maintenance, why so much

[NovaTiempo]

Personally, I'm very happy with ANY downtime at the moment. I cant play for more than 5-20 mins before my client locks up and needs a hard reboot. So any time theres DT, I hope it'll get fixed!

 

Also, knowing theres bugs being fixed, Im generally happy.

[SaintAvalon]

There are bugs, and bugs need to be fixed.

 

The downtime isn't that bad if you compare it to other games. World of Warcraft for instance was known for major down time during major updates, where people couldn't play, people lost items or spells, server rollbacks, etc... That's for one of their updates, they still did updates every Tuesday there after.

 

Then you have Rift, that game had updates every other day at times. The down time was insane, however many items were fixed or tweak rapidly. There was no "wait till Tuesday to enjoy content" it was "here's the content, crap we broke it, let us fix it, here you go".

 

I like downtime if it means the game and world I enjoy will actually let me play without game breaking bugs.

 

So more power too them.

 

However on that note, that isn't to say I don't sometimes get annoyed or mad when it goes down. I'm human, I enjoy the game, so yeah sometimes i get plans in game and then realize I have to cancel them. Just remember to check the forums often to see potential down times.

[pyropete]

This downtime has killed two days this week for me too.. It always kills one day a week.. Sucks that it has to be at 12am PST..

 

change it to at least 2am like normal games. WoW is 3am pst.

[ChakraFive]

This. Give us casual players more low end content, more starting classes & low-end zones/planets - that will keep us coming back. And where end game grinders ARE a minority, we are legion...<will the penny ever drop>

Word.

[ChakraFive]

This downtime has killed two days this week for me too.. It always kills one day a week.. Sucks that it has to be at 12am PST..

 

change it to at least 2am like normal games. WoW is 3am pst.

 

While I actually would prefer that they do this (change to 2am PST) , I really have to facepalm for the sense of entitlement and the tone.

 

Seriously folks....they are FIXING stuff so your experience gets better....give em a little bit of a break

 

 

Here, let me shows ya

 

Hey BW, love the game, love playing late, thanks tons for fixin the stuffs.

 

Any chance of moving server downage to more of a middle of the night deal?? Would be awesome and would definately put a plus in your collumn for me.

 

thanks for considering y'all!

 

give it a try

Edited April 19, 2012 by ChakraFive

[Leyv]

Cant complain that theyre fixing and updating etc..but it is pretty annoying when they had a 5 hour maintenance not 2 days before

I'd also love to see these patch notes before the patch so at least we have an idea what was so gamebreaking it couldnt wait for scheduled times , when they drop it like this I cant help feel theyre going to desperatly rummage around fix whatever they can find and then post what was changed.., Id have thought they y'know tested the patches before going live....

cest la vie

 

meh reality it is then

[rjkishida]

i wouldn't go so far as to say no improvements. I would say that with weekly patches, unless something is server crashing critical, then just fix most things during the weekly.

 

Anything else smacks of bad planning and a disregard for players who want to play.

 

I'm not complaining about them fixing things, I'm complaining about why the patches need to come in such rapid succession. The weekly is there for a reason. Unless it is an emergency, why not wait? Do it all at once and minimize down time? Players pay to play. If we can't play, WHY PAY?

[Palathas]

While I actually would prefer that they do this (change to 2am PST) , I really have to facepalm for the sense of entitlement and the tone.

 

Seriously folks....they are FIXING stuff so your experience gets better....give em a little bit of a break

 

 

Here, let me shows ya

 

 

 

give it a try

 

Are you serious? So you're saying that if you pay for a service as an ongoing subscription then you aren't entitled to that service? I AM entitled to that service and feel entitled to that service because I'm paying an ongoing fee for them to maintain and expand on what exists with the view of still actually being able to use it without constant interruptions, that's the whole point of the subscription.

 

If it was a free DLC, a free to play game or something like that then it'd be completely different.

Edited April 19, 2012 by Palathas

[MikelGoff]

Are you serious? So you're saying that if you pay for a service as an ongoing subscription then you aren't entitled to that service? I AM entitled to that service and feel entitled to that service because I'm paying an ongoing fee for them to maintain and expand on what exists with the view of still actually being able to use it without constant interruptions, that's the whole point of the subscription.

 

If it was a free DLC, a free to play game or something like that then it'd be completely different.

 

And that service is barely down, realistically speaking. There are less than ten hours of downtime on most weeks. Big patches might take more time, and there might be the occasional increased downtime due to something unforeseen, but usually it's fewer than ten hours a week.

