Weekly server maintenance EU times?

[Mandrax]

I think up to 15:00 would be perfectly fine for an EU maintenance.

Even when you extend it the servers will be up around 18:00 GMT +1 which isn't something all that bad.

Sure some would prefer it in the morning but it is hardly something to complain about.

 

Thing is that even with small patches an extended maintenance isn't all that uncommon in the first half year of a new MMO.

Taking your EU costumers into consideration and adjusting the times a bit is simply smarter.

 

Turn it around how will US costumers support if every patch will result in the servers being down during prime time.

I'm pretty sure they will not be all that happy.

 

Indeed. You've only got to look at the hate when EU retailers were given permission to release SWTOR for sale on the 15th December. There were huge sections of the US community up in arms. Imagine how it would be if they carried out maintenance at the time they did for us on Tuesday...

[Mandrax]

 

I see no reason why this extended downtime cannot start at 24:00 CST and finish around 06:00-07:00 CST at the worst so by EU lunchtime it will be all over. This would cause only an hour or two disruption to the American market prime time while only interfering with EU prime time (Day Time) by about 2-3 hours.

 

Dev answer please.

 

Actually this is a very good compromise. This way both EU and US are sharing the burden. Seems fair to me.

[Syas]

Actually this is a very good compromise. This way both EU and US are sharing the burden. Seems fair to me.

 

It shouldn't be about any nationality "sharing the burden", it should be about taking the servers down at the time during which the least amount of players worldwide are playing. That is the fair way to handle it, ignore nationality, focus solely on playerbase.

[GumBoil]

Many players raised concerns that patches/updates would land later in the EU than in the US. .

 

Their concerns are that patches would be days weeks or months later as has happened with some MMO's. To use this as an excuse is risible. Actually it would make sense to do the EU 4 or 5 hours earlier (due to how the time zones pan out). Hows that for an idea?

 

Anyway the predominant issue is not patches but maintenance. This is verging on 'weasely words'. Frankly I'm unimpressed.

[Lady_Femke]

Actally she only mentioned 2 of the countries as did I and my suggestion would in fact meet the requirements you stated in your reply.

I get the feeling that it is you talking of nationality, my suggestion was that their 2 biggest markets EU and US are not being balanced to the lowest number of people being inconveinienced ,so I fail to see why you had to comment in such a way. Unless of course you felt that I or the poster who followed me were biased against Americans, which it seems you interpreted incorrectly.

[dekey]

Wrong, it is not off peak. Off peak is a term applied to a period of time to denote when there is not a fairly large audience participation.

 

Off-peak is actually when you have the smallest audience. This is ofcourse going to be the middle of the night for EU but I at least am assuming this isn't possible as all regions are being brought down together (meaning that is peak time for US).

 

More and more of us old fogies, who are young pensioners, are getting into the games market, and for us, EU prime time is this stupid time that BW/EA are using as their best time to maintain the servers.

 

For you this maybe be your ideal play time and perhaps there are increasing amounts of people in your situation, but you are still not the majority.

 

This presumption that only children and youngish adults are the ones that should be catered to is very irritating. It costs me the same amount of cash each month as it does young people, so why should I not receive that same amount of available uptime as them.

 

By this logic we should move over to a korean style pay-per-hour system so that we can be sure everyone is playing for the exact amount of time they have paid for I suppose? That would be the only way to ensure your proposal.

 

I appreciate that major patches and expansions will nesecitate longish downtimes, but bug fix patches do not need such a huge amount of downtime unless the client your working on has substandard code. Judging by the amount of claimed dev money spent on this game the code should be very streamlined and needing the lowest amount of downtime of all MMO's right from the get go. Sadly this isn't happening.

 

Conjecture. As this isn't the case in my past experiences, frequently seeing occasions where even the simplest maintenance tasks can bring up complications. I'm afraid I am going to have to assume you have no real technical knowledge in this area to validate your statement.

 

I see no reason why this extended downtime cannot start at 24:00 CST and finish around 06:00-07:00 CST at the worst so by EU lunchtime it will be all over. This would cause only an hour or two disruption to the American market prime time while only interfering with EU prime time (Day Time) by about 2-3 hours.

 

What about the people who work in the bar industry? Why should they have maintenance when they get home from work? By your own logic should they not have equal access to the servers? This is also based on your evaluation of when Primetime is which I am afraid was inaccurate. Global maintenance at 00:00 GMT would be 18:00 EST. That is roughly the actual commencement of "Primetime". (Also this would result in the west coast being in maintenance at the exact time everyone in EU is complaining about.)

