Ipsin Posted February 7, 2012 Share Posted February 7, 2012 I was wondering : Why make the maintenance at the same time for the US servers and the European servers ? Since there is a huge difference between the time zones, most maintenance on the european servers occurs in the mid-morning. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Narzeja Posted February 7, 2012 Share Posted February 7, 2012 And any contractor would tell you to hit the road. The work at set time and not when you want. If it's my house, I hired him and accepted the terms in the contract, but that does not convey that I decided when he could work or not (indirectly), otherwise I would have found another or accepted that this is the only available solution. Hence the first description of the situation would never be able to take place; it's an absurdity. Besides, the analogy does not fit this discussion. Guess you have never worked with a contractor.Guess you assume too much. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KatjeRabenu Posted February 7, 2012 Share Posted February 7, 2012 (edited) I am one of the MANY off-shift working players. On a normal patch night I get home just in time to NOT play... (between 1-2am mountain). As has been pointed out by several previous posts, server populations are still high at midnight in the USA, and many of us are only just logging in at that time (or later). WoW does weekly maintenance at around 4am mountain on tuesday morning unless it is a major content or bug patch. No one is arguing that down time is not needed, just start later! And for those of you posting that we should all get new jobs to support EA's schedule, grow the hell up! Why do I (and many others) reference WoW server maintenace times? Maybe because alot of us who would like to be playing SW:TOR right now will instead be logging in to our WoW accounts for our weekly check-in... And yes, I still get routinely kicked off the servers with a 4am maintenance, but it is a hell of alot more reasonable than a 1am shutdown. And as a matter of finance, IT geeks starting a downtime at midnight versus 3-4am are STILL 3rd/night shift either way, so it costs the same! Edited February 7, 2012 by KatjeRabenu Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dani_P Posted February 7, 2012 Share Posted February 7, 2012 The servers are split. It is not a server issue. It is a client issue. As noted, the only way to do it is having specific clients per region. Well, spliting servers involves having their own clients otherwise they would still be "linked" by the client (same maintenance shedule ... etc) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Combopoint Posted February 7, 2012 Share Posted February 7, 2012 This is the weekly planned downtime, that does not move.. So rather silly to QQ about something we all know about. And 4 to 8 hours for a planned weekly is not that much. It is when you're in Europe. Some friends of mine already didn't continue their subscription for this reason and i will join them soon when my playtime ends. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ProMinx Posted February 7, 2012 Share Posted February 7, 2012 The maintenance definitely comes at a terrible time for anyone on the West Coast. It is horrible planning on BioWare's part, and it absolutely ruins 2 days per week when people would love to play. Scheduled maintenance every Tuesday morning and unscheduled maintenance the last 2 weeks have cost me 4 of 14 possible nights of play (including a Friday night at midnight immediately after my fiance went to bed) during that period. As long as Bioware insists on such an unreasonably early maintenance window, they should have to credit any players in Pacific and Mountain or any players who primarily log in during those hours for an additional FREE DAY every time the server goes down during optimal game time. At least split the server groups over 2 different maintenance windows so that players have an opportunity to play the game every night... because they pay to play every night. Midnight and onwards on a week day is typically where most people are asleep or trying to. You're an unfortunate outlier. Get new working hours. Moving the maintenance to some other time will affect more people. Regardless what clueless Narzeja just said, it really is a crock of BS to go down so early. Far more people play at midnight than play at 6 am or 8 am. MMO players aren't mahjong players. They tend to play far later at night. Narzeja doesn't have a clue what he is talking about. Maintenance would unquestionably affect far fewer people if the servers went down for 4 hours at 2AM or 3AM PST. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Romiz Posted February 7, 2012 Share Posted February 7, 2012 (edited) It is when you're in Europe. Some friends of mine already didn't continue their subscription for this reason and i will join them soon when my playtime ends. Sorry I was laughing at you signature that is totally wrong. There are 529 (2008) million in North America and 857 (2010) in Europe. That is only 38% more people not 300%. And does not take into account the growth of 2009 and 2010 for North America. Edited February 7, 2012 by Romiz Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Oneirophrenia Posted February 7, 2012 Share Posted February 7, 2012 (edited) And any contractor would tell you to hit the road. The work at set time and not when you want. Guess you have never worked with a contractor. Tell me you're joking. I hired a remodeling contractor for my investment condo and told him that I needed the unit ready in a week for renter. It was a major remodel involving kitchen, both bathrooms, flooring, carpeting, painting and window replacement. If he had stuck to his *normal* schedule, he would have needed 2+ weeks with the 3 man team he had. Guess what though? He changed his staff's schedule and worked 7am to 7pm everyday to make sure the unit was ready in a week because he wanted my "money". When my water heater's ignitor burnt out at 8pm at night, I called the HVAC contractor I've worked with for years. Sure I was charged a bit more but he still came by and swapped it out at 9pm. Why? Because he wanted my "money" but even more so he wanted to continue the working relationship. I work in finance and my regular hours are from 10am to 6:30pm. If a large client wanted to swing by my office at 7pm or even do dinner, I don't tell him/her "sorry but I only work during these hours". You have it completely backwards