Fed Up With Weekly Downtimes

[Sparxysparx]

I played EVE for years, and loved this downtime schedule. An hour is no sweat. I've been browsing these forums for an hour. If this were EVE, I'd almost be ready to log back in by now.

 

4 hours is dumb.

 

And defending a 4 hour downtime by citing all the other games that have 4 hour downtimes only shows that all those other games' downtimes are also dumb.

 

I'll save everyone the trouble, I've been playing MMO's for 15 years and HAVE learned to deal with it. But they're still dumb.

 

No, me saying that doesn't accomplish anything, but it sure makes me feel better.

 

Comparing MMORPG maintenance times with classic multiple-server infrastructure setups to EVE's maintenance with their setup is nearly impossible. EVE uses an entirely different setup which is much simpler in some ways.

[EnufThree]

Didn't SWG go down almost every single night?

 

Seriously, you will never find a good MMO that doesn't have weekly (maybe even daily) down times.

[Larkarus]

Lol... Close this thread. Seriously. We already have a sticky explaining what maintenance is and does and why we have them.

 

 

Go read the offical post.

 

Most people on these forums don't want to read explanations, they just want to vent.

[Dahnnauven]

Most people on these forums don't want to read explanations, they just want to vent.

 

Yup...

[SaphraxDark]

Sure, but why midnight? Why not the middle of the night for each timezone? It makes sense that they'd inconvenience as few people as possible. My server is still hoppin at midnight PST. By 2 am, it's slowed waaay down.

 

how is that possible if all the servers can be played at any time from any location in the world.. Think about it dude. And as for WoW. My brother has been playing every day since it first started and it always has had and still has weekly maintenance. If your sick of it go to D2 or Mass effect or something you dont need to annoy other people with your annoying whines.

[DeutschGamer]

Its one day, you can live without it for a few hours. If you can only play the game on Tuesday nights..well perhaps an MMO isn't for you.

[DiabloDoom]

I'm sure you're right on both points. Easier probably is better characterized as "cheaper". I hope they've factored in the cost of "lost subs" due to their maintenance hitting the same night at the same time in their cost analysis. As much fun as I've had with SWTOR, I'm looking forward to some of the upcoming games mostly because of this issue.

 

Lol... just. They go down when they start work. It's how work goes, you should know that and appreciate that.

 

Hey hunny I won't be home till 2am this morning, we are running maintenance.

 

Why so late?

 

Because someone threatened to unsub from SWTOR unless we changed OUR hours and lifestyle around to suit him.

[Menthro]

I played EVE for years, and loved this downtime schedule. An hour is no sweat. I've been browsing these forums for an hour. If this were EVE, I'd almost be ready to log back in by now.

 

4 hours is dumb.

 

And defending a 4 hour downtime by citing all the other games that have 4 hour downtimes only shows that all those other games' downtimes are also dumb.

 

I'll save everyone the trouble, I've been playing MMO's for 15 years and HAVE learned to deal with it. But they're still dumb.

 

No, me saying that doesn't accomplish anything, but it sure makes me feel better.

 

But I don't think Eve has as many servers as SWTOR or other MMO's do, they have a fair number I think because of the economy and the size fo the game but just imagine taking Eve's server cluster size and multiplying it by the number of servers in SWTOR currently.

[Canmore]

maintenance while very annoying its completely neccesary and keeps the game servers healthy and your client reatively bug free , i woke up at 8 am this morning hoping to do some warzones and was a tad disapointed the servers where offline . but i do understand why it happens and frankley so should you , go walk the dog or something

[Ashlian]

That's kind of harsh, like the OP, I myself am a dad and do not get to play as often as family and responsibilities take up my time. I hope others realize this game is not played solely by the younger generations. I am likely one of (unsilent) many who saw the movie when it released back in the 1970's. So please try to have some understanding for those of us whom feel inconvenienced but do not wish to change to another MMO.

 

I feel for you, as I am not a kid, I remember seeing the first SW movie in the theater, and I was in my late 20's when I started with EQ1 at launch in 1999. So if you didn't begin with MMO's until a later generation of them, you will perhaps not understand the lack of sympathy and/or empathy from people who watched servers taken down with a) no warning for b) days at a time with c) no refunding or extension of gametime. Added to d) server queuing and e) running to retrieve one's corpse.....ah, those were the days! /sarcasm off. A dad or mom could probably accomplish nothing in the original EQ1 as a casual player. And we most certainly paid for well over a year to ALPHA EQ2, let alone beta it....I look at a game like SWTOR and think, how far have games come in rolling out beautifully smooth launches and being a wonderful environment with little downtime for casual players. And let there be rejoicing in the streets.

 

I'm sorry there's no convenient way for the game companies to roll out patches to separate time zones unless, like EQ2's Euro and Korean servers, they are literally run as separate companies. In which case, what the left hand did had no affect on the right hand. Not the case for BW.

[Leggomy]

This guy would hate Ultima Online. It has downtime every night.

[Sickith]

wow people moaning cause the servers go down at midnight - ya ever thought about the people from the EU, whilst your cosy in your bed and us EU folk is awake the servers are down for us, and there as been times when for us the servers are not back online from 6pm to midnight, so thats all of our raids cancelled - but hey its prime time for the US folk then that's ok right ?

