Maitenance during APAC primetime... again..

[Aleeha]

Yep, at least here in Utah. The "patcher service is temporarily unavailable. Please check the forums." It's Thursday morning at 7:52ish MST. Yay!! Awesome!! Woohoo!! Quality stuff here... Best ever...

[SpearlikeAtom]

Maybe it offended the Mormons and they killed it in Utah.

[monkgryphon]

When I get up I spend my afternoon doing all those day to day chores that need to get done. THen I go off to work and work 8-10 hours. I get off work in the wee hours of the AM and most days I am just wanting to come home and relax on my lay-z-boy and play a game that I enjoy most of the time..... but I tend to find myself 2+ days a week finding a server going offline 10 minutes after I log in.

 

I do have a life. I have chosen to give BW my money instead of running a DVR to record the crap networks air while I am at work. So you see.... this repetitive paching to fix their frakups is getting beyond old. I accept once a week, even though this is the first MMO that does it at this hour for me, but these multi patches a week are a direct result to BWs failure as an MMO devolper.

 

Do you expect to go see movies at the cinema at 5 in the morning? No, they don't open til 9 or 10.

 

This game isn't supposed to fit your routine one bit. Sure you choose to pay for it, just like you would choose to pay to see a movie on the big screen. However, when you want some movie entertainment, you expect the movie theater to be open. God forbid they decide to do some emergency renovation and close the cinema for a few days with only a day's notice, they might receive an angry letter.

[Eillack]

Oi this crap agian.

 

Listen,

Maintenance time is based on when the least amount of players are on....

[Andryah]

Nothing wrong with being the squeaky wheel and hoping for some grease, though. We want to play!

 

Importance is relative.. and not all squeaky wheels get oiled.

 

You are at best 1% of the player population. Want more attention... fill your three sagging servers with active players and you might have sufficient relative importance to be heard when demanding more fairness on server maintenance.

 

Besides...when exactly could they do maintenance that would not impact some players somewhere on the planet?? Somebody is going to be upset no matter what. TL;DR there will always be some wheel squeakage, and it cannot be eliminated.

[Goretzu]

Tuesdays are patch/maintenance days. Thursdays (sometimes Fridays) are to fix whatever Tuesdays maintenance broke. This is common in SWTOR and most of us expect it by now. No one knows why, we just accept it and move on with our life.

 

Welcome to SWTOR.

 

 

 

Yeah, pretty much, but it would still be nicer if they sorted their QA bug release policy instead.

[asbalana]

SWTOR does go down a LOT for fix to the patch that was supposed to fix stuff stuff.

 

Again I wish they just ran a proper test server rather than pushing anything that doesn't crash the server Live and then fix it later, it's a horrible policy.

 

True.

 

Does anyone know if the servers will go down to fix the things that this fix broke?

[Nemmar]

This might be to fix the issue with crafting people are QQing about. But downtime QQ, QQ? Lets QQQQ cause QQ is QQ fun.

[NinjaApacHe]

for europe maintenance is during working/school day, so i figure you are either on the dole (then u can use that 'free' time tp find a job) or you are home sick (then try to rest a bit).. tbh, why complain, i've played this other mmo and they had maintenance at about the same time, never someone complained about it, only here, seems like this is the dumpster for people that 'have to' complain about every little thing.

 

What do you know about my job? I have morning free and work in the afternoon, so try again you'll be luckier.

[MitchPB]

I love it when people whine about maintenance...

 

Is SW:TOR really that large a part of your life that 2 hours of downtime on a thursday is completely ruining your life?

 

Take a breath. Watch a good movie, or two or three episodes of your favourite tv-show. Read a book. Maby do the dishes, or whatever else it is that takes up your time when youre not playing SW:TOR and that will give you more time to play when the servers are back up again.

 

Its really not that much of a bother.

 

And if it is, to you, then you really need some help.

 

Exactly, I fail to understand how people can build their lives around a game and then cry like baby's when it goes away

[lollie]

Yeah this is just needless whining.

[Igax]

What "other mmos"? Pretty much every MMO I've played has downtime within a few days of every major patch. I don't think WoW has EVER had a patch without any problems, and they have people actually testing.

 

Also, you want bugs fixed? PLAY THE PTS AND REPORT THEM! If no one plays the PTS then of course bugs will make it to live.

 

They do not use the PTS, if they did then stupid bugs that are game breaking would likely get caught.

 

It's true, even WoW (pre-WoTLK never played it after that).

 

WoW had server stability issues, certainly, but had much less patch to fix the patch fix and less unscheduled downtime over all in vanilla and Burning Crusade.

 

SWTOR must be getting close to averaging a patch to fix every patch, which is getting silly 12 months into the game.

 

Check the sig, I have counted them up. Might be off 1 or 2 but I doubt it as I went down the list twice.... just like Santa and I find Bioware has been incompetent.

 

Oi this crap agian.

 

Listen,

Maintenance time is based on when the least amount of players are on....

 

I doubt it very much, as every MMO I have played to date has their maintenance window after 4am Central. If I had to guess they do it at the time they do it for their own convienence since BW has shown a very large lack of concern for the playerbase. Sort of reminds me of the dev team pre NGE-SWG.

