. downtime... a SATURDAY???

[Greywatch]

My god. What ever happened to paitence?

 

Oh no. You can't play a game for a few hours because of a legitimate reason, your life must be oh so affected.

 

Not to say that I don't understand why you're unhappy, but a company is somehow the devil when you can't just accept the fact that you can't do something you wanted to which is basicly just entertainment? Something which isn't important to your health, financial wellbeing or life in any way beyond mild annoyance?

 

It's this attitude that has come from an ever-expanding consumer culture and the advances of technology, plus the caving in of companies - which have cause ANYONE who buys ANYTHING to want it instantly. It's honestly depressing - because people just want more faster and any problems which are encountered along the way are seen as a personal affront.

 

Do you have any idea how both petty and greedy that is? How quickly does the world owe you something?

 

Grow up. Accept the annoyance, and move on like the rest of us rational human beings.

[Maidel]

OK, does it mean sexual intercourse? What country are you in, btw? I find it interesting to know the various different ways the different cultures refer to the act of "getting laid."

 

HAHAHA

 

Oh god no.

 

Lie in = sleeping late!

 

UK (england)

[Knyghtprowler]

Americans like to think they are best, centre,and most, at all things including subs in this game

 

We are... and you spelled "center" wrong

[Luckmann]

Solution is simple. Every MMO has those needed peak time updates sometimes. WoW was full of them months on after release.

The simple thing Blizzard did was to extend players time with the unexpected downtime, so they don't feel like being robbed.

And yes, there is EULA stating that they can get the servers down when they want, but do you, do you really think that anybody cares? Or even reads the EULA.

Nobody will sue EA/BW over this, they will just right away execute their judgement by simply canceling. You can wave EULA and server maint all you want then...at your empty servers.

 

So BW, here is a constructive feedback for you:

1. Compensate EU players with extending their accounts by several hours for this type of maint.

2. Split EU and USA maint times.

 

As ill-written as this may be, this is essentially what it comes down to. It is not a matter of whether EA has the right to schedule maintenance or whatever they want whenever they want. It's their game; it's their servers.

 

But that's not the point of the issue.

 

The point isn't that they can't do this. The point is that they shouldn't do this.

 

Those rights means nothing as people start to unsub. Maintenance like this is just another one of those nagging annoying little things that ruin the appeal of the game. And that adds up to cartoon snowball size.

 

I would say that this is another nail in the coffin that is SWTOR, but it's really just that one nail called Customer Support, being pounded on really hard.

Edited January 28, 2012 by Luckmann

[Dekai]

Well, I think I know the solution then.

 

Time to Region Lock servers.

 

Yes people will dislike it, but it's the only way they can shut US servers down and people not flood to EU servers and vice versa which would cause a lot of network and server strain.

 

It's the real reason why all servers go down at the same time after all, this is the only solution. Sorry for those who want to play with friends in the EU or America, buy another copy for that region and play that way.

[Daross]

Wow. If you can't live without this game for like 4 hours, please quit playing and get help.

 

If you play 12 hours each day, 4 hours of saturday is not problem..

But some people play 2-4 hours a day.. if you cut THOSE hours, you are loosing whole day. People get back from work/school and want to play some .. and cant, because maintance is AT THIS MOMENT.. Usualy Saturday is day off, and suddenly Bioware cut it in half.

[Zabonam]

People are not being very mature in this topic.

 

I wasn't affected at all today, but some people are. They want to play the game. I would deal with it personally, but some people have their day planned out. They decided that today they wanted to play.

 

Don't judge others based on your own lives. If it doesn't make a difference to you try and refrain from coming into the thread to call others stupid or whatever for how they react to this situation.

[NoTomorrow]

Why do American players feel the urge to come to this thread and show their disrespect for EU players? This sort of attitude will not get you far.

[lethal_ghost]

HAHAHA

 

Oh god no.

 

Lie in = sleeping late!

 

UK (england)

 

lol epic miss understanding

[RSLeMire]

...hmmm seriously? Does your state of being hinge on a game?

 

 

 

***You want to go rethink your life***

[AnjyBelle]

If they cannot roll the updates at different times, how about updating this weak during US prime time, next week during EU prime time? wouldn't this be more fair to all the sides? Why does it need to be every week at the exact same time?

 

Hehe... in this case they had to expand their ostrich-like manner they already celebrate with each patch.

