Lack of communication is unprofessional

[Demorgoth]

if you don't care.. Don't post. Also if you had time to post a undermining post... You don't have much more of a life than us do you?

 

qft

 

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[SiaSinblade]

Yes yes... you are better than us ô wise one. You never get angry at anything. Sorry to have troubled you.

 

If you don't care.. don't post. Also if you had time to post a undermining post... you don't have much more of a life than us do you?

 

My dear, dear, angry Forum-Goer. I have suffered through this thing that is called the General Forum with a host of whiners and complainers from the very first day it was created.

 

I have raged, I have insulted, I have been insulted and been raged at. Your little jab is completely pointless and meaningless. There is nothing undermining about my post. My post states a subjective opinion about the state of these forums and the state of the world in general.

 

If you can't deal with that, or think I am wrong, how about you try to present a good case for your side? Or just dispute my theory. Instead of trying to support your side of things with a silly little attack on my person?

 

All you have done is prove me right in my theory.

 

Enjoy your little hissy-fit.

[Sirsri]

Hey everyone; I appreciate everyone's views on this topic and I can understand the feelings being expressed here.

 

 

The root of your problem is the same mistake blizzard and SOE make. You assume forums work as a means of communication, they do not.

 

Whether that means you should be RSS feeding the launcher with 'dev tracker' posts of any game related news, or have an in game OOC news feed about the game I'm not sure, but maybe both.

 

It shouldn't be up to Curse, or ZAM or some dude named darth******** on some random forum to be conveying information to people they should have about the game. That applies to downtime, valid specs, upcoming changes, recent changes etc.

 

You guys did what you were *thought* was the right thing to do. In the narrow little world of how game companies communicate you did it the way everyone else does. But that only connects to those of us who are forum trolls, and EA (along with every other game company) need to re-envision customer communications on live services.

 

Oh, if you need to do downtime on a friday, you need to do downtime on a friday. It sucks, but that's the way it goes. After the whole 'leaving ilum exploited for 18 hours' disaster you are hopefully learning your lesson on triage I hope the playerbase can be made to understand that if it's broken it is better to fix it right now than seriously mess up the game for weeks (as the Ilum thing has done), or simply have the servers crash and you couldn't play anyway.

[Malcho]

If they bring down the servers again on a Friday night at midnight with the only notice having been posted to the forums, I'm done with the game. I dont' check the forums everyday and it should have been posted to the info wall you get upon login. To the people who say get a life and go do something, *** was I supposed to do at midnight not knowing what was coming.

[Kemeros]

If they bring down the servers again on a Friday night at midnight with the only notice having been posted to the forums, I'm done with the game. I dont' check the forums everyday and it should have been posted to the info wall you get upon login. To the people who say get a life and go do something, *** was I supposed to do at midnight not knowing what was coming.

 

See that exploit bug was urgent because it can break the game in a matter of hours. And we can suffer from that bug for quite a while.

 

A bug that just makes you have to reconnect doesn't have long term effects except maybe annoying the player. I get the 9000 error sometimes, very rarely but i do and i just reconnect and continue whatever i was doing...

[Surakis]

The biodrones are just amazing. It doesn't matter what you complain about. You could be complaining that the game is so awesome that you can't stop playing it. Long as it's a complaint they'll swarm the thread and turn day into night.

 

And if there is a complaint thread there you'll be. Pot, kettle and all that jazz.

[Parrelli]

I think some of you need to find another game maybe.

 

OMG it was down on a friday night... I'm sure there was nothing else in your city to do on a friday night...

 

Really... Go out into the world for a few hours and see what other people look like. Some of them even look like these aliens in the game. Get some sleep... plenty of things to do.

 

Stop crying over this and deal with the 20 hours of time the game was up that day.

[Tankshoes]

Seems none of you have played FFXI, where all servers are housed in Japan. There aren't any "EU servers", you get what you're given. Servers are taken down in JST time, like the rest of the world doesn't exist, leading to the servers coming back up as late as 6-8pm GMT.

 

In addition, they can't even tell the time properly, or accommodate for British Summer Time, so the times are always 1hour out.

 

Whilst I don't agree with same time server down time, you act like BW are the only people to do this.

[Mannoth]

Hey everyone; I appreciate everyone's views on this topic and I can understand the feelings being expressed here.