 

Dev answer please.

 

Server maintenance is not carried out by developers.

Edited December 29, 2011 by dekey

[TheHauntingBard]

Many players raised concerns that patches/updates would land later in the EU than in the US. .

 

Let's see an extended maintenance can easily hit up to 19:30, a big patch will hit up to 20:00 + GMT +1.

Let's be a bit realistic, 4 hours extended maintenance can happen with a big patch.

Now for the US that will be around 13:00.

 

Let's take 20:00 GMT +1 for when some things goes a bit wrong and 21:00 on a big patch.

These things aren't uncommon in a new MMO, Bioware already showed that with a minor patch both the forum and the server get an extended maintenance.

Now also take into account that a log in server might not handle all EU players logging in during prime time.

 

Average EU player will go to sleep at 23:00-23:30 which means they have 3 hours to play and other wise 2 hours if at all with queues and perhaps some server instability.

Now the average US player won't be even home at those times.

 

This means we EU players do get to play later and less.

As some one mentioned people where concerned about getting the patch weeks later not 5 hours.

Edited December 29, 2011 by TheHauntingBard

[CaptainCorcoran]

in my mind, with the amout of potential subscibers *global service* just isn't cutting it.

 

please, just go over it again, re debate it over coffee or somthing. EU daytime downtime Really suck for those that are available to play.

Edited December 29, 2011 by CaptainCorcoran

[Lady_Femke]

Off-peak is actually when you have the smallest audience. This is ofcourse going to be the middle of the night for EU but I at least am assuming this isn't possible as all regions are being brought down together (meaning that is peak time for US).

 

 

 

For you this maybe be your ideal play time and perhaps there are increasing amounts of people in your situation, but you are still not the majority.

 

 

 

By this logic we should move over to a korean style pay-per-hour system so that we can be sure everyone is playing for the exact amount of time they have paid for I suppose? That would be the only way to ensure your proposal.

 

 

 

Conjecture. As this isn't the case in my past experiences, frequently seeing occasions where even the simplest maintenance tasks can bring up complications. I'm afraid I am going to have to assume you have no real technical knowledge in this area to validate your statement.

 

 

 

What about the people who work in the bar industry? Why should they have maintenance when they get home from work? By your own logic should they not have equal access to the servers? This is also based on your evaluation of when Primetime is which I am afraid was inaccurate. Global maintenance at 00:00 GMT would be 18:00 EST. That is roughly the actual commencement of "Primetime". (Also this would result in the west coast being in maintenance at the exact time everyone in EU is complaining about.)

 

 

 

Server maintenance is not carried out by developers.

 

Many childish people practice taking small sections of post out of context of the complete post to devalue a persons argument, while trying to counter everything that they feel is wrong with the other persons post. They also do not read the post they are commenting on, or its context, and they make assumptions about another persons knowlege of a subject denigrating them while being totally uniformed themselves. This practice is to show all others following a post that they are extremely clever, at least in their own little world

 

I will not take your post and itemise it to prove my points, as I said that is mere childishness and a practice carried out by most common forum trolls, I will just mention your most glaring error. I did not say the EU servers should go down at midnight GMT, I actually stated 24:00 CST, which would be after most American people were retiring for the night and it would cause a much smaller impact on the EU daytime market.

 

This misread by you, in your hurry to prove how rightious you are, also of course affects your opinon of when I think prime time is.

I may have called myself an Old Fogie but at least I was educated correctly and I know full well what prime time is. I also know a lot more about programming code than you think I do. Now of course I will place you on ignore so your trolls will no longer be visible to me dear child. Oh yes and I am talking of your mind not your possible physical age. Have a nice day.

Edited December 29, 2011 by Lady_Femke

[dekey]

Condescending wall of text

 

If you truly were as mature as you are attempting to sound, you would be able to hold a debate without resorting to passive aggressive, condescending insults.

 

You're either pretentious, incapable of constructive communication or simply trying to prove to you and whoever else may care, that you are still as capable of siding with the ill-informed masses as you were in your teens.

 

At this stage I give up. Continue your tears about your maintenance. 5 attempts to explain why it is how it is have fallen on death ears and you would rather attack the one person trying to clarify WHY it is as it is rather than take it on board and move on.

