Should Bioware give free time to Oceanic players

[KBSIP]

You aren't guaranteed play time.

 

You aren't guaranteed the servers will be up when you want them up.

 

You aren't guaranteed the servers will remain up, period.

 

Does it suck? Sure.

 

Do you deserve something special? Other than perhaps them eventually splitting maintenance into regions (don't hold your breath), no.

 

 

anyone in basic PR understandings knows when a significant consumer issue arises, regardless of its "nature" or your "terms of use" you have around 2-3 weeks to satisfy said customer before you risk losing their business permanently. Bioware's already on my ****list for new IP's thanks to my personal opinion of ME 3 and how it was handled, if I were in the oceanic region I'd be harassing PR people for compensation since my gametime is going to waste, or just freeze my account every patch until the 2-3 week period after a major update where they keep doing baby patches is over.

[Insomnio]

Of course!

If you look close enough there's always more important things to do!

But I paid my sub.

I work full time.

I dont mind 1 maintenance per week or occasionally 2.

But now it's taking away 3/5 weekdays of my play time in one week...

 

Yes I understand, we all ( well a good number of us ! ) work full time, I have 3 jobs !

 

I am on the server Shadowlands, which today (my best day to play) has had issues booting people from the game. It even had major emergency server maintence last time I was playing- so I moved on to doing some work online.

 

It is frustrating, but hardly reason for free time. If you do get some free time out of this situation, congratulations, but then do you not think we all "deserve" some free time?

[randalthorr]

We oceanics have never been addressed or apologized to for all their poor customer service to us from since before launch and beta, and I doubt that we ever will be. I really dont care if they gave us free time or not, but they always refuse to even acknowledge the fact that they are inconveniencing us and that they ever would possibly make changes in the future that could possibly be more convenient to us.

[MajikMyst]

NO!!

 

 

/thread

[Insomnio]

We oceanics have never been addressed or apologized to for all their poor customer service to us from since before launch and beta, and I doubt that we ever will be. I really dont care if they gave us free time or not, but they always refuse to even acknowledge the fact that they are inconveniencing us and that they ever would possibly make changes in the future that could possibly be more convenient to us.

 

Join the club! Its like that for every region

[LordHazanko]

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Instead of spamming yourself, how much answering the question as to why all the down time? How are these isses/problems not fixed and resolved on pts... really 3 days of maintenance is just crappy service on your end BW.

[Molik]

Here's a thought and I know it's a radical one but.....k wait for it.....

 

Don't like it go play something else!

[Insomnio]

Bioware will be giving everyone free time, when TOR is F2P.

[Senden]

Should they? Probably.. will they no? Instead they'll waiting x amount of months before the game goes F2P then complain that subscription model doesn't work because today's MMO gamers aren't loyal. Guarantee that somewhere in the not to distant future, probably from some clueless EA executive, there will be a quote going around the forums where people will laugh at and say "that's what you get for poor customer service."

 

Personally I'm happy to stay subbed to the game as I play it casually but if BW keep up this endless cycle of rushing patches that require double/triple maintenance periods, then I'll happily go elsewhere. Seeing as GW2 release date has been announced and is right around the corner, I think it's time BW eat that humble pie and take a real hard look at pleasing their customers on as many levels as possible.

[grallmate]

"BIOWARE PROVIDES TOR SERVICES ON A COMMERCIALLY REASONABLE BASIS AND DOES NOT GUARANTEE THAT YOU WILL BE ABLE TO ACCESS OR USE TOR SERVICES AT TIMES OR LOCATIONS OF YOUR CHOOSING, OR THAT BIOWARE WILL HAVE ADEQUATE CAPACITY FOR TOR SERVICES AS A WHOLE OR IN ANY SPECIFIC GEOGRAPHIC AREA."

 

Thats the only part of the ToS I could find relevant to server uptime.

 

"This EUALA does not give you any right to obtain reissues or replacements of the Software at any time. Furthermore, EA is not obliged to supply Software updates, upgrades or expansions, or even to operate or continue support the Game or Software, for an indefinite period."

"You acknowledge that, owing to the complexity of computer technology, as well as the nature of online games themselves and play over a global communications network outside EA’s control, EA and its licensors cannot and do not guarantee that the Software, the Game and any updates, upgrades or expansions Software will run permanently or uninterrupted on your computer. EA and its licensors are not liable for delays, system failures, system outages or difficulties, especially of a technical nature, that are due to legal restrictions or other circumstances beyond its control, including but not limited to third party criminal activity. EA also does not guarantee that the version of the Game covered by this Agreement will be playable in geographic locations where it is not available for sale at retail and/or at all times of the day and/or night."

