Weekly server maintenance EU times?

[Xerda]

NA region - First Class Customer

EU region - Second Class Customer

 

If they continue this ridiculous scheduling with preferential times for NA region then we will have an official Third Class Customer base in the Oceanic region when they officially launch there later this year.

Edited January 5, 2012 by Xerda

[Goreson]

Ireland upgrading Net infrastructure to host SWTOR EU servers for this ? :(:(:(

 

http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/game/367/view/forums/post/4466060#4466060

 

One country has done this for this treatment to european customers? :(:(

 

Don´t take us for fools

 

Right, I'm a bit surprised that Dublin keeps coming up as the location where the EU SWTOR servers are supposed to be...

 

BW's customer service center is located in Galway which is neither part of the city of Dublin nor County Dublin.

 

So either the servers are located in a non-BW location (let's include an EA office as a non-BW location) which may explain why service needs to be done by 3rd party contractors what have a set SLA with BW (US) (but somehow I doubt that) or they are in Galway or heck, maybe they are actually in the US but access is routed thru Galway...

 

Let's be fair here, do Bioware/EA look like companies that want to forge a loyal fan base and are interested in providing players with good customer service?

Just to ignore their attitude,ticket service and general flaws in the game.

 

- Servers in Ireland aka cheap tax wise but one of the worst locations for the servers in Europe.

 

 

To your first question - without being a fanboy - I'd have said yes, well, at least as far as BW goes.

 

But sometimes things just don't work out the way that you expect them!

 

Anybody remember good ol' DAoC and its release? How little problem there was?

 

Now imagine it had been like this with SWTOR and BW had a staff of 1000 CSR sitting ready for action.

 

After the initial wave of complete morons calling in or raising e-tickets things would have quite down and suddenly out of those 1000 CSR 950 would just be sitting there doing nothing... which then would have let to BW having to let them go... I'm sure people would put it on the front page that BW is letting 900 people go from their SWTOR staff, the brand new game the just released.

 

What do you think how the public and more importantly the shareholders would react?

 

Don't you think that the public would feel like BW considers SWTOR to be a failure, that's why staff is let go?

And shareholder would question why BW wasted good money on recruiting and training all of these completely unnecessary CSRs.

 

So, in short having a too well prepare CS can also lead to what can be perceived as a failure!

 

Obviously, SWTOR wasn't DAoC and things went quite wrong.

 

I'm sure managers are sitting together trying to play the blame game with Manager (CS) saying that Manager (Dev) had said that the game was pretty much free of bugs and that Manager (Sales) had said that there wouldn't be any issues on that end, etc., and potentially they are doing so before they actually attack the many problems e.g. by getting the budget greenlit for more people (yes, I'm sure they have a budget, which means that the Manager (CS) can't just go and hire 10, 20, 50 more people despite needing them).

 

Let's face it: This happens again and again in all types of industry that offer CS.

 

And yes, BW could have gone elsewhere for their 'centre' but would you still want to play SWTOR if suddenly the price tag goes to 20 Euros/15 GBP per month due to the higher costs of having the support located say in Germany?

 

BW is far from the only (big) company who have their EMEA support in Ireland.

 

- Maintenance is less convenient for the Eu than it is for the US, especially for the GMT +2 and GMT +3 time zones in Europe.

Also adding that an extended maintenance cuts far into our prime time.

 

I do sort of agree with that... as long as BW is doing 8 hrs of maintenance!

 

We have seen yesterday that they can do 'something' in less than 3 hrs.

 

Also the servers have been up (at the time I'm posting this) for more than 6 hrs after today's 'something', which means that they were up before noon GMT.

 

I don't think that'll have hit any European zone in what could NOT be called off peak time.

 

Of course, with what BW had planned for yesterday: server downtime for 8 hrs starting at 8 AM GMT till 4 PM GMT people were rather justified to have a fit.

 

Frankly, I'll give BW another chance regarding this, for 2 reasons:

 

1. I think they are learning. At least yesterday's reaction seems to indicate this.

 

2. I'll soon be out of the EU and going by PST

 

- No Eu forum aside from the German one and French.

It's nice to see every Eu post being spammed away next day because we share it with the US.

 

Sorry but you are 100% wrong!

 

There isn't a single EU SWTOR forum!

 

Each forum is dedicated to a certain language, that being English, French or German.