 

If they would dare to touch US-prime time, they probably had to revoke posting rights for about a week, otherwise the US-customers would spam the forum to death with announcements of cancellations etc.

[Mandrax]

What did people do for 4 hours before the game came out?

 

Played a different game. One that had maintenance in the middle of the night...

Edited January 28, 2012 by Mandrax

[unclekaula]

I hope euros do unsub, I'm tired of listening to them whine about maintenance.

 

Regards,

An American that's affected by the maintenance times but does other crap during downtime.

[Grammarye]

Wait wait, let me get this right.

 

You love the game so much you can't tolerate being away from it for 4-5 hours on a Saturday so your answer is...to quit.

 

Makes perfect sense...

You fail to take into account the considerable competition that exists for both time & the entertainment available in that time. If enough people say 'yeah, not bothering playing TOR on a weekend with all this maintenance' or 'why log in now after maintenance, the place will be dead' then the actual player population & player experience is affected. That can cause a cycle if you are not careful, where people find they are just happier playing other games; people who needed just one more excuse to unsub might just do that. Gamers are a fickle bunch.

 

In short, annoying your customers when you want them to be playing your game, not someone else's, is considered, generally speaking, a bad move.

[Rodanth_The_Wise]

 

this is one of the reasons games like wow goes so smooth. they have good customer service and don't **** things up so often.

 

hahahaha

 

What don't you people understand? I think half of the people complaining have never played a game of this magnitude before, or an mmorpg in general. No matter WHAT time they take down the servers, a lot of people will be affected and a lot of people will have something negative to say about it. Here's what bioware does, and yes..I know it may be unfair, but get this... They monitor the server populations. Unfortunately for EU guys, and yes...like I said..unfair WE GET IT, more people are playing the game during prime-time in the united states. What I would guess is that is 5pm-12am CST. Because of this, they take the servers down in the morning hours as to not effect a wider range of players. I'm sorry there are more subscribers based in the united states. That's not biowares fault, or the players from the US. Until they control both the EU servers and US servers separately, and patch them separately, there is no way of fixing this problem. You drew the short end of the stick, I'm honestly sorry for you.

 

You can bet your *** right now, that if this were a EU made game, and the larger player-base came from Europe, down-time would most CERTAINLY be during US prime-time hours. That's just how it works.

 

Now, you have two choices -- 1. Stop ************ about it and find something else to do or 2. Continue ************ about it and exerting energy that will net you nothing in return. It's your choice. You're just wasting time you'll never get back by complaining. It's not going to help your cause in the slightest. What's next? A protest? Guess what, it's still not going to work. The only thing you can do is cancel your subscription, but I guarantee 75% of the people who threaten to cancel will never do so, and if they make a post stating they have already done so -- I'm betting half of them actually haven't. I'm done.

Edited January 28, 2012 by Rodanth_The_Wise

[Jebu_Boin]

I assume my post will get lost in the ocean of other replies but it appears this is the place Bioware would like us to give our feedback, so here goes. If you take the time to read this post then feel free to comment.

 

First, its worth noting that in general I avoid forums as I like to consider myself a well balanced person who can understand multiple points of view. A trip to the forums always shows people with insanely polar opposite views so whatever you post will always get shot down and abused. However, this issue I felt was worth commenting on.

 

I should also note that I think this a great game and that I will definitely continue playing. During the down time today I took the time to head out to the food market earlier than usual so I am no social reject who compains insanely just because I am missing 4-6 hours of gameplay.

 

However, I do think you have handled this situation very poorly bioware/EA and would highly reccomend you take some time to do a lessons learnt about this week and gather feedback (Regardless of how negative it is) from this forum about your actions.

 

My key thoughts are:

 

1) You cannot continue to annoy the EU playerbase with matinanance times that are extremely inconvenient and now starting to eat into good ol prime time. For example, I know a lot of people that consider the morning / early afternoon slot on a saturday as a great time to play as we try and wind down from a long week at work.

 

2) Improve your communication with the playerbase. Details as to why servers are going down on a saturday is very limited and gets people guessing. This just causing mass arguments on the forum. If you had said up front that there was a major exploit in the game that needed fixing immediately then people would be much less upset at your actions.

 

3) I still see no real reason why you cannot split the maintanance times for EU and US. The Eu servers and all their staff are based over in Ireland so there are no logistical issues. If you are concerned it will cause population issues on servers during the cross over period (i.e. US logging into EU during their downtime) then simply put some control mechanisms in place to mitigate that issue (which I feel will not be significant anyway).