 

Those are the only 2 passages I could find from the EUALA relevant to uptime.

 

Overall, any argument (aside from good customer service) comes down to what is considered "commercially reasonable" and whether patch issues are considered "technical issues outside EA's control". Of course it can be argued that the last sentence is a catch all to say "we can take it down whenever we want".

 

As an Aussie who works full time and studies full time it would be nice if the servers were actually online when I got home and wanted to relax. Failing that it would be nice to know what they're actually doing. I'd be happier knowing the maintenance is going to fix some massive game breaking bug rather than a pos lag bug on knockback abilities and some minor LFG bugs.

 

To all those complaining that we are a small part of the population: prior to the character transfers, all 3 APAC servers were top 10 population servers. To those that say we'd have massive queues if we were at a different maintenance time: I'd rather be able to queue and have a chance at getting on during prime time than miss out all together.

 

IMO the best option is to bring maintenance forward 2 hours (normally) to 12:00 - 04:00 PDT/15:00 - 19:00 AEST. Its a minor inconvenience to more people and a major one to much fewer. We still get the worse end but its much more bearable and they actually used these times for one of the maintenance's due to a holiday somewhere.

[Kynesis]

You aren't guaranteed play time.

 

You aren't guaranteed the servers will be up when you want them up.

 

You aren't guaranteed the servers will remain up, period.

 

Does it suck? Sure.

 

Do you deserve something special? Other than perhaps them eventually splitting maintenance into regions (don't hold your breath), no.

 

There are absolutely no guarantees of any kind made, no warranty of any kind and the company has all rights to all aspects of the game - it's their toy, they can do whatever they want with it - we're just lucky enough that they'll let us pay to play with it.

Obstructing us from using it though really doesn't seem like a great idea. Some downtime is to be expected, even applauded - I like to know that they're taking care of it.

 

Taking the entire worldwide game offline so frequently though can't go without repercussions, at the very least "patching the patch" is becoming synonymous with SWTOR and guilds will start saying "oh, it's patch week - no raids this week... we'll just go try out that other game till they've got things stable again"

 

If an IT department did this to a business there'd be serious repercussions - nothing BW don't already know but after so many strange top level decisions I'm honestly starting to wonder.

[GooseGrims]

I've played a few different games based in asia

1. was a beta of a game called silk road online

2. was this great pvp mmo that was short lived, based in Australia called Fury.

3. and a martial arts mmo called fung wan online based in Malaysia.

 

Guess what time they had maintenance?

 

IN US PRIME TIME.

 

You guys need to get over it.

 

^ this, when i was playing WoW we would have maintenance during US prime times in the days after a patch and when the servers would finaly come back up i would be sleeping but you ppl would be logging in and did i demand my 50 cents a day back? no i did not.

[Senden]

^ this, when i was playing WoW we would have maintenance during US prime times in the days after a patch and when the servers would finaly come back up i would be sleeping but you ppl would be logging in and did i demand my 50 cents a day back? no i did not.

 

Good for YEEEEW *thumbs up*

 

Seriously though.. I don't recall blizz patching WoW then the servers having to down 2 out of 3 days later in the middle of prime time to patch the patch. And even when WoW was experiencing problems in it's infancy (mainly due to popularity than poor patch testing) they done the decent thing and gave free game time and even blizzard's CEO took the time on the forums apologising to all of their customers.. comparing Blizzard's service to BW's is never going to end well for poor old BW.

Edited June 29, 2012 by Senden

[GooseGrims]

Good for YEEEEW *thumbs up*

 

Seriously though.. I don't recall blizz patching WoW then the servers having to down 2 out of 3 days later in the middle of prime time to patch the patch. And even when WoW was experiencing problems in it's infancy (mainly due to popularity than poor patch testing) they done the decent thing and gave free game time and even blizzard's CEO took the time on the forums apologising to all of their customers.. comparing Blizzard's service to BW's is never going to end well for poor old BW.

