Why does the West keep paying the price?

[CosmicKat]

Suck it up, mate. Us Australian's have ALWAYS had maintenance done during our peak hours. So many boring Friday nights. Now, for the FIRST time we get a downtime which ends just as our peak hours begin, the American's start crying. Look back on all the American-time-based MMO's; Australian's were always left out until ToR. We finally got Aussie servers, free transfers to them & now a downtime which will hardly affect us. Just suck it up, we've had to deal with all of these problems in the past,

 

Oh, and I believe 250 people on the Republic fleet alone at 7pm in the evening is proof enough that us Aussies are a much larger gaming base than anyone cares to realise.

 

We in North America just assume you Aussies are fending off hordes of mutant bikers till at least 6:00 PM.

[JebusJM]

We in North America just assume you Aussies are fending off hordes of mutant bikers till at least 6:00 PM.

 

Nah, we're home by 5. Beer'o'clock.

[chrissiurso]

I think this is the first time I logged on with a 10PM maint last night (West Coast USA) and I was really super annoyed cuz I just logged in. I can only imagine how annoying that is for the rest of the world. I think BW mentioned they did this maint at the special time due to some European holiday. The usual midnight maint does suck sometimes but I should be sleeping by then anyway

 

If they can't stagger servers for downtime, maybe they can rotate the maint somehow so it doesn't constantly suck for people.

[Tiggress]

At times, I can deal with it, BUT I do agree, it is the only mmo that I have played that patched during play time..most either did it at 2am (PST) or 4am(PST).. Im sure the real reason is its when the janitor goes home...."HEY CHUCK hit that red button when you leave for the night!"...

..But I have to leave early this week, so ill hit it 2 hours earlier......

.

.

Some day they will change it to a "Normal" time, once they piss off the west coast..because as we all know west coasters dont game at night.....

.

.

[Rhizoprionodon]

I'm and East Coast player who's PRIME play time is affected by the weekly maintenance (I don't work 9-5). Guess what, it's really not a big deal. On those morning I just don't play star wars. People will QQ about anything.

[Daphnis]

I hope they eventually move to staggered maintenance windows so this can be a non-issue.

[Darkulous]

West Side!

[LeonBraun]

I was pretty shocked last night at 10pm server when my server went down...

 

There were many guildies on line, just getting going and a healthy 50+ in the fleet...

 

Now some would say 10pm is not exactly prime time for some, but 50+ on fleet is a substantial number active online on any TOR server, and I know a good many gamers with kids that don't even log in until 9 or 10pm at night...

 

I've never seen this kind of thing in the years that I've played MMO's... With all the number of things lifted right from WoW, one would think they would also borrow WoW's method of doing rotating/selected server maintenance downtimes.

[Nonameavailable]

I love the "first world problems!" and the "suck it up" responses. Maybe you should pay for your time yourself instead of getting your parents to pay, then you might think otherwise.

 

As for the basic tone of this thread, what it comes down to is people will eventually leave if they can't play at the times they want. Especially if they can't find a server in a time zone that allows them to play when they want. Yes it's only once a week (well sometimes), but I'm pretty sure more people are playing at midnight PST than they are at 5am CST.

 

Another issue is that due to the outage being at midnight you can't really get any kind of group going for any of the lengthy encounters. So it's pretty much a ghost town, due to the down time, around 11:00pm.

 

Anyway, I'll still play, might try Tera. Lots of people leaving... not sure if it's even worth talking about anymore.

[Scerge]

So a few weeks back, I predicted that we would be seeing Maintenance windows moved up again, and last night's maintenance proved my projection was correct.

 

Here was my prophecy:

 

http://www.swtor.com/community/showpost.php?p=3821337&postcount=62

 

The question is, why does the West Coast, and more importantly, Oceanica, have to keep bearing the brunt of maintenance windows, to benefit non-peak play times for Europe and the East Coast?

 

Let's look at these maintenance windows.