 

Our Live team took the decision to roll out today's 1.1.0c patch during Friday night/Saturday morning with the knowledge that it would affect a higher than usual number of players. Unfortunately, we had to make changes that required server downtime. The Live team felt those changes were urgently required and that was why the maintenance was scheduled. Generally speaking, we try and ensure all required maintenance happens during our weekly maintenance period, but this was one situation where we had to move forward quickly; to not do so could have led to severe performance issues across the service as a whole.

 

I want to address a couple of other points from the OP:

 

 

This is a little inaccurate. I'm not sure where your timing comes from, but our original post regarding the downtime was posted at 5:10PM CST (Austin time). At that point, we were unsure of the start time for the maintenance so posted without it. The post was updated with the exact timing of the maintenance at 8:54PM CST, which would give just over five hours notice of the exact timing.

 

Five hours is not a generous window of notice, and for that we apologize. In this instance, we updated with the precise timing as soon as we could, but we'll strive to improve.

 

 

Overall, this is a fair point. Generally speaking, every Friday we post details of our upcoming maintenance period to give plenty of advance notice. Because of the timing of this patch, we thought it might be easier to roll both notices into one. We didn't feel the ambiguity was too extreme, as the upcoming patch was detailed up front, but I can see how it might have confused some. We'll improve.

 

As stated, the patch was deemed necessary and urgent enough to be rolled out on a Friday night/Saturday morning (Austin time). We didn't take this lightly, and don't expect or wish it to be a regular occurrence.

 

To those of you in Europe, I want you to know that we'll be discussing maintenance windows and how we can improve their timing this coming week. We may not have an update immediately (and not before the scheduled maintenance on January 31st) but we have been paying attention to your opinions.

 

Thanks again for the feedback - it helps us know where to improve.

 

Man... I want to be in PR/Marketing now. I have never seen anyone type so much to simply say "The Dev team thought this was important, but poor internal communication and planning on our end made it impossible to get you any information until 5 hours before. Our bad. We'll try harder next time."

Edited January 29, 2012 by Mannoth

[trumpsofdoom]

What i don't get is that when you enter the form area of the website we have 3 posts of what is up coming so it is easy to see but we have a post about down time on the 24th and the 31st and patch notes for 1.1 but nothing about the down time on the 28th if they want this problem with communication to go away the need to start putting the information where it is easy for people to find

[Achromatis]

Man... I want to be in PR/Marketing now. I have never seen anyone type so much to simply say "The Dev team thought this was important, but poor internal communication and planning on our end made it impossible to get you any information until 5 hours before. Our bad. We'll try harder next time."

 

If you were in PR and all you typed out was what you just said, youd get fired

[xioix]

They already have your money.

[Lankard]

Last week I posted on the Suggestion Forum, asking that the DATE be included in the system alerts for maintenance down times. This still has not been done. Yes, you put the date on forum posts; but not everyone reads the forums, especially not daily. Put the DATE of the down time in the system alerts which appear on the system alert page here and in the launcher. It can't be that hard to do. After all, you manage to put 4 or 5 different times for various time zones. Why not just include the DATE of the upcoming maintenance as well? It doesn't make sense. It's sloppy. It leads to confusion. Fix it.

[Bregah]

To those of you in Europe, I want you to know that we'll be discussing maintenance windows and how we can improve their timing this coming week. We may not have an update immediately (and not before the scheduled maintenance on January 31st) but we have been paying attention to your opinions.

 

 

 

I don't play in Europe, so the maintenance time there doesn't affect, but this quote does.

 

Surely you should have seen that maintenance during non-early am hours would be an inconvenience (you do, because you make the server down times start at roughly 3 am US EST).

 

Your quote just seems like it's only since the game has launched that you are realizing Europe is 7+ hours ahead of the US, and that US maintenance times aren't the best for European servers.

 

The answer, from like 10 years ago, is to do patches local time, not worldwide at the same time. It seems you guys could have planned for this around day 2 of this game's planning.

 

I only point this out because in so many areas of this game, you guys seem to have simply not learned from over a decade of MMOs being, well around, and seem fixated on painfully, and slowly, learning for yourselves what others took years to learn and take into account, instead of just building on what other MMOs have learned, and planning your game with learned lessons already accounted for.

 

Oh, and for the thread topic - your guys' communication is pretty piss-poor. That 3 minute video of "upcoming features" is it?

[Lith_Ragond]

I'll just express the same sentiment as others. It's a game. Yeah you pay for it (some of you probably don't), but if you have a couple hours a months when you don't get to play it... well, if that's a major concern in your life that causes you any level of emotional anguish, I'm glad I'm not you.