 

As a rational person, I will not scream "quitting" over this issue but I have to admit it has got me annoyed. if you have managed to annoy me then I am pretty sure that the vast majority of irrational people who play MMORPG will take much more drastic action. This is why I have seen quite a lot of quit posts and whereas I dont agree with them, for me that is a negative for the game I love playing at the moment as I want to see it be as prosperous as possible.

 

I hope you have found some usefull feedbacak in this post. I will never know if it has been read or included in any future learning but at least I feel I have done my bit =)

 

Regards

[Bramblerose]

Not to say that I don't understand why you're unhappy, but a company is somehow the devil when you can't just accept the fact that you can't do something you wanted to which is basicly just entertainment? Something which isn't important to your health, financial wellbeing or life in any way beyond mild annoyance?

 

Actually it is important to my finical wellbeing. I can only afford one games sub. I can only play 8 hours a week the majority on a Saturday morning. Ergo is the only game I have ever known to have non-essential maintenance on a weekend really the one I should be paying for?

 

That is the problem here.

[Proto]

Best thing to do is quit this game. It isn't worth the monthly sub or the time you invest in it compared to the other fun games out there you could be playing. This pile of junk code should have never been released.

[Luckmann]

Well, I think I know the solution then.

 

Time to Region Lock servers.

 

Yes people will dislike it, but it's the only way they can shut US servers down and people not flood to EU servers and vice versa which would cause a lot of network and server strain.

 

It's the real reason why all servers go down at the same time after all, this is the only solution. Sorry for those who want to play with friends in the EU or America, buy another copy for that region and play that way.

 

That makes no sense. There is no need to region lock servers. If you schedule maintenance differently in EU and US, the EU downtime will be in the middle of the night. There will be no "flooding" of the US servers during EU downtime or vice versa.

 

And even if there were, I don't see how that would be a problem at all. Worst case scenario, some hardcore people abusing the game like crack would have a few cross-Atlantic alts.

Edited January 28, 2012 by Luckmann

[porfyr]

You know the saying, "Absence makes the heart grow fonder".

 

Your girlfriend is trolling you.

[Maidel]

I hope euros do unsub, I'm tired of listening to them whine about maintenance.

 

Regards,

An American that's affected by the maintenance times but does other crap during downtime.

 

Great plan there bub.

 

 

Lots of people unsub, game looses money, gets less support and therefore you get less updates, the game becomes less popular etc etc...

 

 

How about hoping they fix this so there is a different way of roling out patches (Eg split times) and then you can roll on an EU server and wont be affected?

[VSampedro]

As ill-written as this may be, this is essentially what it comes down to. It is not a matter of whether EA has the right to schedule maintenance or whatever they want whenever they want. It's their game; it's their servers.

 

But that's not the point of the issue.

 

The point isn't that they can't do this. The point is that they shouldn't do this.

 

Those rights means nothing as people start to unsub. Maintenance like this is just another one of those nagging annoying little things that ruin the appeal of the game. And that adds up to cartoon snowball size.

 

I would say that this is another nail in the coffin that is SWTOR, but it's really just that one nail called Customer Support, being pounded on really hard.

 

You're 100% true, this and Customer Support (which I believe doesn't exist, it's only a spam robot) are the reason for me to cancel my subscription plan. I can't believed that a 200M$ multinational product has been so badly managed in it's first weeks after launch.

[tmpearson]

It is my understanding that the NA and EU servers are in separate locations.

Isn't having maintenance at the same time doing it the hard way?

[GHeissi]

That makes no sense. There is no need to region lock servers. If you schedule maintenance differently in EU and US, the EU downtime will be in the middle of the night. There will be no "flooding" of the US servers during EU downtime or vice versa.

 

And even if there were, I don't see how that would be a problem at all. Worst case scenario, some hardcore people abusing the game like crack would have a few cross-Atlantic alts.

 

Right. There is no need for region lock, but the easiest way to do it is to seperate US and EU clients and force them to only connect to their own respective servers.

[unclekaula]

It is my understanding that the NA and EU servers are in separate locations.

Isn't having maintenance at the same time doing it the hard way?

 

They are, but they are intentionally keeping them on the same schedule. There was feedback from the devs/customer support as to why its being kept like this. Everyone thats complaining just doesn't agree with the reasoning.