Uptime Percentages for Oz (based off AEST times)

[Skoobie]

Wow's maintenance takes out 1 night, so lets call that 5 hours (sometimes only 4 hours of one night, but lets bias this against WoW).

 

5 / 41 = 12.2% - so the moment SWTOR runs 2 maintenances (commonplace), they're worse than WoW for any maintenance timezone player & substantially worse for the casual players cos it's 2 nights versus 1.

 

I'm unfamiliar with Rift, been a long time since I've played it, but I'm told that 2-3 30 minute maintenances are routine. Lets bias it against Rift and call it 4x 30 for simplicity's sake:

 

2 / 41 = 4.9% - so, if those downtimes are accurate, Rift is always better than SWTOR.

 

So the moment SWTOR does an extra maintenance a week, they just became the worst of the 3 big names on the market. If they could actually stick to their schedule, they'd be in the right ballpark.

 

If you are going to compare, then you have the compare the games at the same point in it's lifespan.

 

LOTRO was down for 2 or 3 days straight (during the American Thanksgiving holiday even...talk about being short staffed!) on top of normal maintenance/patches/updates their first year.

Edited June 29, 2012 by Skoobie

[Lakhesis]

If you are going to compare, then you have the compare the games at the same point in it's lifespan.

 

LOTRO was down for 2 or 3 days straight (during the American Thanksgiving holiday even...talk about being short staffed!) on top of normal maintenance/patches/updates their first year.

 

Not really to be honest. I agree it'd be "fairer", but frankly you need to compare them with what the competition are doing now.

 

If you wanted to balance it against something a bit fairer, you could compare SWTORs patch release week with Blizzard or Trion's patch release weeks from this year.

 

In which case, SWTOR is still losing out. Blizzard goes longer but avoids multiple WoW maintenances like the plague (although D3 has been just as bad as SWTOR), while Trion seems to go for the opposite approach of twice-as-quick & frequent.

 

Bioware's trying to use a slightly quicker version of Blizzard's approach, but their rushed & haphazard management approach is ending up with Blizzard length maintenances with Trion's frequency. The worst of both worlds.

 

This is a management issue. They're bending their own rules in the name of speed & it's biting back at them.

[Skoobie]

So for 3 pages your argument has been: Right now, SWTOR's servers are down more then other games?

 

Well yea...no kidding. I don't think anyone is saying that any other games had to take their servers down 3 times this week.

 

But please don't act like this has never happened in other games.

Edited June 29, 2012 by Skoobie

[fptackle]

I completely empathize with your situation. I, too, play on the Asia Pacific servers and I, too, have found myself on three occasions this week sitting in front of my computer only to discover that the game was down. Again.

 

Worse still, I'm not actually a geographical Oceanic player. I'm a US Player who works a graveyard shift job, leaving me playing the game primarily during Asia Pacific Primetime. That means, unlike the OP's hypothetical example, I don't have the option to go mow the lawn on a Thursday or take care of my grocery shopping and paint the garage, because for my individual life situation, it's 3am while I'm trying to play, only to discover that the game is down.

 

It begs the question for me, what is the purpose of the Asia Pacific servers? Back when all the Oceanic players were basically forced into the US Servers, I still was able to play with the same batch of Aussies that I have over the past 10 years of MMOs; the extra Americans playing while we're asleep never hurt anything. The lag is hardly noticable for playing cross-Atlantic. The sole reason we were so adamant about wanting our own server was not to segregate ourselves from other players, but rather so we would not be held to a West-Coast American's timetable.

 

I've been playing MMOs for over a decade. In Everquest, World of Warcraft, Vanguard, City of Heroes, and Champions, they all worked with a system known as 'Rolling Restarts'. The host companies realized that not every server was located in the main-office timezone, so you recieved your reset and maintainence during your individual server's downtime. The patches and fixes can be ironed out on the Public Test Server first, meaning that barring the rare hotfixes for gamebreaking bugs, there is no reason to actually bring the servers down in order to fix them, only to implement the fixes which have already been designed on Test. And there is no reason why those fixes, barring the extreme gamebreaking hotfixes that are worked immediately across the board, need to be done all at the exact same moment.

 

In a nutshell, if you can let it wait until 3am for Americans before putting it into effect, you can leave the Euro and Asia Pacific servers up and implement the patches during our 3am non-peak hours as well. For matters urgent enough that you would bring down the US Servers at 6pm, by all means, we understand that the whole game needs to come down. But if it can wait, then stagger them. Respect all your customers, not just those in California. Acknowledge the fact that we play on Euro and Oceanic servers for a reason, and allow us to actually do it.

