Lord_Scythe Posted March 15, 2012 Share Posted March 15, 2012 I think that the unfortunate reason for this is the fact that Bioware is an American company. Without wanting to make any rash generalisations some people in this world are more insular than others. They tend not to leave their own country and as such have a rather self centred outlook on things. These sort of people sometimes wield a little bit more power then is really ideal. I don't know where you might find these people. Actually right now it is based on numbers. North America: 1.17m 53.3% + Europe: 0.74m 33.9% + Rest of the World: 0.28m 12.8% If it were flipped and Rest of the world had 53% of the games population server down time would be flipped as well. Do you possible tick off 1.17 million or 280 thousand players. Simple math decision. Again once bugs are fixed and missing features implemented and programmers have time, I am sure they will revisit maintenance times and move them to a regional time. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
utio Posted March 15, 2012 Share Posted March 15, 2012 I understand the concept but again it is not as big an issue as people make it out to be. You are right I don't care. As I have said I am an adult I deal with change very well! I am also not a member of the NOW generation. I am wondering why this is on the general forum and not in say the suggestion box. I answered the OPs question about why. Shear numbers affected. To make it a truly fair maintenance schedule it will need to be rotated based on percentages. That way each zone would be affected equally! In the future I can see them doing scheduled maintenance based on regions. But their programmers are currently trying to fix game bugs and prepare patch 1.2. Comes down to priorities. Whats is more important for the game? Fixing the maintenance time issue affecting a smaller percentage of customers or fix the game bugs and add the stuff that should have made launch. In order to fix the maintenance time to region serious reprogramming of the launcher needs to occur. I do not know how much work would be required on the back end. 100% of customers are affected by bugs, class imbalance and missing features. Well I'm glad you agree that the system is currently unfair. I'm actually genuinely happy for you that you aren't bothered by it too. I agree that bugs are a priority too, but they will always be a priority. What I don't think appropriate is the implication that because some people are bothered, that they aren't behaving like adults, and are part of the NOW generation. Though I understand you have a right to your opinion, I really don't think it's the case here. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
utio Posted March 15, 2012 Share Posted March 15, 2012 Actually right now it is based on numbers. North America: 1.17m 53.3% + Europe: 0.74m 33.9% + Rest of the World: 0.28m 12.8% If it were flipped and Rest of the world had 53% of the games population server down time would be flipped as well. Do you possible tick off 1.17 million or 280 thousand players. Simple math decision. Again once bugs are fixed and missing features implemented and programmers have time, I am sure they will revisit maintenance times and move them to a regional time. Being in the majority is no basis for preferential treatment. Maths has nothing to do with good customer service. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lord_Scythe Posted March 15, 2012 Share Posted March 15, 2012 Being in the majority is no basis for preferential treatment. Maths has nothing to do with good customer service. You are correct but until they are able to implement patches by region they are still going to cater to the larger number of customers. Would you rather risk losing the 280 thousand customers or the 1.17 million? Now if they had the foresight to do regional patching in the first place there would not be this issue. However there would be people who play late night regional posting about unfair patch times. Then again if they had the foresight they would have done a truly global launch at the same time and postponed the game to have the missing elements in place before launch. It sucks when the bean counters force a game out the door early! Have you not seen the crying about the emergency patch? It happened during the EU prime time. It should be quite entertaining to watch if this goes into NA prime time! You would think by some of the posts that someone shot their dog or something! As to your other post anyone who says "fix this or I am quitting" is not acting as an adult. I consider that a tantrum. I equate this phenomenon as the "I'm taking my ball and going home!". Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bashindwarf Posted March 15, 2012 Share Posted March 15, 2012 Greetings All, Server maintenance is chosen to occur at the time of global population minimum and as such probably will not change much if at all. This is to minimize player game time impact for the greatest number of players. The maintenance is not staggered so as not to give any one group of players an advantage and also to maintain all users on the same game client patch. Thank You for playing Star Wars: The Old Republic Here is your answer. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Micksteroo Posted March 15, 2012 Share Posted March 15, 2012 (edited) There has been a lot of discussion about these maintenance times and how it's unfair for us Aussies and Europeans, and there is likely to be more. Again there are 2 sides to this - those who aren't affected by the maintenance and couldn't care less about the rest of us, and those of us who are adversely affected. I play 3 days a week - Monday through to Wednesday, starting around 8 pm AEST - 11 pm AEST. BW took away Tuesday from me which equates to 33% of my time being lost per week. With this in mind I no longer see the point of paying the subscription and have cancelled it to that effect. This is especially since I've played both Wow and Eve and none of those games cut into my playing time (except for the once off major patch which I can live with). Edited March 15, 2012 by Micksteroo Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Draflorin Posted March 15, 2012 Share Posted March 15, 2012 Honestly I do not understand why Maintenance at the very least can not be performed at a convenient time for the regional server groups. After all they DO have that ability to take down individual servers down to reset or fix them - so its not an impossibility. Come on BW Oceanic group is only 3 frigging servers Regarding patching, Simply change to the logging screen for the client with a message which informs you that: "The patching cycle has started with US servers at<Stated time> EU servers at<stated time> Oceanic Servers at<stated time>, you may upgrade your client now but should you choose to do so, the other server groups will be unavailable until the end of the upgrade/patching cycle. If you want to play on a server that is not yet reached its patch time simply select NO and continue, please be aware that you will not be able to play on patched servers until you have upgraded your client. this will be indicated by "incompatible version" in the server status column" Doing it this way would keep everyone happy - and if by chance there are people who play on 2 servers from different regions then they would have at least one server available for play 100% of the time - I cant see how it can get any better than that... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lord_Scythe Posted March 15, 2012 Share Posted March 15, 2012 Honestly I do not understand why Maintenance at the very least can not be performed at a convenient time for the regional server groups. After all they DO have that ability to take down individual servers down to reset or fix them - so its not an impossibility. Come on BW Oceanic group is only 3 frigging servers Regarding patching, Simply change to the logging screen for the client with a message which informs you that: "The patching cycle has started with US servers at<Stated time> EU servers at<stated time> Oceanic Servers at<stated time>, you may upgrade your client now but should you choose to do so, the other server groups will be unavailable until the end of the upgrade/patching cycle. If you want to play on a server that is not yet reached its patch time simply select NO and continue, please be aware that you will not be able to play on patched servers until you have upgraded your client. this will be indicated by "incompatible version" in the server status column" Doing it this way would keep everyone happy - and if by chance there are people who play on 2 servers from different regions then they would have at least one server available for play 100% of the time - I cant see how it can get any better than that... Resources. The entire launcher needs to be reprogrammed. I am sure the prep on the back end will be a nightmare as well. If it was a simple solution that took very little resources to change it would already have been done. Again as I have posted before they are currently using resources to fix bugs, add missing features and create new content. I am sure once the game is stable they may look back at making patches regional. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Micksteroo Posted March 15, 2012 Share Posted March 15, 2012 Resources. The entire launcher needs to be reprogrammed. I am sure the prep on the back end will be a nightmare as well. If it was a simple solution that took very little resources to change it would already have been done. Again as I have posted before they are currently using resources to fix bugs, add missing features and create new content. I am sure once the game is stable they may look back at making patches regional. Indeed that might be. But still, they should have had the foresight for doing this right from the beginning; there's no excuse for not getting it right. When you design infrastructure you plan for every possible contingency, and you certainly set it up with global access in mind. All with the ultimate aim of making future work more actual work and less of rework. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gavin_Darkl Posted March 15, 2012 Share Posted March 15, 2012 All MMOs do the same type of maintenance window. No one is special. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dafpants Posted March 15, 2012 Share Posted March 15, 2012 Greetings All, Server maintenance is chosen to occur at the time of global population minimum and as such probably will not change much if at all. This is to minimize player game time impact for the greatest number of players. The maintenance is not staggered so as not to give any one group of players an advantage and also to maintain all users on the same game client patch. Thank You for playing Star Wars: The Old Republic Here is your answer. Thanks for that quote, Bashin; was there a link to the OP? Emphasis is mine. How is the current maintenance system not already giving the American players an advantage? We're not getting up at 1am on a Wednesday morning to storm that new Operation or flood the GTN with the shiny new crafting goodies from 1.2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Micksteroo Posted March 15, 2012 Share Posted March 15, 2012 (edited) All MMOs do the same type of maintenance window. No one is special. Wrong. Eve goes down for 30 mins every day, no biggie. Wow doesn't go down till 10-11 pm AEST, not in our prime playing time. The problem here is having maintenance at 6 pm AEST (soon to be 5 pm AEST because of DST) - a very rash decision on BW's part. Edited March 15, 2012 by Micksteroo Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Drunkenfarmer Posted March 15, 2012 Share Posted March 15, 2012 As a 2nd Shift person, I do. And at 3AM there are still a hundred or so on Fleet usually. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Micksteroo Posted March 15, 2012 Share Posted March 15, 2012 All of you who have a problem with the current maintenance schedule, have a think about this. BW does not care (they are most likely prioritising fixing the game, not the maintenance), you complain but continue paying them a subscription. What's going to happen when you cancel your subscriptions as a sign of protest? Do you think BW will still not show a care in the world when their bottom line is being affected? Power in numbers - if enough of us cancel our subscriptions BW will be forced to make a change. I've already cancelled my subscription and I'm aware of a few others who have done the same. Look at what we did to the retail industry in Australia - we got sick of paying them their inflated prices so we turned to buying online and caused them to go south with their revenue. The result? Bigger than normal sales and some retailers even closing. Bottom line - we were unhappy with their treatment of us and decided to do something about it (conciously or not). So yeah, please think about cancelling your subscriptions if you are adversely affected with the current maintenance schedule. I for one will not be paying them and waiting for 3-6 months so they can fix the issue. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Draflorin Posted March 15, 2012 Share Posted March 15, 2012 Resources. The entire launcher needs to be reprogrammed. I am sure the prep on the back end will be a nightmare as well. If it was a simple solution that took very little resources to change it would already have been done. Again as I have posted before they are currently using resources to fix bugs, add missing features and create new content. I am sure once the game is stable they may look back at making patches regional. and i would be ok with that if thats what they said - right now though its a blanket "NO" with no plans to change anything at all. and its fairly obvious where their bias lies - EU are screaming about it - Oceanic are screaming about it - Americans are happy because they are being catered to. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Draflorin Posted March 15, 2012 Share Posted March 15, 2012 All of you who have a problem with the current maintenance schedule, have a think about this. BW does not care (they are most likely prioritising fixing the game, not the maintenance), you complain but continue paying them a subscription. What's going to happen when you cancel your subscriptions as a sign of protest? Do you think BW will still not show a care in the world when their bottom line is being affected? Power in numbers - if enough of us cancel our subscriptions BW will be forced to make a change. I've already cancelled my subscription and I'm aware of a few others who have done the same. Look at what we did to the retail industry in Australia - we got sick of paying them their inflated prices so we turned to buying online and caused them to go south with their revenue. The result? Bigger than normal sales and some retailers even closing. Bottom line - we were unhappy with their treatment of us and decided to do something about it (conciously or not). So yeah, please think about cancelling your subscriptions if you are adversely affected with the current maintenance schedule. I for one will not be paying them and waiting for 3-6 months so they can fix the issue. exactly - even if you cancel at the beginning of the month and resub when you run out - there will at least be a large number of exit surveys indicating that this is a problem - and being first and foremost interested in their income streams BW will probably take notice Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rtwozero Posted March 16, 2012 Share Posted March 16, 2012 Mostly I don't have an issue with missing 1 night of prime time. The biggest issue for me is the fact that we have been told that this is the way it is going to be yet are expected to still pay the same subscription fee to play 6 nights. If BW does not have the technology to cater to different time zones why expect customers to still pay a fee for limited access. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Banicks Posted March 16, 2012 Share Posted March 16, 2012 Australian here, played MMOs since release of WoW. That was a good 5 year slog of requesting Oceanic servers, and at the end of the day we still never received what we wanted - just a West Coast US server with Oceanic realm time. I for one am extremely grateful that Bioware gave us a physical server on shore to provide us with decent ping for the first time in an MMORPG. It is a sacrifice to lose prime hours of play time every Tuesday, would the shoe be on the other foot and this be occuring to the Yanks - it would be changed because they are the majority of the player base. I get to do maybe 30 minutes of playtime on a Tuesday soon as I get home from work before the servers go down. It sucks, but then I go play BF3 or watch some TV shows I've been saving. Not the end of the world for us, and Bioware