 

Or are you telling me that French-Canadians should have their own forum as obviously the French forum is just for the EU-French?

[Kaarina]

 

Also the servers have been up (at the time I'm posting this) for more than 6 hrs after today's 'something', which means that they were up before noon GMT.

 

I don't think that'll have hit any European zone in what could NOT be called off peak time.

 

 

Todays was an unexpected down time, no warning or advance notice, just servers were taken down suddenly for some sort of patch.

 

2. I'll soon be out of the EU and going by PST

 

 

Well as long as it will not effect you. But then this is more a principle now, they promoted one thing and giving another and to add insult to injury, they are not even responding to the well over 1000 post about this problem

 

 

For those who may not know I will try to give you some ideas of time difference

 

USA Standard time 2 pm

GMT Time 8pm

For me I am GMT +2 so at 2pm Standard time USA it is 10 Pm my time

Edited January 5, 2012 by Kaarina

[spudbynight]

NA region - First Class Customer

EU region - Second Class Customer

 

If they continue this ridiculous scheduling with preferential times for NA region then we will have an official Third Class Customer base in the Oceanic region when they officially launch there later this year.

 

Really - as a purely business decision - it should be the reverse if anything. The EU is a larger market than the US which is why WoW has more subs in the EU than the US. It is a pretty dim and short-sighted approach for Bioware/EA to take to go the way they have gone.

 

The thing is though, the EU punters don't want the situation to be reversed, they just want maintenance at a time that suits them as well as the US.

[Keadin]

Really - as a purely business decision - it should be the reverse if anything. The EU is a larger market than the US which is why WoW has more subs in the EU than the US. It is a pretty dim and short-sighted approach for Bioware/EA to take to go the way they have gone.

 

The thing is though, the EU punters don't want the situation to be reversed, they just want maintenance at a time that suits them as well as the US.

 

Maybe BioWare isn't very good at doing business... There's still zero reply to all of this, it's the best explanation I can come up with :S

[Jahor]

And that seems correct in the US, but in europe the time is 10AM to 4PM.... How is that in anyway during off peak-hours. Its in the middle off the day.

 

Wrong, it's in the middle of normal people work time which is between 8:00 and 18:00 (including the travel time from work to home).

 

EU prime time == early start 18:00, common start 20:00, early end 22:00, late end 0:00.

 

We talk arbout MOST people play at this time. Not "some students and kids or unemploid" play time .

[TheHirogen]

gonna add that EU costumer supportand GM's support is the worst out of every other game support I have had in the last 7 or so years, get your act together soon or expect my sub to dissapear. Fixyour damn support,hire more GM's get on with the program already!!!

[Mandrax]

More downtime incoming during EU daytime hours. Night time for the Americans of course...

 

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=136591

Edited January 6, 2012 by Mandrax

[Urdnaxela]

Tonight's patch downtime will begin at 2AM CST (12AM PST/ 3AM EST/ 8AM GMT/ 9AM CET). We expect the servers to be available again by 4AM CST (2AM PST/ 5AM EST/ 10AM GMT/ 11AM CET). Thank you for your patience!

 

So the Earth must be flat...

Edited January 6, 2012 by Urdnaxela

[Ikox]

Tonight's patch downtime will begin at 2AM CST (12AM PST/ 3AM EST/ 8AM GMT/ 9AM CET). We expect the servers to be available again by 4AM CST (2AM PST/ 5AM EST/ 10AM GMT/ 11AM CET). Thank you for your patience!

 

Who the **** says we have any patience left with BW ?

 

You sir, have ****** up , time and time upon again.

 

We pay more than any US customer to play the game under worse conditions.

 

we pay 14.99 euro a month, equivelant to 20$

 

they pay 14.99$ a month and yet you wipe their ***** for them ?

 

brilliant.

Edited January 6, 2012 by Sireene
lang

[Erelenko]

Another one ? 3 in a row during the day for the european customers.

A lot of mmo dedicated webs are aware of this issue and a lot of threads here (when you don´t cap the forum) and you still keep doing this crap for us.

Hope you will understand your failure in 2 weeks.

You have a good game, with work could be great but if you are offering less than a lot of games out there , even some f2p you are doing something wrong.

We are no asking for something unreal, we are asking for the same service other nationality players have.

[jihn]

They obviously dont give a crap about the EU base.