when it comes to customer and service provider relationship. Customers pay the money for the service provider to work with them, as long as it is reasonable, not the other way around. Edited February 7, 2012 by Oneirophrenia Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Saitada Posted February 7, 2012 Share Posted February 7, 2012 I spend more time trolling the forums than playing the game. When the forums are down, I go troll FB. Doesn't bother me none. ~Saitada Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pink_Saber Posted February 7, 2012 Share Posted February 7, 2012 I was wondering : Why make the maintenance at the same time for the US servers and the European servers ? Since there is a huge difference between the time zones, most maintenance on the european servers occurs in the mid-morning. Because they use the same client. They push client updates out when they do the server updates. Since the client isn't region-specific, if they updated one group of servers first, the client would b out of sync for people in the second group until their server maintenance was done. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
_Banewolf_ Posted February 7, 2012 Share Posted February 7, 2012 I have a problem seeing this as problem! Improving gameplay and adding new features is a part of the game. And God knows this is most needed in this game since they released it halfdone in many parts. So keep patching and improve it! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mikkeos Posted February 7, 2012 Share Posted February 7, 2012 A simple version check when trying to connect to a server would be all that is needed to avoid any incompatibilities due to separate maintenance and upgrade windows. EVE and WOW are both having loads of patches applied on the fly to the servers - with no downtime, or just a quick restart (<30minutes) in case of emergencies. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pink_Saber Posted February 7, 2012 Share Posted February 7, 2012 (edited) What are your plans to arrive at a place where you do not impact your paying customers to do maintenance on the game? Q1, Q2? You're kidding, right? No MMO does this. The poster right above me is dead wrong about WoW, by the way. They still do downtime maintenances on a regular schedule. The hotfixes they do without downtimes are generally client-side fixes. Edited February 7, 2012 by Pink_Saber Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Urdnaxela Posted February 7, 2012 Share Posted February 7, 2012 Midnight and onwards on a week day is typically where most people are asleep or trying to. You're an unfortunate outlier. Get new working hours. Moving the maintenance to some other time will affect more people. Ignorance and stupidity are infinite... The world has many, many times zones... so many of them that you can't even use all your 20 fingers to count them, because there's more times zones. Midnight is just in some of them, in most it's some other period of the day that cannot be accurately described as being midnight. Afternoon, evening, morning - maybe, but definitely not midnight. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kieranthenerd Posted February 7, 2012 Share Posted February 7, 2012 get this, tuesday is the only day i do not have something, and the maitnence stars when i get back from work, and ends when i am reading a book about to go to sleep, so me too Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
_Kalki_ Posted February 7, 2012 Share Posted February 7, 2012 Agree'd with the OP as I'm working late today and was looking forward to a bit of time on there this morning but then I can get a load of jobs done around the house lol The way I see it is that at least they are fixing the problems, how would you feel paying you £8.99 and playing with all these bugs? Just hope the amount of downtime does decrease in the future as it does get annoying :/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Necrolepsy Posted February 7, 2012 Share Posted February 7, 2012 Try being an Oceanic player, we've had peak maintenance since WoW's release in 2004. You know nothing of patience OP. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Timmermannen Posted February 7, 2012 Share Posted February 7, 2012 They should just alternate it, every other week europe gets downtime that stretch into the middle of the day and every other week US will. Also it's funny how the americans whine their faces off as soon as something is in favour of europe with ingame progression, server downtimes and the like but when it's in their favour european players should just "suck it up" and accept it. Doublestandard much? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Urdnaxela Posted February 7, 2012 Share Posted February 7, 2012 1. Why is it that the maintenance and all the other downtime period happen during European mid-day (which is a long way from off-peak hours)? Each week, each end of the month the European players have to "suck it up" and stay cool about the fact that even though they pay more for a service, they receive less than the Americans. 2. Has any Bioware employee (and so many of the American posters here) ever heard of Time Zones and, i dare say, what they mean? 3. Do you realize that most of Europe are GMT+1 and GMT+2, and not GMT? 4. I do realize that it's really trendy to say: "well, just get out for a couple of hours" but most European players would really like to just sleep while you "maintenance" the servers (and the forums of course - what a shocker) or put an "emergency - fix some fonts" patch, just like the American players do. So where is this discriminatory and offensive behavior towards your European customers come from? 5. Why are the forums shut down each time there's some scheduled (or not) downtime? 6. Where is the fabled "highest Quality of Service" you promised, advertised and marketed? 7. How does this "highest Quality of Service" that you so much strive for gets achieved when: a) the European servers are in the worst possible location in Europe (bar Iceland maybe) from a Quality of Service point of view b) the European players, while paying substantially more for this service, receive less then their American counterparts. c) the Bioware employees, even the British one(s), seem to fall into the, obviously mistaken perception, of American ignorance and stupidity by not realizing that saying "the downtime will happen in the early hours of..." when the service/product is sold all over the world (note: all over the world != Bioware's definition of worldwide). 