 

Do you know how many hours a week the game is up?

[pyropete]

While I actually would prefer that they do this (change to 2am PST) , I really have to facepalm for the sense of entitlement and the tone.

 

Seriously folks....they are FIXING stuff so your experience gets better....give em a little bit of a break

 

 

Here, let me shows ya

 

 

 

give it a try

 

??? My sense of entitlement? Perhaps you read my post wrong but I wasn't writing it in anger. I was just saying it as a suggestion that they put back the maintenance by a couple hours so that us PST time players can have a decent amount of time to play. I work swing shift, and I have tues-thurs off. With family I can only play at about 9pm pst on my nights off at the earliest which only leaves a couple hours to play.

[Palathas]

And that service is barely down, realistically speaking. There are less than ten hours of downtime on most weeks. Big patches might take more time, and there might be the occasional increased downtime due to something unforeseen, but usually it's fewer than ten hours a week.

 

Do you know how many hours a week the game is up?

 

So I have to be up at 2am to get access? Recently this game has been down 66% of the time I've had access to it. Once again, if it had been at a reasonable time it would have little impact. Both patches have been from 5pm to 11pm or 9pm respectively. I've had access again for the last 3 days, two of those days it's been down. Prior to leaving it was down 4days in a row.

 

I'm happy to miss out for some scheduled and unscheduled maintenance but this is truly getting ridiculous.

Edited April 19, 2012 by Palathas

[MikelGoff]

So I have to be up at 2am to get access? Recently this game has been down 66% of the time I've had access to it. Once again, if it had been at a reasonable time it would have little impact. Both patches have been from 5pm to 11pm or 9pm respectively. I've had access again for the last 3 days, two of those days it's been down. Prior to leaving it was down 4days in a row.

 

I'm happy to miss out for some scheduled and unscheduled maintenance but this is truly getting ridiculous.

 

Or play on other days.

 

I know it sounds strange, but there are 6 days a week where they aren't performing scheduled maintenance.

 

Would it be great if we all had uptime when our schedules allowed us to play? Of course. Nobody in here will argue against it, they'd be ignorant to do so.

 

Down 4 days in a row? Looking at the time that you said it was down on your end (5-11pm), I have to worry about you. I won't lie and say that there weren't any days when I wanted to play but couldn't. Do you know what I did? I spent time with family, got some work done, did something that wasn't complaining on these forums that Bioware must change their schedule for me.

 

If, on average, 1-2 days a week not being able to play from 5-11pm is going to ruin your entire life, I think you might want to take a look at your priorities.

[Thornsbane]

Are you serious? So you're saying that if you pay for a service as an ongoing subscription then you aren't entitled to that service? I AM entitled to that service and feel entitled to that service because I'm paying an ongoing fee for them to maintain and expand on what exists with the view of still actually being able to use it without constant interruptions, that's the whole point of the subscription.

 

If it was a free DLC, a free to play game or something like that then it'd be completely different.

 

You pay a whopping $15 a month....you get all you deserve for that small price.

 

There are 672 hours in the average month and the servers are up for around 630 hours in the average month. So they are up around 94% of the time. You are getting what you pay for easily for a tiny $15/month.

 

Quit whining.

[coille]

Totally agree! I Usually play pretty late and for me the maintenance starts at 00:00. This week I have 2 days of play time killed, as I can't do to much till server shutdown. I wouldn't be surprised if they will have yet another one till the weeks end!

 

I've got the same issue. I'm playing in Australia and it starts the minute I get home from work and stops around the time I go to bed . Second night this week scrubbed. Could the Australian servers be done at a different time perhaps?

Edited April 19, 2012 by coille

[wellymace]

Oceanic guilds have again missed a key raid night....guess this happens when you buy "used servers" from Blizzard

[Sonofdeath]

And that service is barely down, realistically speaking. There are less than ten hours of downtime on most weeks. Big patches might take more time, and there might be the occasional increased downtime due to something unforeseen, but usually it's fewer than ten hours a week.

 

Do you know how many hours a week the game is up?

 

For those of us in the Asia Pacific regions that downtime is scheduled to start just as we get home from work and the servers come back up just as we go to bed. So whilst it might actually only be 10 hours to me and many of my Asia Pacific brethren it may as well be 48hrs downtime per week as it has much the same outcome.

 

I have roughly 58 hours a week that I could realistically play SWTOR and those 10hrs down time are within those 58 so to me 10/58 is pretty poor when compared to 10/168. Due to real life commitments and the fact that I play the game with friends we are only able to get online together once or twice a week, so when that happens to coincide with maintenance it can be some what frustrating.