 

obviously you wernt around for the BC or Wrath expansions and the servers being down most of the time. or maintenance scheduled to end at 10am pst and not ending till 7pm pst (no didnt happen all the time but it did happen a few times) and im not even talking about classic WoW which was so horrible with the down times i dont even need to go into it. im sure you would have better luck setting up a donation link to your paypall on facebook, im sure you will get your $1:50 back. *thumbs up*

[Callianna]

Good for YEEEEW *thumbs up*

 

Seriously though.. I don't recall blizz patching WoW then the servers having to down 2 out of 3 days later in the middle of prime time to patch the patch. And even when WoW was experiencing problems in it's infancy (mainly due to popularity than poor patch testing) they done the decent thing and gave free game time and even blizzard's CEO took the time on the forums apologising to all of their customers.. comparing Blizzard's service to BW's is never going to end well for poor old BW.

 

I remember wow maintenance being pretty horrible at times, suppose to end at 11 am and if we were lucky it might be up at 8pm that night for major patches. All mmo's have some issues when deploying new patches some of them minor some of them major, sure it's a pain but much rather they fix the issues asap then to leave them till the next weekly maintenance.

[Mizaki]

man this is seriously *********** anoying. they really need to make maintenance time diffrent for australia . i get home from work everyday at 5pm and when i get on to play theres another 4 hour maintenance again. then when it finaly comes back online its around bedtime. Edited June 29, 2012 by Mizaki

[Kunda]

Good for YEEEEW *thumbs up*

 

Seriously though.. I don't recall blizz patching WoW then the servers having to down 2 out of 3 days later in the middle of prime time to patch the patch. And even when WoW was experiencing problems in it's infancy (mainly due to popularity than poor patch testing) they done the decent thing and gave free game time and even blizzard's CEO took the time on the forums apologising to all of their customers.. comparing Blizzard's service to BW's is never going to end well for poor old BW.

 

BioWare gave people an enitre month of free game time when they couldn't get ranked warzones into 1.2. Amazing how quickly an unplanned maintenance makes people forget that.

[SpacePiglet]

BioWare gave people an enitre month of free game time when they couldn't get ranked warzones into 1.2. Amazing how quickly an unplanned maintenance makes people forget that.

 

Everyone got that equally.

Hence there were no additional gain in time to anyone.

But the maintenance time is not planned equally.

A lot of countries have different prime times.

[Liquidacid]

Everyone got that equally.

Hence there were no additional gain in time to anyone.

.

 

so if I give everyone 10 dollars there was no monetary gain by anyone?

 

lol

[Kaisernick]

since i live in the uk and normaly play during the day and bioware seems to love to always have their downtime during that (didnt get to play at all yesterday as i start work at 3) then shouldnt i get free play time to? Edited June 29, 2012 by Kaisernick

[Sauska]

since i live in the uk and normaly play during the day and bioware seems to love to always have their downtime during that (didnt get to play at all yesterday as i start work at 3) then shouldnt i get free play time to?

Agreed. I live in The Netherlands and tend to sneak in a few playing hours during the day. I don't mind regular maintenance, which is all for the greater good or something, but I do mind maintenance 3 days in a row. Yessir!

Edited June 29, 2012 by Sauska

[Bolognawan]

I'm all for refunds. The bad is starting to outweigh the good. Not sure how long I can stick around.

[jarjarloves]

Ok we are all getting a little hacked off with the hopeless dev team now 1 night a week is ok but when they stuff up and deploy an update that is broken that's on them not only has it been 2 extra night's of prime time no play they also said it wasn't going to happen last night and bang we all got dropped at 5:07pm wow so they decided to go ahead and deploy a worthless patch now that there having to fix up now i am sure all Oceanic players would like some type of an Apology and compensation for the loss of game time in there prime spot and being a friday night is even worse.

 

what about us US players that can only play from 1am to 7 am? Do we get free time since we can only play during maintenance?

[FourTwent]

Ok we are all getting a little hacked off with the hopeless dev team now 1 night a week is ok but when they stuff up and deploy an update that is broken that's on them not only has it been 2 extra night's of prime time no play they also said it wasn't going to happen last night and bang we all got dropped at 5:07pm wow so they decided to go ahead and deploy a worthless patch now that there having to fix up now i am sure all Oceanic players would like some type of an Apology and compensation for the loss of game time in there prime spot and being a friday night is even worse.

 

no

 

i mean im sorry there isn't game developers in your area of the world that can put out quality content like we do in america but no free time should be given out.

 

if you think that way then you'd think anyone who works at night and comes home to a maintenance page should get free time too. it's either everyone gets free time or no one does. and there is NO reason to give free time JUST for the game going down for updates. sure if there was a network issue, or the servers literally crapped on themselves and wouldnt work. . .then we should get free time. but not for PLANNED maintenance

Edited June 29, 2012 by FourTwent