 

If we had known that moving to the Asia Pacific servers would still result in the exact same three hours of downtime right slap in the middle of our primetime raiding schedule, we wouldn't have bothered in the first place. Many, many other games already use the rolling restarts and separate server downtimes by region. Please, SWtOR, let us play the game we're paying you for.

[Punksonic]

IMO the patches/fixups should be split up between timezones.

Yeah the Aussies cop it right on 5pm, this week 3 patch/fixes = 3 days out of the week they cannot get on, which is a bit one sided.

The staff that are doing the repairs/fix ups are doing a nightshift, this isn't good for a maintenance time.

 

Share the maintenance around

[fujeo-finel]

Blame EA shareholders. They wanted the patch out before it was ready to be put out, so now Bioware has to reduce server uptime for bug fixing.

[Henu]

For me its got nothing to do with the Percentages of down time, its the time of day that it happens...

And here is why, i work a 8 - 4:30 job home by 5 on 5:30 (on my gaming nights) i focus on my dailies right away, start with PVE (ilum+black hole only) then hit my PVP. On a good night with slow queue pops i get get my PVP done in 1 and half hours but if the server goes down and doesnt come back till 9 - 9:30 i miss out on my daily rewards. And this might seem like a small thing to you but i get 3 nights a week to play so missing out on an extra 2 is frustrating for someone working on their WH gear.

 

The server down times SHOULD be region specific for everyone.

[Henu]

Blame EA shareholders. They wanted the patch out before it was ready to be put out, so now Bioware has to reduce server uptime for bug fixing.

 

EA have always been about their own pockets, everyone knows this.

[Ailie]

And if you were the only person playing the game, you would have a case. You are in the minority of their total customer base. Get over it.

 

When you have 3 highly populated servers offline when they should be running heavy... yeah I'd call that a problem. Especially when BW has invested in Australian based servers

[Rassuro]

And if you were the only person playing the game, you would have a case. You are in the minority of their total customer base. Get over it.

every single democracy works like that... they do what is best for the majority... and so do ALL businesses or they fail

 

I haven't read the law in question, but WOW, it's so disturbing how amazingly clueless you people are.

 

It doesn't matter if this is done to a minority, or even to one person. If the law is indeed on the affected persons side, then the persons who this applies to should absolutely be compensated.

 

Let's say that a company has left over explosives. They decide to detonate the explosives to get rid of them. Doing this, six houses are completely blown up.

Should the persons whose houses blew up get nothing in compensation because they were in the minority?

 

If you think that, then your extremist views on society are in my opinion absolutely sickening.

[fptackle]

For me its got nothing to do with the Percentages of down time, its the time of day that it happens...

 

The server down times SHOULD be region specific for everyone.

 

Exactly.

 

The point is not 'Wah. Wah. We're mad because of maintainence." The point is that the maintainence hits us right in the middle of our primetime gameplay. For us, these maintainence updates are hitting at 6pm when we're just getting ready to start playing for the evening. When we have raids scheduled, or Guild events that we're supposed to be attending. And we can't even start until after the point many players start going to bed.

 

It's a very, very rare occurance they would take down the West Coast servers at 6pm their time; Bioware understands that the vast majority of patches are not urgent enough to require immediate action, and these can be done then in the middle of the night in the least obtrusive way possible.

 

All we ask for is Regional Restarts, the same way many other games already offer, so that West Coast gets their reset in the middle of the night, East Coast gets theirs in the middle of the night, Euro gets theirs in the middle of the night, and we get ours, gasp, in the middle of the night. There is no issue with maintainence, just stop slapping it in the middle of our Primetime Gameplay.

[grallmate]

I haven't read the law in question, but WOW, it's so disturbing how amazingly clueless you people are.

 

It doesn't matter if this is done to a minority, or even to one person. If the law is indeed on the affected persons side, then the persons who this applies to should absolutely be compensated.

 

Let's say that a company has left over explosives. They decide to detonate the explosives to get rid of them. Doing this, six houses are completely blown up.

Should the persons whose houses blew up get nothing in compensation because they were in the minority?

 

If you think that, then your extremist views on society are in my opinion absolutely sickening.

 

I like that hypothetical.

[Liquidacid]

I haven't read the law in question,

 

you should have stopped right there.... the law is not on his side... so your whole post is pointless... made even more so by your hyperbolic analogy

 

also I suggest you take a look at some history books and maybe look at REAL societies instead of what you see on TV

Edited June 29, 2012 by Liquidacid

[jarjarloves]

Wow's maintenance takes out 1 night, so lets call that 5 hours (sometimes only 4 hours of one night, but lets bias this against WoW).