 

10pm - 2am (Pacific Daylight Time) is the equivalent of the following:

 

Sydney, Australia: 3pm - 7pm

Austin, Texas: 12am - 4am

New York City, New York: 1am - 5am

London, England: 6am - 10am

 

So, the time the servers return to operating is:

 

7pm Australia

4am Texas

5am New York

10am London

 

I would like someone from Bioware to provide me with hard numbers which prove that there are in fact more people playing and active at 10am in London, than there are a 10pm in Seattle, Portland and LA, or even at 7pm in Sydney.

 

Can you do that Bioware? Give us an explanation why the West continues to bear the brunt of maintenance windows, even though by all accounts, in the East and in Europe, servers return to operation during non-peak hours.

 

Or, alternatively, since you insist on the West bearing the full brunt on maintenace times, how about offering pro-rated subscription rates to compensate?

 

Or better yet, how about regional maintenance, so this can be a non-issue? Other MMOs do regional maintenace, so as to not inconvience their customers, so why not you as well?

 

All I see is crying here.

Americans get all the free stuff and benefits and the game has just been launched in some more euro countries.

 

Stop crying because someone took your candy away, you'll still get fat gradually!

[djlowballer]

Man Bioware pushes the downtime forward once for a European holiday and so many people come crying. You want to know what is worse than having the servers go down once at 2200? Having the servers go down every week at 1900. I really have no sympathy in this situation. Edited May 2, 2012 by djlowballer

[LeonBraun]

Man Bioware pushes the downtime forward once for a European holiday and so many people come crying. You want to know what is worse than having the servers go down once at 2200? Having the servers go down every week at 1900. I really have no sympathy in this situation.

 

Really neither should happen. This is 2012, not 1988. We have pretty decent tech now. If WoW can do selected server downtimes, why can't TOR? TOR has borrowed a ton from WoW, why not something like selected server maintenance?

 

On a side note... Many people's prime time is 2200, so 2200 is no better than 1900.

[Bocek]

Personally as an Aussie player last nights downtime was perfect. But all you west coasters can just relax the early game shutdown was a once off. You really need to read the forum stickies before posting.

 

We can go back to getting screwed over next week, but hey is nothing new fro Aussie MMO players.

[HeavensAgent]

I hope they eventually move to staggered maintenance windows so this can be a non-issue.

That is the stated intent.

[djlowballer]

On a side note... Many people's prime time is 2200, so 2200 is no better than 1900.

 

Prime time is not counted on an individual basis. It is when the majority of people are logging on. For my guild and friends every Tuesday is a wash because playing after 2300 just isn't an option for those leading normal work/school schedules.

 

I fully support staggered update periods as a concept, but in this game I am not sure they would help people in my area. For some reason Bioware decided to put their "Asia Pacific" servers in eastern Australia (which is more "oceanic") . My latency to the "Asian" servers is actually double to triple that to the US West coast. No matter what happens I am screwed so yeah, I don't have much sympathy for somebody who has to experience an "inconvenient" downtime for one night.

[Redat]

So a few weeks back, I predicted that we would be seeing Maintenance windows moved up again, and last night's maintenance proved my projection was correct.

 

Here was my prophecy:

 

http://www.swtor.com/community/showpost.php?p=3821337&postcount=62

 

The question is, why does the West Coast, and more importantly, Oceanica, have to keep bearing the brunt of maintenance windows, to benefit non-peak play times for Europe and the East Coast?

 

Let's look at these maintenance windows.

 

10pm - 2am (Pacific Daylight Time) is the equivalent of the following:

 

Sydney, Australia: 3pm - 7pm

Austin, Texas: 12am - 4am

New York City, New York: 1am - 5am

London, England: 6am - 10am

 

So, the time the servers return to operating is:

 

7pm Australia

4am Texas

5am New York

10am London

 

I would like someone from Bioware to provide me with hard numbers which prove that there are in fact more people playing and active at 10am in London, than there are a 10pm in Seattle, Portland and LA, or even at 7pm in Sydney.