 

Importance is relative.. and not all squeaky wheels get oiled.

 

You are at best 1% of the player population. Want more attention... fill your three sagging servers with active players and you might have sufficient relative importance to be heard when demanding more fairness on server maintenance.

 

Besides...when exactly could they do maintenance that would not impact some players somewhere on the planet?? Somebody is going to be upset no matter what. TL;DR there will always be some wheel squeakage, and it cannot be eliminated.

 

Since you are making up numbers your opinion is voided from consideration

 

Exactly, I fail to understand how people can build their lives around a game and then cry like baby's when it goes away

 

I have not built my life around a game. This is what I do when I get off work, it is my relax time. No kids, no wife, all the daily chores done and a long *** shift at work dealing with the idiot I am forced to work with out of the way. Some people go home and watch some crap reality TV show, Some go home and **********, I want to sit down and chill with a fun game before bed. I pay for it, and I want it. I have in fact dropped TOR for this reason already once and will do so again if BW can not change policy or provide a really good reason why they are screwing the pooch so often.

[Tmanarl]

It's just the way it is. Sorry.

[grallmate]

Some important things to consider when talking about APAC Prime Time maintenance.

 

- We already deal with Tuesday's. That's fine. Its one day a week we lose, we plan around that. Thursday however is a main raid night for most guilds. My guild had 3 teams running on Thursday. We're looking to change our times now so we don't have to worry about this on Thursdays but that doesn't solve the problem.

 

- We are the lowest subscriber base. I'd say we're more than 1%, but I doubt we'd be more than 10% on a good day. Minorities suffer in every society until someone stands up for them. It wasn't THAT long ago that African American's had to sit at the back of the bus because they weren't white. Should I have to miss my playtime because I'm not American? Andryah, I had some respect for you until you said that we should suffer because we are the minority.

 

- It's only 2 hours and most of us HAVE a life. That is what makes it worse, we don't want to waste time waiting for the server to come back up. If its down, only 1 person on a raid team has to make other plans and 7 people miss out, regardless of how long the maintenance is. Similarly, if the maintenance is an hour into a scheduled raid, you can't really run until the end of maintenance, up to 3 hours after it was meant to start, at which point, why bother?

 

- Short of adding APAC as another game environment, the launcher does not support different server versioning as you update and authenticate BEFORE you select which server to play on. Personally I have no issue with adding: APAC, NA, EU and PTS as different environments at potentially different game versions, but I also only play on one server. Other people may have an issue with that and it may give rise to different issues.

[Thehellfire]

I would like to thank Bioware for its great timing, the servers go down as Im heading to bed. Keep up the excellent work.

[Selvec]

Why? Because if a bug sneaks through, people start demanding a second maintenance within the same week to correct the bug.

 

They do a second maintenance? People start complaining about the multiple maintenances.

 

In other words, people on this forum will keep on complaining for the sake of complaining.

 

Correction. Other regions ask for a second maintenance to fix bugs, APAC doesn't because they know the maintenance will kill their playtime for a second time that week, even if other regions are fine with the maintenance being during their prime time.

 

APAC then complains about the multiple maintenance times. Supported by people from other regions who feel sympathy.

[Grayseven]

Since you know maintenance is going to happen on Tuesdays every single week, the smart thing to do is to NOT schedule anything on Tuesdays. Second, since you know unscheduled maintenance down time happens on Thursday, the smart thing to do is to NOT schedule anything on Thursday either. This still leaves 5 other days you can schedule runs.

 

It is also asinine to expect any company with a world wide presence but with its employees in one time zone to spend 24 hours pushing out maintenance when they can get it all done at one time. It is not only not cost efficient but it isn't time and resource efficient either.

 

Whining about it every single week isn't going to change it. Since you know what is going to happen and when it is likely to happen and how long it is going to last, be smart and plan around it.

[Ailie]

Since you know maintenance is going to happen on Tuesdays every single week, the smart thing to do is to NOT schedule anything on Tuesdays. Second, since you know unscheduled maintenance down time happens on Thursday, the smart thing to do is to NOT schedule anything on Thursday either. This still leaves 5 other days you can schedule runs.

 

It is also asinine to expect any company with a world wide presence but with its employees in one time zone to spend 24 hours pushing out maintenance when they can get it all done at one time. It is not only not cost efficient but it isn't time and resource efficient either.

 

Whining about it every single week isn't going to change it. Since you know what is going to happen and when it is likely to happen and how long it is going to last, be smart and plan around it.

 

Unscheduled maintenance is unscheduled, and it's happened on pretty much everyday of the week. By your logic, we should just not plan to do anything in our prime time just in case

[grallmate]

Since you know maintenance is going to happen on Tuesdays every single week, the smart thing to do is to NOT schedule anything on Tuesdays. Second, since you know unscheduled maintenance down time happens on Thursday, the smart thing to do is to NOT schedule anything on Thursday either. This still leaves 5 other days you can schedule runs.

 

It is also asinine to expect any company with a world wide presence but with its employees in one time zone to spend 24 hours pushing out maintenance when they can get it all done at one time. It is not only not cost efficient but it isn't time and resource efficient either.

