How many free game days do we get as compensation?

[Raicc]

Hey guys,

 

I found myself trying to log in to TOR, and once again, I found myself frustrated with not being able to login, and I wondered, how many days do you think Bioware will give us as a compensation for all the maintenance waiting / queues etc?

 

This is no emo threat cause I can't play, or actually, it is, but I wanted to keep in a nice tone, since the guys at BW is doing an awesome job. You rarely see MMOs doing this well at release, yet I figured that at some points (EA???) the game is lacking the attention it needs. Thats why I made this treat, cause I figured that it is our responsibility as customers to point out the things we want fixed. The customer is always right you know.

 

Anyways here goes:

 

First of all, I know this has been in a threat or two, but why would anyone make maintenance during a holiday? I mean it's right after christmas, everyone is done celebrating it, most people are off from work / school whatever, I simply don't get it. And please don't give me the "They live in the US, they sleep during our night time". I don't care when they sleep and if they live in the US, no offense, but that is just not my problem. Then they either need to work off hours, or hire someone in the EU to do it. No matter what, I do not want to, and do not find it acceptable that I am the one (and you guys) who has to suffer cause of it. And I must admit, if they don't get that fixed asap, then I'm not sending anymore cash their way for sure. I mean, they got like 1 million + subscribers already, surely they can hire a team in the EU to handle this, so get to the working guys!!!

 

Another thing, where is my customer support? And no, I don't mean the premade mail from Protocol Droid M0-T0, I mean an actual person who I can talk to and who will fix my problem, and not just tell me that "We have passed this information onto one of our specialized teams who will investigate", cause surely these teams are not exsisting or went on a holiday a few days ago, making their email inboxed filled to a maximum. As an example, 3-4 days ago I made the first of many tickets regarding quests being bugged and not abandonable, and yes I know, it'll get hotfixed in a patch, but still not good enough, sorry. I am not gonna spend 4 days having to sort out my quests every day, so I don't hit the 25 cap. Also, I deleted an item by mistake, (yeah I'm a morron I know) and I wanted it back, ticketed it, and again, all I heard was "I am Protocol Droid M0-T0..." and frankly, I reached the point where I'm gonna slice that protocol droid in half with my light saber if I ever run into it at some point.. Please BW, get some actual people working on the support. I know that it's holidays etc and launch and so on and so on, but again, I don't care, cause I am not the one who decided to release the game close to a holiday In other MMOs they have live customer support and therefore, I expect SWTOR to have it to, end of discussion.

 

Besides from this, I'd like to /applause Because expect for the flaws mentioned above, this game is awesome. It's by far the best MMO out there and you guys have done a great job making this game. I can not remember when I have enjoyed and lived myself so much into leveling up a character in an MMO during the 10+ years of gaming experience I have with MMOs. This is also a big part of me writing this threat, cause I would hate to see such a great game, with such an enormous potential, ruined by bad support.

 

With wishes of happy holidays and me looking forward to talk a lot to the BW supporters in the future I'm out

[Stonerift]

Maintenance is part of your expected up time. You don't get compensated.

[Wu_Thunderkiss]

Actual game experience may vary.

 

No cookie for you.

[Kilgoress]

Nice troll.

[Chrisamcnicholas]

Maintenance is part of your expected up time. You don't get compensated.

 

This guy gets it.

[Gaidax]

I do not care about free days, but it is obvious that at the very least there should be 3 maintenance windows:

 

1. US

2. EU

3. Site

 

It's that simple. It is all the question of EA spending $$... Fat chance of that after the whole Grace period fail.

[Yotes]

I knew one of these posts would show up....

 

Thanks for not letting me down.

[Voradoor]

Gotta wonder if this is this guys first mmo? weekly down time is part of the package man. plan around it, learn the days and catch up and house stuff.

[Pengatron]

Sounds just like the self entitled jerks on the WoW forums, maintenance goes a bit long and you are screaming for comp time.