 

Can you do that Bioware? Give us an explanation why the West continues to bear the brunt of maintenance windows, even though by all accounts, in the East and in Europe, servers return to operation during non-peak hours.

 

Or, alternatively, since you insist on the West bearing the full brunt on maintenace times, how about offering pro-rated subscription rates to compensate?

 

Or better yet, how about regional maintenance, so this can be a non-issue? Other MMOs do regional maintenace, so as to not inconvience their customers, so why not you as well?

 

All I can say is "welcome to my world".........its nice for the US to get a taste of what we EU players have had to endure when confronted by awkward down times............I remember the US players told us to get a life and "suck it up"........

[mavsynchroid]

I know this might come as a shock to you, but not everyone works 9am-5pm. Lots of people worldwide work nights.

I won't delve much in to the fact that most 'Hardcore Gamers' don't even have jobs.

 

I agree that not everyone works 9-5. In fact, I run my family package store from 3pm - 10pm, and I don't get home to play until 11:30ish pm. This has corrupted my sleep schedule to the point where I'll stay up until 6am, treating MY 6am like "normal" people's midnight. I'm EST, so the 2am shut downs actually affect my game time.

 

However, I don't agree with the most hardcore gamers not having jobs comment. Sure, there are tons of kids playing, having their parents pay for it, but that doesn't make them "hardcore". There are tons of adults/kids who have jobs and invest a lot of time into games, because it's their hobby. Please don't add fuel to the fire concerning the stereotype of gamers. It's insulting.

[Anarchi]

For those that are saying staggered maintenance is the way to go, I'm afraid that could lead to more issues than you really think.

 

First off if there is a fix for any exploits included in the maintenance, for a brief few hours the rest of the unpatched servers would be open to that vulnerability and gamers would know that such an exploit existed.

 

Secondly while a certain timezones servers are down, the gamers in that zone would likely create new chars on another timezones servers, creating a false representation of the number of players on that server since they will most likely only play those characters during their own servers downtime.

 

If a timezones client was tied to that zone then there may be a possibility of staggered maintenance and only posting of patch notes once ALL servers have been patched, but the client isnt tied to a timezone, so the issue with jumping servers during downtime will always exist.

 

Regards

 

Anarchi

 

[Uvirith]

You do realize that european servers are off 8am to 4pm most of the time?

So we ALWAYS get the bad deal. When youre servers are down on a free day during daytime, then you can start complaining.

[Deadpooled]

All I can say is "welcome to my world".........its nice for the US to get a taste of what we EU players have had to endure when confronted by awkward down times............I remember the US players told us to get a life and "suck it up"........

 

this ^

 

in the last huge maint thread which Stephen Reid responded to saying 'we are looking into it' then we got a 'tough, deal with it' response from BW/EA...THEN to add insult to injury they even took down the EU servers only one night after a maint.

 

they are capable of doing split maints, they just chose not to

 

also those that keep quoting GMT/BST, its only the UK & I think Portugal that use GMT/BST, every other country in EU is +1 - +4 GMT so what may be 6am GMT start is 10am for some EU countries, add to that extended maints (which there has been a few) most EU's get hit into prime as well, all the while the NA players are sleeping/just waking when they finish

 

yes, Aussies get the raw end of the deal, worse than we in the EU, especially considering these days its been 2x maints per week

 

still, amuses me to no end the amount of NA players complaining when 90% of maints are done when they are sleeping and they had the gall to tell us EU's to stop whining/being self-entitled cry-babies etc etc etc

 

quick edit:

 

also forgot to mention this is a 24/7/365 game as are all MMO's so anyone saying about 'work times at EA/BW' are obviously living under a rock, 24/7 service requires 24/7 staffing, if a server breaks at 8pm PST do you really think they wont fix it until they turn up for work the next day, CS may not be working but you can guarentee they have a tech team working 24/7

Edited May 2, 2012 by Deadpooled
forgot to add something

[Urdnaxela]

I love the "first world problems!" and the "suck it up" responses. Maybe you should pay for your time yourself instead of getting your parents to pay, then you might think otherwise. [...]