 

I understand the need to do regular weekly maintenance at this early stage of the games release, I also understand the need to place that maintenance at a time that impacts the least amount of players. I understand both these things even if they are extremely inconvenient.

 

But at this point in time for me to be able to play SWTOR with so much downtime I almost have to plan my real life stuff to occur on days that SWTOR will be down just in an effort to ensure when the game is up I might actually be free and able to play. Once a game starts to factor in to your real life planning that much well its time to start to think why bother is it even worth it.

[pyropete]

Yah like the post above me and the last couple on the previous page have said this is an annoyance to have the downtime catered to the EST time zone in the USA..

 

It would be nice if you could do the USA servers at 6am EST and the other servers according to their off hours.

 

So PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE with a cherry on top change the times of maintenance around to cater to the players a little better.

[Thornsbane]

For those of us in the Asia Pacific regions that downtime is scheduled to start just as we get home from work and the servers come back up just as we go to bed. So whilst it might actually only be 10 hours to me and many of my Asia Pacific brethren it may as well be 48hrs downtime per week as it has much the same outcome.

 

I have roughly 58 hours a week that I could realistically play SWTOR and those 10hrs down time are within those 58 so to me 10/58 is pretty poor when compared to 10/168. Due to real life commitments and the fact that I play the game with friends we are only able to get online together once or twice a week, so when that happens to coincide with maintenance it can be some what frustrating.

 

I understand the need to do regular weekly maintenance at this early stage of the games release, I also understand the need to place that maintenance at a time that impacts the least amount of players. I understand both these things even if they are extremely inconvenient.

 

But at this point in time for me to be able to play SWTOR with so much downtime I almost have to plan my real life stuff to occur on days that SWTOR will be down just in an effort to ensure when the game is up I might actually be free and able to play. Once a game starts to factor in to your real life planning that much well its time to start to think why bother is it even worth it.

 

Now this type of post I agree with.

[WereMops]

Why is there so much server down time for Maintenance.

In all the mmo,s i have played this is the worst for the amount of server down time.

The game has about a 96-97% server uptime, that's far from the worst uptime compared to all other MMO's in this early stage of post release development, it's actually quite high up on the "good" list.

While the timing of the downtime is atleast "unpleasent" to a big part of Europe (me included, but I'm not whining about it) it still is situated in a time where it still affects the MAJORITY of players the least.

 

To be absolutely honest I have not seen any marked improvement in this game.

Well, the rest of us have (atleast most of us with eyes, basic memory and awareness skills).

 

the most important part of ANY mmo is the end game and that has Definitely not been sorted.

We'll have to agree to disagree on this one, while a decent "endgame" is nice to have (which I for the record think SWTOR has), the fun in this MMORPG (in contrast to most other MMO's) starts at level 1 (atleast 8 times actually).

 

You are mucking about in areas that are absolutely fine

No, they aren't, they are improving areas that they see needs improving.

 

& The Legacy system,,, do you Really think that we

are gonna love that.

Yes, well maybe not love, but I like it very much, it's a good start.

 

Come on Bioware, EA & Lucas, admit there is a series problem here and that so called special meeting of the guilds etc was a farce. Its fixed nothing and was just soap screen.

 

Of course I love the game at the beginning hoping that things would be sorted but I am now knowing that it probably wont and I can understand why serious mmo & pvp gamers are leaving in droves.

 

It would be obvious if the figures were published of say January,s player base vs today,s.

They don't have a magic "code" wand that they can just wave and *poof* everything is in, programming/developing/expanding a game doesn't work like that (especially when it comes to a complex MMORPG), these things take time, the game has come a long way in the few months it's been "alive", I'm sorry that you can't see that.

[davidpop]

You haven't noticed ability delay go away completely? You haven't noticed more fluid frames in every area of the game? You haven't noticed more content at this point in its life-cycle, than just about any other MMO ever made?

 

Everyone else has.

 

If you think the ability delay is gone, youre delusional.

[Ignicity]

 

Personally I'm HAPPY when there's downtime to put new patches in, as hopefully it means bugfixes, especially for some of the issues introduced in 1.2.

 

 

In that case let's ask the devs to patch every day and change the down time so that it's right in the middle of your prime gaming time.

[Freyar]

In that case let's ask the devs to patch every day and change the down time so that it's right in the middle of your prime gaming time.

 

It's going to happen. From a business perspective it makes more sense to make downtime happen when you have the least amount of players on according to your metrics. Anything else is pretty dumb.