8. What does the "highest Quality of Service" translated into for the Russian players, who were from the start giving the lowest service (by refusing them the CE edition, by choosing the location of servers in Ireland etc.) since every maintenance and any other downtime cuts right into their peak time (Russia is mostly GMT+3, GMT+4)? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lord_zod Posted February 7, 2012 Share Posted February 7, 2012 (edited) I have a problem seeing this as problem! Improving gameplay and adding new features is a part of the game. And God knows this is most needed in this game since they released it halfdone in many parts. So keep patching and improve it! Not trying to be mean but you need to read the original post. No one is complaining about having maintenance they are upset about the time it's done. It's done when servers are still standard to heavy and not during light populations. Here in the US they can accomplish this by moving the downtime to 4am CST. At this time 90% of the servers are light. This time would also benefit the EU because the down time would be from 11am to 2pm. Or they could just go ahead and do their downtimes at 4am Wednesday by separating the two maintenances. Edited February 7, 2012 by lord_zod Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pitchcontrol Posted February 7, 2012 Share Posted February 7, 2012 They just have to devide the servers into different clusters. Take a cluster down, keep the others up! That way you still can login on another server and enjoy the game. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pink_Saber Posted February 7, 2012 Share Posted February 7, 2012 Not trying to be mean but you need to read the original post. No one is complaining about having maintenance they are upset about the time it's done. Actually, the OP is complaining that they do downtime maintenances at all, and was very specifically asking when they'd stop. Which, of course, they won't, because this is an MMO, and his expectations are unrealistic. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Saitada Posted February 7, 2012 Share Posted February 7, 2012 They should just alternate it, every other week europe gets downtime that stretch into the middle of the day and every other week US will. Also it's funny how the americans whine their faces off as soon as something is in favour of europe with ingame progression, server downtimes and the like but when it's in their favour european players should just "suck it up" and accept it. Doublestandard much? Personally, I like this idea. The problem would be implementing it. Also, for me.... Maint comes at an inconvenient time as well. However I find myself spending less and less time playing, and more and more time trolling the forums. That should say volumes... and what is sad is... I LIKE this game. ~Saitada Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pitchcontrol Posted February 7, 2012 Share Posted February 7, 2012 1. Why is it that the maintenance and all the other downtime period happen during European mid-day (which is a long way from off-peak hours)? Each week, each end of the month the European players have to "suck it up" and stay cool about the fact that even though they pay more for a service, they receive less than the Americans. 2. Has any Bioware employee (and so many of the American posters here) ever heard of Time Zones and, i dare say, what they mean? 3. Do you realize that most of Europe are GMT+1 and GMT+2, and not GMT? 4. I do realize that it's really trendy to say: "well, just get out for a couple of hours" but most European players would really like to just sleep while you "maintenance" the servers (and the forums of course - what a shocker) or put an "emergency - fix some fonts" patch, just like the American players do. So where is this discriminatory and offensive behavior towards your European customers come from? 5. Why are the forums shut down each time there's some scheduled (or not) downtime? 6. Where is the fabled "highest Quality of Service" you promised, advertised and marketed? 7. How does this "highest Quality of Service" that you so much strive for gets achieved when: a) the European servers are in the worst possible location in Europe (bar Iceland maybe) from a Quality of Service point of view b) the European players, while paying substantially more for this service, receive less then their American counterparts. c) the Bioware employees, even the British one(s), seem to fall into the, obviously mistaken perception, of American ignorance and stupidity by not realizing that saying "the downtime will happen in the early hours of..." when the service/product is sold all over the world (note: all over the world != Bioware's definition of worldwide). 8. What does the "highest Quality of Service" translated into for the Russian players, who were from the start giving the lowest service (by refusing them the CE edition, by choosing the location of servers in Ireland etc.) since every maintenance and any other downtime cuts right into their peak time (Russia is mostly GMT+3, GMT+4)? Well said!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shaz Posted February 7, 2012 Share Posted February 7, 2012 (edited) BioWare: You claim that you've deemed 02:00am+ CST to be the time when fewest are playing, and thus the hours that will inconvenience the fewest. However, this downtime was first decided upon right after the game launched. So my questions follow: That didn't give you much data to base your 'this is the best possible time' on, did it? (Since this time was chosen immediately post-launch, and the only data you'd had to mine was from the beta, correct?) and Given you now have many, many weeks of data from the live game to mine for player population / time, do you still find that 02:00-06:00 (or 08:00+CST) are the hours with the lowest population and the hours that affect the least amount of people? and finally- If/when the game officially launches in Oceania, will that region have different maintenance hours as your currently scheduled 02:00 CST is absolutely and completely 100% primetime in this region? (And if so, will Europe finally get its own official and appropriate maintenance schedule as well, or will we all continue to suffer the 02:00 downtime?) Edited February 7, 2012 by Shaz Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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