[QuiJonPed]

Uh, practically every MMO has a weekly maintenance.

 

Get used to it or unsub.

 

edit - you played WoW and didnt notice weekly maintenance? Yeah, right

 

Confirming this. I am calling obvious troll is obvious on the OP

[Meat_Puppet]

Mainenance fine, but how about revolving the "downtimes" so that the same timezone doesn't get done dry EVERY time?...

[DieAlteHexe]

Again, why does every server have to be at 2 am central? That's wonderful for central and eastern time zones, but it blows for many around the globe. LIke I said, having played 4 MMOs over the past decade, I've never ran into this with any other game.

 

I have. WoW (at least 'til BC release when I quit), EQ, DAoC, and several others. It's a n inconvenience for some, no doubt but it's usually only a few hours of the week and I make good use of the time to get weekly chores done. It's kind of a tradition. Going to the big city for errands on server down day.

[Ingvar]

Mainenance fine, but how about revolving the "downtimes" so that the same timezone doesn't get done dry EVERY time?...

 

This, basically.

 

I don't think any rational person would debate that downtime for maintenance is not necessary. The inequality, however, arises from it being done at a (fairly) arbitrary time. Sure, this is probably the time with the least amount of CCUs, but that doesn't mean we are less of customers. Some of us don't have the same schedules as the majority of North America. Some of us live outside of North America. Do we pay less money monthly than you?

 

I think this would be less of an issue if the downtime wasn't multiple times a week (as it has been, recently). The game has been out for a few months now, there's no reason a better downtime schedule couldn't have been worked out by now.

[DieAlteHexe]

Mainenance fine, but how about revolving the "downtimes" so that the same timezone doesn't get done dry EVERY time?...

 

Probably cos it's not cost-effective.

[Leggomy]

This, basically.

 

I don't think any rational person would debate that downtime for maintenance is not necessary. The inequality, however, arises from it being done at a (fairly) arbitrary time. Sure, this is probably the time with the least amount of CCUs, but that doesn't mean we are less of customers. Some of us don't have the same schedules as the majority of North America. Some of us live outside of North America. Do we pay less money monthly than you?

 

I think this would be less of an issue if the downtime wasn't multiple times a week (as it has been, recently). The game has been out for a few months now, there's no reason a better downtime schedule couldn't have been worked out by now.

 

They have already said it simply is not possible to split the maintenance times up. Just going to have to deal with not being able to play for a few hours once a week. You will be ok trust me.

[Ingvar]

They have already said it simply is not possible to split the maintenance times up. Just going to have to deal with not being able to play for a few hours once a week. You will be ok trust me.

 

Your care for my feelings is flattering, but ill advised. You don't know me, as I do not know you, and I would never presume to. Maintenance knocks off 1/4 of my total playtime. A "few hours" could mean a lot more, in the right perspective.

[Galavan]

And why can't they start it in the wee hours of the night at say 2 - 4 am? Midnight is still relatively early.

 

Move to Australia where servers go down FREQUENTLY during PEAK PERIODS.

 

Be grateful that it is very late hours of the evening.

[Leggomy]

Your care for my feelings is flattering, but ill advised. You don't know me, as I do not know you, and I would never presume to. Maintenance knocks off 1/4 of my total playtime. A "few hours" could mean a lot more, in the right perspective.

 

You will be a lot happier when you realize not everything is about you. If you havent noticed I am on here too. This is when I normally play. I accept the fact that I am not the only person in the world tho so I can relax and wait. Its one day a week usually and normally 4 hours. They had to take the servers down to remove the event anyways.

[pieteral]

Is always strange people stating that every MMO has a weekly maintenance.

Rift never had weekly maintenance and was performing well. Yes they had weekly maintenance but it never interrupted gameplay or at best you just had to restart your client.

Innovation, creativity start by looking what you can do better and differently .....

[chaosdefined]

Difference is on WoW at least Blizzard staggered the downtimes throughout the regions so that in each time zone the servers went down usually between 2am and 6am or those sort of hours.

 

That way they weren't constantly taking them down during one regions peak time.

 

You'll find a good majority of those telling you to deal with it are those in time zones who don't get affected by the times.

[Panthian]

Pretty much this.

 

The weekly downtimes for SWTOR aren't any worse than for WoW imho.

WoW's maintenance times are always getting extended, too.

 

Rose colored glasses maybe?

 

I have a lot of issues with SWTOR, but the length of weekly maintenance isn't one of them.

 

Well.. in all fairness WoW doesnt have maintainance every week anymore since cataclysm came out, but then again they now have an huge amounth of servers being brought down for emergency patches on seperate days now.

 

I wouldnt call them pink glasses, Id go with blinders.

[Shai-Huluud]

Yeah I totally sympathise with the OP, partly because I'm European and if anyone gets really screwed by downtime, it's us!

 

I don't think that many of the responders are being entirely fair. It is of course true that WOW had weekly downtime as you rightly point out, however, that weekly downtime normally lasted an hour and was a different times depending on what part of the world you were in.

 

This is in no way similar to what happens here on SWTOR, they have made a financial choice to choose a single world downtime rather than tailor it to a broader spectrum of playtimes. They are a business and they have to be profitable however the facts remain and the similarities between WOW server downtime and SWTOR server downtime are not really a comparison between apples and apples.