 

Want it to happen during US Prime Time? Get more people to play during those off-peak hours.

[Palathas]

You pay a whopping $15 a month....you get all you deserve for that small price.

 

There are 672 hours in the average month and the servers are up for around 630 hours in the average month. So they are up around 94% of the time. You are getting what you pay for easily for a tiny $15/month.

 

Quit whining.

 

Well unlike you, as by those times you are able to play 24 hours a day 7 days a week, I only have a small window of access. A more realistic time frame would be 8 hours a day and the servers have been down 11hours this week in that time frame so by the end of this evening, assuming that they don't come down again that'll be ~80% ( or 71% of my actual access time as 16 hours is lost.) up time for the week. Heck I'd be happy if I was locked into a 5pm to 10pm window of access if it meant that I was guaranteed access between those times.

Edited April 19, 2012 by Palathas

[Kindara]

I wouldn't really give a toss how often they did maintenance if they did it inline with each server's local time, ie. NA server on NA times, Europe times for Europe and Asia Pacific times for Asia Pacific. But it just so happens they only ever do it during NA early morning which is my prime time so that's a whole day gone yet it's practically transparent for NA players.

 

It's just getting very frustrating with these constant interruptions. I unsubscribed for a while with this being one of the factors, heck in January there was a stint of 4 days in a friggen row where the servers were down during our prime time but I couldn't complain too much because the game hadn't been officially released here in Australia but now that it has it's perfectly reasonable to expect to be able to utilise the software like any and every other user.

 

Well I suppose if we all want to pay more for the game so they can hire multiple teams to handle 1 entire division of the game process then you can have what you want as far as downing servers according to region. Bioware is located in North America, even if the servers are abroad they are still being handled by North America. Server Maintance and patching is handled by 1 team. That team is likely maybe 10 people, those 10 people can't work over 24 / 48 hours to down the servers in small incriments according to various people's time schedules. I can't even imagine the ridiculous amounts of complaints that would be caused when something goes wrong and a particular region has to wait longer because a window was missed or better yet...like the olden days when all regions except north america had to wait an extra day for everything because NA the company's home region is always going to get the patch first.

 

Its not feesable to have multiple teams and multiple launch windows unless you want to be Region Locked like several MMOs are because they spend money to hire other companies to run, maintain and update their servers abroad. Its a format people have cried and moaned over for years because they can't play with friend X on Server B because Server B is not in their region and to buy the appropriate copy of the game its to expensive.

 

Bioware is damed if they do and damned if they don't. If they waste money to pay a third party or higher ridiculous amounts of employees to handle 1 division of the company customers will still cry. Its the first year of the game get used to there just be an unusual amount of down time thats just par for course. Its even more par for course when a game is adding in new content. Every MMO does this even that other game that shall not be named.

 

The servers go down maybe twice a week, three times if its a bad week like a content addition week thats the nature of the game. If your life completely revolves around playing the game everyday or only playing the game on only 1 day a week and that day is patch day then maybe you need to re-evaluate your schedules and your priorities. Or change your play day to a day that almost never has downtime like a Saturday.

 

Last week was unfortante and they gave everyone a free day. Just about everyone who's played since launch or the first month or so since launch is about to get a free month so is it really hurting your bottomline so much that an extra maintance day or two after a content addition is so bad? I mean really.....is it killing small children in 3rd world countries? No.

 

PS. They're not catering to the US. They're IN NORTH AMERICA so they're schedule is on North American work hours which just happen to suck for Euro / Asia etc.

Edited April 19, 2012 by Kindara

[DClarkNV]

Why is there so much server down time for Maintenance.

In all the mmo,s i have played this is the worst for the amount of server down time.

 

To be absolutely honest I have not seen any marked improvement in this game.

 

the most important part of ANY mmo is the end game and that has Definitely not been sorted.

You are mucking about in areas that are absolutely fine & The Legacy system,,, do you Really think that we

are gonna love that.

Come on Bioware, EA & Lucas, admit there is a series problem here and that so called special meeting of the guilds etc was a farce. Its fixed nothing and was just soap screen.

 

Of course I love the game at the beginning hoping that things would be sorted but I am now knowing that it probably wont and I can understand why serious mmo & pvp gamers are leaving in droves.

 

It would be obvious if the figures were published of say January,s player base vs today,s.

 

You could easily change the title to this thread to "Whining, why so much???"

 

Seriously, go play the game or do something else instead of posting nonsense.

 

Their is no purpose to this thread and it should be locked away and/or deleted.