Edited December 29, 2011 by dekey

[nkitch]

While today is still classed as a holiday in many parts of Europe and many of you may still be off work or school, this downtime slot was chosen for a number of reasons.

 

Firstly, in the past, we've talked on a number of occasions about how we will run a global service. Many players raised concerns that patches/updates would land later in the EU than in the US. We stated that as we're running a global service, we'll do everything we can to make sure the updates go live in both regions as close together as possible. For this to be achievable, we need to run maintenance at the same time.

 

Secondly, although many of you are able to play at this time, this is actually one of the times in the day (and the week) when we have the lowest number of players in game. It's certainly far from peak. Given that many of you are still on holiday, today's maintenance may feel a bit more out of place than usual, but in the future, the number of users impacted will be even smaller.

 

Finally it's also worth noting that today's downtime was a little longer than usual and in the future, shouldn't be the case.

 

So hopefully that's gone some way in shedding a light on the reasons as to why we've chosen this slot.

 

Still not on US time though is it ?

[MareLooke]

Originally Posted by ChrisCollins

While today is still classed as a holiday in many parts of Europe and many of you may still be off work or school, this downtime slot was chosen for a number of reasons.

 

Firstly, in the past, we've talked on a number of occasions about how we will run a global service. Many players raised concerns that patches/updates would land later in the EU than in the US. We stated that as we're running a global service, we'll do everything we can to make sure the updates go live in both regions as close together as possible. For this to be achievable, we need to run maintenance at the same time.

 

Secondly, although many of you are able to play at this time, this is actually one of the times in the day (and the week) when we have the lowest number of players in game. It's certainly far from peak. Given that many of you are still on holiday, today's maintenance may feel a bit more out of place than usual, but in the future, the number of users impacted will be even smaller.

 

Finally it's also worth noting that today's downtime was a little longer than usual and in the future, shouldn't be the case.

 

So hopefully that's gone some way in shedding a light on the reasons as to why we've chosen this slot.

 

TL;DR : Dear non-US subscribers, you are second class citizens in SWToR, deal with it.

Edited December 29, 2011 by MareLooke

[Mandrax]

It shouldn't be about any nationality "sharing the burden", it should be about taking the servers down at the time during which the least amount of players worldwide are playing. That is the fair way to handle it, ignore nationality, focus solely on playerbase.

 

No, it should be about taking the servers down at a time when each region is inconvenienced the least. This means there needs to be TWO maintenance schedules like all the other AAA MMOs seem to manage with no problem.

[GumBoil]

TL;DR : Dear non-US subscribers, you are second class citizens in SWToR, deal with it.

 

You missed the 'we are doing it because it is what you want really' bit apart from that you nailed it. That's what really makes me angry, livid actually. They dare to tell me that is what we want and is really best for us. We know best with just a hint of condescension.

 

I'm not threatening to rage quit but it certainly has tipped the balance further towards 'BW is not a company I want to lease a service from'. I am also rather disappointed with the slicing nerf, not because of the nerf itself (of course adjustments where needed) but how it was dealt with. A heavy handed knee jerk reaction to friggin twitter. That coupled with a fairly lack lustre set of 1.1 patch notes compared to the many (on the whole small) real issues that people are having.

 

I am currently disappointed with how they are running a decent game. They are doing a lot right but getting some things completely wrong.

Edited December 29, 2011 by GumBoil

[CedrionKatar]

As there is now a annoucnement of Australian and New Zealand servers, there needs to be some serious thought about maintainance and patching works. If you think those of us playing in the EU are being unreasonable, they will be royally pissed that the servers are going down in their peak hours.

 

It might be easier to patch and maintain everything at once, but the patching/maintainance process is EA/Bioware's problem not the customers. In pretty much every industry the customer doesn't care if something causes the company a problem, if it inconviences them or doesn't life up the standards they expect (and unsurprisingly people living in different countries/regions/cultures have different expectations) they go elsewhere. It's fairly basic business sense that if you want to operate in a global market you have to take into account that customers living in far away countries in different time zonse expect you to operate your business at a time that is convienent for them not you.

[Mandrax]

As there is now a annoucnement of Australian and New Zealand servers, there needs to be some serious thought about maintainance and patching works. If you think those of us playing in the EU are being unreasonable, they will be royally pissed that the servers are going down in their peak hours.