 

You know what I do when I can't play TOR cause of server downtime? I go spend time with my family, I take that opportunity to get housework/homework/work done. What I don't do is throw a tantrum on the internet saying BW should do this, BW needs to do that, BW owes it to me to tell me exactly when I can't play the game. Cause guess what, it doesn't matter.

 

Now don't go flaming me about "community feedback," about game issues, communication issues, or whatever you're peddling. Yeah, feedback's important for any game, but the majority of what I read on the forums isn't feedback, it's the childish expression of displeasure for not getting what one wants. I see it enough in my two year old, and it's quite pathetic to see it here.

 

TL;DR, take a chill pill, you're going to get your moneys worth.

[Skoobie]

 

The answer, from like 10 years ago, is to do patches local time, not worldwide at the same time. It seems you guys could have planned for this around day 2 of this game's planning.

 

I only point this out because in so many areas of this game, you guys seem to have simply not learned from over a decade of MMOs being, well around, and seem fixated on painfully, and slowly, learning for yourselves what others took years to learn and take into account, instead of just building on what other MMOs have learned, and planning your game with learned lessons already accounted for.

 

Can you (or anyone) name 3 games that actually do what you suggest?

[Mogitu]

Can you (or anyone) name 3 games that actually do what you suggest?

 

u serious?

[Darth_Haderach]

Can you (or anyone) name 3 games that actually do what you suggest?

We don't have to name 3 games. With maintenance times during the middle of the day for Europe, I am essentially paying the same monthly fee but for 26 days or less. WoW EU has localized maintenance times, if that is what you want to hear.

[RealAeiouy]

I saw a message for downtime way more than two hours before.

[Dosvor]

I have no problem with patch time in the morning/afternoon US time (eastern). I've said it before. Just don't do it after 6pm eastern . I am all for being fair to our European brothers/sisters.

 

I lived In Germany for 3 years when I was younger, I saw my first middle finger there and was shot by a farmer with saltrocks

[katzandra]

So much downtime.. I understand the need to fix things but can't you fix it on the same day rather than what seems to be every other day. I have a job in the real world too and I would like to know when I can play the game I'm paying for. I understand things need to be fixed but at least give us a heads up before I bother logging in.

[Joonbeams]

Co-sign OP. It's not about fixing stuff, we get that. It's about communication and thinking through the most efficient ways to minimize the burden on the larget numbers of paying customers at one time as possible.

[Deadpooled]

Seems none of you have played FFXI, where all servers are housed in Japan. There aren't any "EU servers", you get what you're given. Servers are taken down in JST time, like the rest of the world doesn't exist, leading to the servers coming back up as late as 6-8pm GMT.

 

In addition, they can't even tell the time properly, or accommodate for British Summer Time, so the times are always 1hour out.

 

Whilst I don't agree with same time server down time, you act like BW are the only people to do this.

 

tankshoes, coming from FFXI myself (and also a EU player) I know 1st hand what you're saying about thier maint times...BUT (and this is a BIG BUT) FFXI was launched originally in JP only....then in NA and lastly EU -

* JP November 7, 2002

* NA October 28, 2003

* PAL September 17, 2004

 

where-as SWTOR had a NA/EU release on the same day, so using S/E as an arguement isnt technically correct as 1/ it was JP timed on release and never changed and 2/ JP's are very xenophobic and will keep everything JP and make the rest of the world stay behind (shown over the years in FFXI where JP's had a 'slight' immunity from GM's)

[DarthDemens]

I know it wouldn't solve the issue completely, but in the future, would it be possible to use the in-game Warning channel to also put out notification of things like this?

 

Put up a forum post, then send out a message in-game saying the servers are coming down in 5 hours, and see the forums for more information.

 

I was in-game the entire 5 hours between the time being posted and the servers coming down. Since I tend not to obsessively check the dev tracker while I'm actually playing the game, I missed it completely.

[Lakhesis]

To those of you in Europe, I want you to know that we'll be discussing maintenance windows and how we can improve their timing this coming week. We may not have an update immediately (and not before the scheduled maintenance on January 31st) but we have been paying attention to your opinions.

 

I'm particularly concerned about what will happen when the Oceanic servers come online in March (or whenever the Q1 estimate comes about).

 

One maintenance is squeezing to fit everyone already & it fundamentally won't be possible if you start running oceanic/asian timezone servers too.

 

I do appreciate that maintenance information+notice has improved & I hope it continues to do so.

Edited January 30, 2012 by Lakhesis