 

Whining about it every single week isn't going to change it. Since you know what is going to happen and when it is likely to happen and how long it is going to last, be smart and plan around it.

 

This was never about Tuesdays. We know that happening. We deal with it and plan around that. It's about being screwed out of a SECOND night most weeks.

 

5 days and 8 people with different schedules. For example, I have real life commitments on Wednesday and Saturday, then I only have a 8 hours between shifts on a Friday nights and every second Sunday night. So those 5 nights very quickly get excluded and I'm down to 1.5. Now I have to find 7-15 other people that only want to raid once a week on a Monday. Yeah.... Or change my life around "only a game"....

 

Anyway, is having to pay the staff overtime to come in at night and deploy a patch cost efficient or would they be better off doing it in the middle of the day for the US? Please THINK before you post, anything you say to defend the action can easily be twisted to support the APAC ideals.

[Grayseven]

Unscheduled maintenance is unscheduled, and it's happened on pretty much everyday of the week. By your logic, we should just not plan to do anything in our prime time just in case

 

Since the "unscheduled" maintenance tends to take place on Thursdays...don't schedule stuff on Thursdays.

 

Occasionally, very occasionally, you'll see unscheduled maintenance on Tuesday, Wednesday or Friday. Then you'll just have to wait it out. I can't remember the last time an unscheduled maintenance didn't hit on a Thursday.

 

As has been stated before, there are many reasons why the maintenance happens as it does. If you are lucky you might see a change in the way Bioware's system pushes out patches but until then whining about it endlessly does nothing to help your cause.

[Grayseven]

This was never about Tuesdays. We know that happening. We deal with it and plan around that. It's about being screwed out of a SECOND night most weeks.

 

5 days and 8 people with different schedules. For example, I have real life commitments on Wednesday and Saturday, then I only have a 8 hours between shifts on a Friday nights and every second Sunday night. So those 5 nights very quickly get excluded and I'm down to 1.5. Now I have to find 7-15 other people that only want to raid once a week on a Monday. Yeah.... Or change my life around "only a game"....

 

Anyway, is having to pay the staff overtime to come in at night and deploy a patch cost efficient or would they be better off doing it in the middle of the day for the US? Please THINK before you post, anything you say to defend the action can easily be twisted to support the APAC ideals.

 

You make assumptions, but if anyone should be thinking around here its the APAC whiners who can't seem to comprehend that ALL OF THE SERVERS HAVE TO BE PATCHED AT THE SAME TIME. You also make the assumption that the employees pushing the patch are "coming in early" and "on overtime" when salaried employees tend not to see overtime and have flex schedules so...in fact...it is cost efficient.

[Karasuko]

Is the any week they don't organise a maitenance for the exact time most of APAC region starts raiding? It's so frustrrrrrrrrating.

 

I hate to say this,

Give up. They don't give a flying **** about us aside from how much money they can siphon before we quit.

[grallmate]

Since the "unscheduled" maintenance tends to take place on Thursdays...don't schedule stuff on Thursdays.

 

Occasionally, very occasionally, you'll see unscheduled maintenance on Tuesday, Wednesday or Friday. Then you'll just have to wait it out. I can't remember the last time an unscheduled maintenance didn't hit on a Thursday.

 

Last week it was on a Wednesday. Great memory there.

 

I never said it was my view. That's just how BioWare looks at it. It's also how a majority of game publishers look at it. They do the maintenance when the fewest number of players will be impacted. It's not a personal attack directed at you, it's simply a business decision.

 

if you don't share the opinion, then don't voice it.

 

You make assumptions, but if anyone should be thinking around here its the APAC whiners who can't seem to comprehend that ALL OF THE SERVERS HAVE TO BE PATCHED AT THE SAME TIME. You also make the assumption that the employees pushing the patch are "coming in early" and "on overtime" when salaried employees tend not to see overtime and have flex schedules so...in fact...it is cost efficient.

 

I proposed a solution to that. Treat the different regions as different environments, just like PTS. Even if they don't increase their salaries it costs them more in insurance premiums to have workers there around the clock.

 

As has been said by multiple people here. Either contribute or get stuffed.

[grallmate]

I was responding to the people who seem to think there is a concerted effort to undermine your playtime by the timing of the patches when none exists.

 

Actually there is a concerted effort to conserve the playtime of the US with complete disregard to the APAC region. The motivation may be different but the outcome is the same. Now you should remember that discrimination and harassment are not defined from intent but rather from perception.

[Ailie]

I think it's just a matter of people not realising how much of a pain in the arse it is until it happens to you.

 

Yes we know Tuesdays are maintenance night... we generally don't plan anything for these nights.

 

It's the other nights that just happen to have maintenance pop up on with less than a days notice. Depending on said plans this can either be a mild hinderance, or wipe the week's raiding.

 

When this happens almost every second or third week, you start to get sick of it and yes, some people have left because they just can't justify playing a game they can't actually play

 

These threads keep popping up because it just keeps happening. We are paying customers just like everyong else, so why shouldn't we be able to enjoy the same playing experience?