should be thankful that the majority of Aussie players don't make a big fuss about it. I would appreciate Bioware showing some appreciation of our patience by discounting monthly subscription or renumerating X amount of hours playtime rollover. Let's do an approximation - US players pay their $15 a month and judging on peak times of 5pm-11pm, get their moneys worth. Oceanic players pay $15 a month and lose out on 4 x 6 hours worth of playtime per month (24 hours). To be fair, Oceanic timezone players should be given a renumeration of 24 hours playetime each month. I'm happy for this amount of hours to vary based on average peak time and length of maintenance or just a pure restart. Now I know there are some who fall outside peak zones and have special shifts or hours of play, but you are the minority. Whilst I know Americans view us as the minority, hence the peak zone outage for us, we are not. We are paying customers entitled to the same access and privaleges prime time players are. In lieu of that, I have suggested a viable alternative. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Micksteroo Posted March 16, 2012 Share Posted March 16, 2012 I will say it again, and hope you guys can point out whether my logic is flawed in any way. BW DOES NOT CARE. Complain and suggest all the alternatives you want, they are either not listening or it is going through one ear and out the other. What's wrong with cancelling your subscription, telling them why you cancelled and then resubbing before your game time for the rest of the month is up? That is the only way we can force them to change their ways. Not like we can ask the law to come and force them... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Micksteroo Posted March 16, 2012 Share Posted March 16, 2012 I personally do not care how busy they are trying to fix the game; I'm a full paying customer and do not get to choose which day of the week I can play while US players have all 7 days of their prime time unaffected. By not cancelling you are letting them get away with this crap for which there is no reasonable excuse except that they possibly stuffed up. Sure they gave us Oceanic servers, that's great and all. But they still take them down during our prime time - that is pathetic planning. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Valethar Posted March 16, 2012 Share Posted March 16, 2012 This thread is new and exciting..... The downtimes are the downtimes. The people doing the work don't live in your countries, why should they be expected to schedule their lives to conform to your timezones? They only just got the servers set up for you. They've not even got the details on your transfers worked out yet. As far as I know, they don't even have an 'official' presence there, so what makes you think they have the people trained and available there to handle the maintenance? Time to get over yourselves. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Waxninja Posted March 16, 2012 Share Posted March 16, 2012 Why are the Aussie servers going down for maintenance in the prime time of playable hours for us Aussie's? The U.S. server go down at 2am so why don't the servers in Australia go down at 2am AEST? A Little Unfair!!!!!!!!! Also why are the forums shut down as well? Some people used the maintenance time to check out forums, Like they did with WoW to catch up on anything new. Toughen up princess. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Micksteroo Posted March 16, 2012 Share Posted March 16, 2012 This thread is new and exciting..... The downtimes are the downtimes. The people doing the work don't live in your countries, why should they be expected to schedule their lives to conform to your timezones? They only just got the servers set up for you. They've not even got the details on your transfers worked out yet. As far as I know, they don't even have an 'official' presence there, so what makes you think they have the people trained and available there to handle the maintenance? Time to get over yourselves. It's been said before, if this downtime doesn't affect you consider yourself lucky and move on. No one said anything about having people trained and able to perform the maintenance here. Have you not heard about remotely managed servers? Just because servers are located in some corner of the world does not mean the people who manage them need to be there as well. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Valethar Posted March 16, 2012 Share Posted March 16, 2012 Thanks for that quote, Bashin; was there a link to the OP? Here. http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=356019&page=2 It's been said before, if this downtime doesn't affect you consider yourself lucky and move on. No one said anything about having people trained and able to perform the maintenance here. Have you not heard about remotely managed servers? Just because servers are located in some corner of the world does not mean the people who manage them need to be there as well. See above and move on. Even if they remotely manage them, they have their reasons for not taking them down at different times. Dry your tears and move on already. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Micksteroo Posted March 16, 2012 Share Posted March 16, 2012 See above and move on. Even if they remotely manage them, they have their reasons for not taking them down at different times. Dry your tears and move on already. Keep going, you are delusional if you think we're going to stop complaining just because you tell us to. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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