 

so funny...

 

so this one time maintenance is inconvenient for the west coasters and you all guys act with so much superiority while in the mean time, EVERY other maintenance screws the AU&OC and EU players each and every week.

 

lemme quote on some of the things we have to read about it, most of it coming from NA people, each an every week:

 

get a life, a couple of hours of downtime is nothing

if you don't have something else to do while this maintenance happens -> lame basement fatso

go get laid

...

maintenance has to be done at the same time

suck it up

get used to it

well, DUH, it's an american game catering for american citizens (na: even though it sells world wide...)

ETC.

 

oh the irony.

 

for the record: good job BW, for once you've done it well.

 

I was about to post yesterday, to underline the fact that there were no "complaint" threads about the maintenance but, lol, seems i had to much faith in our NA counterparts.

[Urdnaxela]

[...] Secondly while a certain timezones servers are down, the gamers in that zone would likely create new chars on another timezones servers, creating a false representation of the number of players on that server since they will most likely only play those characters during their own servers downtime. [...]

 

You people never cease to amaze me. And not in a good way.

 

You use this "fatherly" tone and explain to us this and that but lack even the most common logic. Why? This argument of yours has been refuted countless times, and even so, you could have thought about it yourself.

 

If the servers are brought down in a scattered manner then:

 

1. When it's night time in NA, the NA servers are brought down. MOST NA people would sleep (duh, this is why it should be brought down during the night - the lowest activity period). So there would be few to none "flocking" the EU/AU&OC servers.

 

2. When it's night time in EU, the EU servers are brought down. MOST EU people would sleep (duh, this is why it should be brought down during the night - the lowest activity period). So there would be few to none "flocking" the NA/AU&OC servers.

 

3. When it's night time in AU&OC, the AU&OC servers are brought down. MOST AU&OC people would sleep (duh, this is why it should be brought down during the night - the lowest activity period). So there would be few to none "flocking" the NA/EU servers.

 

common sense

[imtrick]

The question is, why does the West Coast, and more importantly, Oceanica, have to keep bearing the brunt of maintenance windows, to benefit non-peak play times for Europe and the East Coast?

 

I'll skip the part where I mention how egotistical you sound in the OP, Nostradamus, but if you took a second to check out the information available, this one maintenance was shifted because it was a holiday in Europe (i.e., you're wrong about it being non-peak there).

 

They know how many people play. If shifting one maintenance a couple hours meant more people got to play than would have at the normal time, they did the right thing.

[Kabaal]

I can't see it ever being staggered due to the various regional servers all being accessed from the same client. The patch would have to go up for the first downtime, say Europe for example, but everyone around the world would be downloading it as soon as they log on no matter what server they play on. What would happen when someone from the US logs on, downloads the patch then tries to play on their US server that isn't due for it's maintenance to apply that patch to those particular servers for another 4 hours? Chances are it wouldn't be pretty.

[Lord_Scythe]

People in the NA who play off peak or near the end of their peak whine over earlier maintenance. Most people are sleeping during this time.

 

People in EU feel ripped off it is during their regular work day. Most people in EU are working during this time.

 

So far seems to be a very good chance most people are either sleeping or working. Since this was the original launch territories seems to me that would be an excellent time for any company to do maintenance.

 

As for Oceanic. They never had to launch for your territory they could have said screw it and let you keep the lag to EU or NA servers. For the Aussies can you tell me how many other MMO have Australians servers?

 

Before you all whine to me about play times etc etc etc. The maintenance falls during my normal play time.

 

I find things to do on maintenance day. No idea why you guys can't!

 

Servers need maintenance. Deal with it!