 

It might be easier to patch and maintain everything at once, but the patching/maintainance process is EA/Bioware's problem not the customers. In pretty much every industry the customer doesn't care if something causes the company a problem, if it inconviences them or doesn't life up the standards they expect (and unsurprisingly people living in different countries/regions/cultures have different expectations) they go elsewhere. It's fairly basic business sense that if you want to operate in a global market you have to take into account that customers living in far away countries in different time zonse expect you to operate your business at a time that is convienent for them not you.

 

This is a very good point. How do they plan on maintaining Aus and NZ servers? They can't take them down at the times they are now as for example, 2am in Austin, Texas is 7pm in Sydney. Also if they give the Aus and NZ servers different maintenance times then us EU folks are going to be even more pissed that we don't have our own maintenance slot that's more convenient for us.

 

At some point these maintenance schedules are going to need looking at properly. If they came out and said that the current EU slot is a temporary thing for a month or two, I think most people will accept that.

[Demeandor]

Simple weekly maintenance has to be shifted like 3 or 4 hours earlier or otherwise it is just annoyingly unfair to a large number of players (the EU players).

 

Unless Bioware is willing to show actual hard numbers showing that during this time frame the lowest number of players are online I will find it unacceptable since every patch day or extended maintenance (like this weeks) will eat into prime EU playing time.

 

Oh and to note I DO agree with a single maintenance period for all servers (and this is only problematic for Asian/Ausi players sucks to be them ^^).

[Mandrax]

Ok found a couple of snippets by Stephen Reid in the Reddit Q&A:

 

Q: What is your european strategy? Will you keep putting maintenence on day / primetime for europe?

 

The unfortunate reality of maintenance windows is that someone, somewhere, is always going to be affected.

 

Our European prime-time - which is when we have our highest PCUs across all servers - has actually not been impacted by our current maintenance windows. It's later in the evening, not during the day.

 

That said, this week we did overrun, and we know that many EU players were on holiday too, so that wasn't good. We're taking steps to address that.

 

And also...

Q: Why have the server maintenance and web site maintenance at the same time?

 

Well, we made the decision that we didn't want to have two maintenance periods per week (if required) so decided to bundle them together. The two aren't joined at the hip, however; we will have maintenance periods in future where we'll just have the game in maintenance mode and not the webservers.

Edited December 29, 2011 by Mandrax

[elelr]

Q: What is your european strategy? Will you keep putting maintenence on day / primetime for europe?

 

The unfortunate reality of maintenance windows is that someone, somewhere, is always going to be affected.

 

Our European prime-time - which is when we have our highest PCUs across all servers - has actually not been impacted by our current maintenance windows. It's later in the evening, not during the day.

 

That said, this week we did overrun, and we know that many EU players were on holiday too, so that wasn't good. We're taking steps to address that.

 

That still doesn't address when maintenance goes over the extended period.

 

That still doesn't address users that are +1 or greater to GMT.

 

Do it during the day on US times, if it really affects that small amount of people.

Edited December 29, 2011 by elelr

[Mandrax]

That still doesn't address when maintenance goes over the extended period.

 

That still doesn't address users that are +1 or greater to GMT.

 

Do it during the day on US times, if it really affects that small amount of people.

 

I agree. I was posting it so that we had another view from BioWare. It seems that they are happy with the current slot and will not be changing it anytime soon...

[Stormag]

from the reddit:

 

Well, we made the decision that we didn't want to have two maintenance periods per week (if required) so decided to bundle them together.

 

so, **** europe lol

[spudbynight]

Bioware don't seem to understand just how this is being perceived by nearly 50% of their customer base.

 

It doesn't matter whether they are right or not. It is basic business sense not to piss off half your customers.

[elelr]

I agree. I was posting it so that we had another view from BioWare. It seems that they are happy with the current slot and will not be changing it anytime soon...

Wasn't trying to have a dig at you mate, just quoting Stephen! I think BW need to take a beginners course in Customer Service. Mind you EA never did so and I guess it stems from the top!

[corbanite]

DO you want patches the same time as the US? Do you want the ability to log on to whatever server you want in US or EU?

 

This is the reason why maintenance happens at the same time.

[PenguinXI]

DO you want patches the same time as the US? Do you want the ability to log on to whatever server you want in US or EU?

 

This is the reason why maintenance happens at the same time.

 

Thats part of another issue they will find the forums full of whine over (If they were to patch different regions at different times) The NA servers get their patch a day earlier and thus go and claim all the world first kills. The EU get their patches a day later and their will be no world firsts left..... I can see the whine posts building up now. You cannot please all of the people all of the time.