 

Being a new game I was hoping for a more civilized community, not full of elitist jerks and nit-picking idiots.

 

The service (the game) is not guaranteed to be available at all times. Like any other MMORG, there will be down times (scheduled and unscheduled). The best we can hope for is that they will do their best to keep those at a minimum.

[Scar]

When servers are down for days on end like they were for the first six months of WoW's release, I'm certain they will refund days.

 

When they go down for scheduled maintenance and get extended an hour or two, I wouldn't hold my breath.

[deneeve]

Maintenance is normal for ALL mmos. You don't get compensated. And queue times are expected at any mmo launch. Go roll on a server with little to no queue time if you don't want to wait. My queue times have been fine.

[Kiwimeister]

whaa whaa whaaa ....yet another person new to mmo's... Life isnt fair... go smell the fresh air n feel the sun.....ur one of millions that play... don't expect immediate customer support....when u call companies for customer support...u have to wait ur azz on the line till someone available as well...."it's not my problem......i don't care" grow up lil man!

[Urgas]

First of all I didn't read the Wall of Text for fear of it Critting me for 10,00,000 internets.

 

Secondly, welcome to the world of MMO's. It is a fantastic place of mystery and enchantment. Where they cut off your ear if they don't like your face, and all that. (Oh wait they edited that out of the DVD version didn't they.)

 

Anyway, MMO's have downtime for patching. I was impressed they only took a little while longer than expected as this is their first live update. I can remember sitting in vent waiting for the WoW servers to come up 6 hours after they were supposed to.

 

Solution to your problem: Chill. You will not be getting a free day for a 2 hour overrun in patching. That is life, deal with it.

[Shanaeri]

Very much depends on the MMO. For example Guild wars has zero downtime for updates and maintenance. You just pick the latest patch up when you log on again and in the meantime you can just keep playing.

 

This is'nt a criticism of SWTOR but of the whole server ethos that seems to be a hangover from when servers and infrastructure was'nt as scaleable or able to be virtualised as much. If Anet 6 years ago, can make a game with 7 million customers that can stream updates to the user as they play or login then I really dont see why other game dev's could'nt.

 

Yes I know GW was heavily instanced, but then we have instances (shards) in SWTOR too.

 

And to go back OT no, you dont normally get time back for maintenance or queuing unless something goes wrong and it's offline for an entre day.

 

Prolonged and short notice maintenance is also common place for MMO's, especially at launch so it's not unusual either. As I said above though, I think a move away from dedicated 'world' servers and more use of streaming updates would have been a much better way to go.

Edited December 27, 2011 by Shanaeri

[Exostotic]

You guys clearly want to flame the OP; however, he's right. I don't know if we should expect free play time, but their maintenance is weird

 

I have made a post about this before. They have been having excessively long maintenance times. Why is every other game able to do big patches in less than 30 minutes? Why are other games able to maintain their game servers without killing their forum server too?

 

Why are you people unwilling to ask these questions? It's not just "oh-it's-launch-so-its-normal". It's not normal. It's weird, and it concerns me. It makes me believe they have infrastructure stupidities

[Qoojo]

So much writing for a maintenance whine lol

[ukikithemonkey]

You guys clearly want to flame the OP; however, he's right. I don't know if we should expect free play time, but their maintenance is weird

 

I have made a post about this before. They have been having excessively long maintenance times. Why is every other game able to do big patches in less than 30 minutes? Why are other games able to maintain their game servers without killing their forum server too?

 

Why are you people unwilling to ask these questions? It's not just "oh-it's-launch-so-its-normal". It's not normal. It's weird, and it concerns me. It makes me believe they have infrastructure stupidities

 

Every other? Someone has never seen wow patch days I take it. All this time and they still have server problems during patch day.

[Bollah]

For example Guild wars has zero downtime for updates and maintenance.

 

But the game is also terrible.