 

5 / 41 = 12.2% - so the moment SWTOR runs 2 maintenances (commonplace), they're worse than WoW for any maintenance timezone player & substantially worse for the casual players cos it's 2 nights versus 1.

 

I'm unfamiliar with Rift, been a long time since I've played it, but I'm told that 2-3 30 minute maintenances are routine. Lets bias it against Rift and call it 4x 30 for simplicity's sake:

 

2 / 41 = 4.9% - so, if those downtimes are accurate, Rift is always better than SWTOR.

 

So the moment SWTOR does an extra maintenance a week, they just became the worst of the 3 big names on the market. If they could actually stick to their schedule, they'd be in the right ballpark.

 

ROFL WoW take less then 5 hours? Of course WoW's Oceanic servers aren't even near Australia.

 

As for Rift try 2 hour maintenance each time. Last month they did a 6 hour maintenance that got extended to 8 hours

 

I know I still play it.

Edited June 29, 2012 by jarjarloves

[jarjarloves]

Exactly.

 

The point is not 'Wah. Wah. We're mad because of maintainence." The point is that the maintainence hits us right in the middle of our primetime gameplay. For us, these maintainence updates are hitting at 6pm when we're just getting ready to start playing for the evening. When we have raids scheduled, or Guild events that we're supposed to be attending. And we can't even start until after the point many players start going to bed.

 

It's a very, very rare occurance they would take down the West Coast servers at 6pm their time; Bioware understands that the vast majority of patches are not urgent enough to require immediate action, and these can be done then in the middle of the night in the least obtrusive way possible.

 

All we ask for is Regional Restarts, the same way many other games already offer, so that West Coast gets their reset in the middle of the night, East Coast gets theirs in the middle of the night, Euro gets theirs in the middle of the night, and we get ours, gasp, in the middle of the night. There is no issue with maintainence, just stop slapping it in the middle of our Primetime Gameplay.

 

well what about the people who work weird hours in the US? Their maintenance is during play time as well?

[pclchicagox]

Bump. Need to be fair about downtimes to non US timezones. This is coming from a yank too. I play on an EST. None of our primetime is ever effected. This is stupid if in fact there are players that are getting shafted for 20% downtime. We can share downtime. Yes we will whine and cry, no we will not /unsub. Those that will already have, a bit of downtime won't do anything to those still playing. Be fair. As for legal action, sounds extreme, but laws are there for a reason.

[ahusking]

well what about the people who work weird hours in the US? Their maintenance is during play time as well?

 

 

They generally play on APAC region servers

[fujeo-finel]

EA have always been about their own pockets, everyone knows this.

 

So just because it happens all the time, they shouldn't be held to blame? You're an American aren't you?

[fptackle]

well what about the people who work weird hours in the US? Their maintenance is during play time as well?

 

Oddly enough, I am exactly that myself. I live in Central United States, but I work the night shift at a prison. I play on an Asia Pacific server (and am part of an Oceanic multi-gaming community where I've played with Aussies over several MMOs during the past 10 years).

 

I don't expect the game to magically accomidate me as a night-shifter; that's why I put myself on an Asia Pacific server. The US Servers can cater to the majority of Americans and that's all hunky-dorey.

 

Giving the entire Asia Pacific server the shaft and shutting down our entire Region because it's a good time for the States is just rediculous. I can't believe they have servers in the Asia Pacific region, maintain a customer base there, but completely ignore the entire group of customers and shut them down during Primetime hours.

[hyuplee]

I dont care about not being able to play due to maintenance.

 

I however do have a problem with bioware not sticking to schedule and virtually give no alarm before a main.

 

On the 28th of June (Yesterday for aussie player) we were told the maintenance is cancelled, so we lined up for a rated warzone. Turns out it wasn't, and we were not even given the normal 15 min shut down notice, and we ended up with 1 extra loss to our record.

 

You might think this is nothing, but to me, being a avid pvper having that 1 extra loss is unacceptable as I've done nothing wrong here. I didn't dc, nor did I press alt + f4 by mistake. This is a fault on Bioware's part. I've submitted a ticket so hopefully they'll deal with this, if they don't ...well let's just say ill be unsubbing soon.

 

if you're going to have maintenance, sure.

Feel like changing the time? please do.

 

But let your player know at least 30 min in advance for god sake.

 

Is that too much to ask?

[MajikMyst]

I dont care about not being able to play due to maintenance.

 

I however do have a problem with bioware not sticking to schedule and virtually give no alarm before a main.

 

On the 28th of June (Yesterday for aussie player) we were told the maintenance is cancelled, so we lined up for a rated warzone. Turns out it wasn't, and we were not even given the normal 15 min shut down notice, and we ended up with 1 extra loss to our record.

 

You might think this is nothing, but to me, being a avid pvper having that 1 extra loss is unacceptable as I've done nothing wrong here. I didn't dc, nor did I press alt + f4 by mistake. This is a fault on Bioware's part. I've submitted a ticket so hopefully they'll deal with this, if they don't ...well let's just say ill be unsubbing soon.

 

if you're going to have maintenance, sure.

Feel like changing the time? please do.

 

But let your player know at least 30 min in advance for god sake.

 

Is that too much to ask?

 

The post was on the forum about tonights maintenance about 4 hours before hand.. What is the problem?? It was also posted in the launcher..

 

They do let us know.. There has never been a time where they didn't give us at least 2 hours notice before a maintenance.. This is including the beta..

 

I don't know what people are QQ about.. It is almost as if they are just QQ to QQ.. Get a grip people.. It is just maintenance.. I am sure they have a good reason for it.. You may not agree with it.. But it is more important that they fix the issue than just ignore it cause people might QQ about it..

Edited June 29, 2012 by MajikMyst

[Goretzu]

I must admit that any AUS players that aren't at least getting a bit sick must be pretty laid back people by now.

 

 

If the servers went down in US prime time just 50% as much as they do in AUS primetime these forums would be in utter meltdown with complaints! :eek:

[randalthorr]

And if you were the only person playing the game, you would have a case. You are in the minority of their total customer base. Get over it.

 

errr yeah I pay the same as you guys over at the United States of whatever.. maybe if they slashed our monthly subs to around 10 bucks, they can do maintenance whenever they please.

[Alad]

It's common sense, if you run a server in the Asia-Pacific then surely you should schedule your maintenance to impact as little as possible on the customers in the Asia-Pacific region. When I was playing on a US server I was happy to wait out the maintenance period, but shutting down an Asia-Pacific server in our peak time is just poor service. Will I unsub, probably not, but I reserve the right to complain. I am, after all, the customer.

[Arkerus]

Lets say I'm an East Coast Australian who works a regular 9-5 job & play SWTOR a lot during my free time.

 

Mon-Fri Work 9am - 5pm, get home at 6pm, play SWTOR from 6pm-11pm, eat & go to bed, getup at 7am & go to work. Repeat. That's 5 hours playing SWTOR a night.

 

Sat-Sun: I spend all my "work time" playing, so 8 hours a day of SWTOR, and the other 8 hours doing the "general living tasks" like mowing the lawn I couldn't fit into the week due to my heavy schedule of SWTOR.

 

That's 5x5 + 2x8 = 25 + 16 = 41 hours a week of SWTOR. Hey, we're dedicated, k?

 

Lets throw in maintenance though. It lasts 5pm-9pm, so that overlaps 3 hours of the play time. Then lets calculate it based off the number of maintenances per week:

 

Regular tuesday maintenance #1 knocks 3hrs / 41hrs = 7.3% of my playtime out.

Maintenance #2: 6hrs / 41hrs = 14.6% of playtime is removed.

Maintenance #3: 9hrs / 41hrs = 21.95% of weekly playtime is gone

If they do it, Maintenance #4 will be: 12hrs / 41hrs = 29.27% of weekly playtime is gone

 

---

 

In conclusion: Are you intending to refund 20% of my access payment for this week?

 

Also, most people probably aren't as dedicated as my hypothetical guy. Getting 41 hours of SWTOR in a week is rather enthusiastic.

 

If you shut down a non-fanatic just won't bother logging in that night. Which means 41 hours of play gets turned into 26 hours of play (41-3x5), which means that this week the game's only online for them ~60% of the time they could reasonably play (26/41).

 

60% practical uptime for a casual player is beyond disgraceful.

 

I think Bioware needs to look up what a "persistent world" is. It doesn't matter how perfectly you eventually fix problems if the servers are constantly offline being improved. When a game is offline, it's totally unplayable, which is pretty much the ultimate definition of "broken".

 

Hey buddy.

 

You can't take YOUR total hours available and make it the maximum uptime. That's...incorrect. You can't take 41 hours and say thats the max uptime as server max uptime is considered 24 hour a day, 7 days a week.

 

So first, your math is wrong. I don't care if that's your "available play hours".

 

The truth is the server in a month is usually up around 96% of the time if not more. That's industry standard. Get over it. You are just a paying customer like the rest of us and Bioware hasn't done anything wrong here. If they had, I would be on your side.