[TalonSaber]

I do not care about free days, but it is obvious that at the very least there should be 3 maintenance windows:

 

1. US

2. EU

3. Site

 

It's that simple. It is all the question of EA spending $$... Fat chance of that after the whole Grace period fail.

 

of course to do that they would need ALL EU players on EU servers instead of jumping on US ones

[Fyuria]

The sense of entitlement of some people these days is quite depressing.

 

First world problems

[Dweessies]

Gotta wonder if this is this guys first mmo? weekly down time is part of the package man. plan around it, learn the days and catch up and house stuff.

 

He's probably just young and feeling very entitled to whatever he wants when he wants it. You see these kinds of gripes every Tuesday on the WoW forums after years of every single Tuesday morning being their maintenance window. I'm just hoping that most of the special snowflakes all stay away from here, as so far the vast majority of the community has been very nice to be around.

[Caelith]

Maintenance is part of your expected up time. You don't get compensated.

 

It was extended, then the servers come back up and I find out first from a unofficial fansite and by the time I get in the game has a 40min queue.

 

That is terrible customer service.

 

The game is amazingly well done and great but is been failed by terrible customer service.

[Ditboo]

Bioware, I waited 9 minutes and 37 seconds in the queue, please send 937 credits to my account on Coruscant for compensation.

 

Or, provide me with the title "Ditboo the Uncompensated" so people can sympathize with my personal tragedy.

[flumpet]

Hey guys,

 

I found myself trying to log in to TOR, and once again, I found myself frustrated with not being able to login, and I wondered, how many days do you think Bioware will give us as a compensation for all the maintenance waiting / queues etc?

 

[/Quote]

 

I think it'd be a mistake to give away any. Really, an 8-hour maintenance window is inconvenient (especially for our European players and folks who were off work today), but by no means disastrous, and not terribly unexpected for a newly launched MMO.

 

The customer is always right you know.

 

No, the customer isn't always right. For a company offering a service, customers, taken as a large demographic are right, but even when something will irritate a large portion of them, it's occasionally got to be done to improve service down the line.

 

First of all, I know this has been in a threat or two, but why would anyone make maintenance during a holiday? I mean it's right after christmas, everyone is done celebrating it, most people are off from work / school whatever, I simply don't get it.

 

Perhaps it's because they've got some bug fixes and want them implemented as soon as possible, to provide the highest-quality service they can. Perhaps it's because of the wave of "this doesn't work like it should/I think it should/WoW does it." threads. Maintenance and patches have to happen, and somebody will be inconvenienced.

 

 

And please don't give me the "They live in the US, they sleep during our night time". I don't care when they sleep and if they live in the US, no offense, but that is just not my problem. Then they either need to work off hours, or hire someone in the EU to do it. No matter what, I do not want to, and do not find it acceptable that I am the one (and you guys) who has to suffer cause of it. And I must admit, if they don't get that fixed asap, then I'm not sending anymore cash their way for sure. I mean, they got like 1 million + subscribers already, surely they can hire a team in the EU to handle this, so get to the working guys!!!

 

First of all, that's an exceptionally insensitive viewpoint. As a network admin who has to frequently work after-hours, we have lives, too. We like to not spend our entire existence at work, and actually relax in off-hours every now and again.

 

Second, 'suffer' is a little overblown for not having access to a hobby for a few hours. You'll live. Go out with friends, watch a movie, catch dinner somewhere...do something else. The game will be here tomorrow, and nobody's gonna get a big shiny medal for beating you to level 50.

 

Finally, the last major maintenance window was the day before launch, when they took down the Early Access servers to prep for launch. That was when? Ah, peak time for EST players in the U.S.A. They're doing their best to spread the pain around. Y'all wanted no region locking. Y'all wanted the ability to play on any server you wanted whenever. Well, the downside is that patches and maintenance have to happen at the same time on all of them.

[PulseXXX]

Ohh, I know the answer to this one!!

 

Zero <-------------