 

On the bright side, i did a ticket yesterday ingame about low lvl camping on ilum. They actually responded:

 

Dear *******,

 

All of us here on the Star Wars: The Old Republic team would like to thank you for your support, and let you know that we really appreciate your positive feedback.

 

We are very lucky to have fans that share our enthusiasm for great games, and we hope to see you in-game when Star Wars: The Old Republic!

 

Regards,

 

C****

Star Wars: The Old Republic Customer Service

 

We would love to hear your feedback on our Customer Service and invite you to fill out the following survey which will help us to continually improve our support!

https://***.research.net/s/*******

 

Anyway, they asked for feedback, and got my honest opinion. They have a LONG way to go.

[CovenantOfDeath]

Lord Covenant Dictionary New Entries:

 

Mythic: Expert company in ruining his own MMO Launchs (Hidden Agenda= They really are in Blizzards payroll to make his competitors fail again and again)

 

EA: Company that likes to release unfinished MMOs, trying to recover the high amounts of money invested in development. It likes to spend huges for nothing.

 

Both have got an infamous EU customer service in the past, so I'm not surprised with this issue.

 

Bioware: Newbies, they're trying to launch a game worldwide, without a worldwide service.

Note: The world doesn't turn around Austin. We know that you live and work there, but you must understand than not all the players are living in Austin and surroundings... The world is much bigger, the world doesn't begin in Baltimore and finishes in California.

 

And it's not a question of downtimes, it's a question of service... and yours one it's disastrous, at least in Europe.

[Erelenko]

Originally Posted by Mikhail_

Bioware I am honestly sick of your attitude towards European players! Why me as a paying customer, who lives in Russia and have a holiday season and able to play, shouldn't be able to login 3 days in ROW, from 12pm to 4pm. EVERY day. And to make matter worse you disable forum posting during maintance, how convinient. Don't even get me started on customer support quality and making me wait 7 days to get a ticket answered.

 

To sum it all up I seriously doubt I will play past free month.

 

Do something soon.

[Korkokol]

And AGAIN, 3 shutdowns in 3 days in a row during EU daytime, knowing all too well that EU customers are complaining about this (and by the way, 3 days of disservice just to fix minor bugs, nothing game breaking:rolleyes:)... really, till yesterday i wondered if BW cared something about europe, now i KNOW that they don't.

no way i'm going to pay more than US for a monthly subscription and get treated this badly. It's a shame though, it was a nice game.

[TheBMC]

This initially was stupid now its simply absurd.

 

Hey Bio/EA (or whoever dares to take the responsibility for this mess), you might want to address this before sub's come due, I don't know that many gamers stupid enough to pay a higher sub cost for a lesser service on what amounts to an incredibly familiar product with such an over-saturated market.

 

At this point even if by some miracle you were able to turn it around and offer a flawless service henceforth you would find it difficult to compete with the current product your offering, as it stands the lacklustre service with the painfully familiar product, well, you can imagine.

[HerrFett]

Really laughable.

 

Always their "Thank you for your patience!".

 

Change your Maintenance times for europe ffs!

[Soulchilde]

waaaahhhhh

[Lady_Femke]

Oh well while it was down for maintainance 4th time in the last 7 days.

 

I, luckily enough got time off to play The Secret World Beta. Its shaping up to be something quite horrific and quite entertaining. It is due for release in April, so Bioware I think you need to get this maintainance problem sorted out on the EU servers fairly quickly as it won't just be the other quality existing MMOS you will have to compete with, but the up and coming new ones too.

 

Its not only the poor choice of eu maintainance times it is also now the amount of those times that are getting very annoying. Please don't let a good game fall apart. Help me obi one your our only hope.

[QuasarLight]

Hi all! I'm from Russia and play on European servers, we now have 2 weeks holidays and weekends and all of our gaming community is concerned entirely unacceptable service time.

In this connection I would like to express dissatisfaction not only on my own behalf but on behalf of all Russian-speaking players!

 

PS

I apologize for my English, but you're not going to learn Russian, aren’t you? =)

[Ebellior]

Just chiming in my dissatisfaction with this. Today's another public holiday (Epiphany) at least in Finland and at 10 am the servers go down. Also the weekly projected time lasts until 18 here and it's just not acceptable.

 

More than the lost gaming hours it's the feeling of being a 2nd class customer that's getting to me.

[Xerda]

I believe many NA players posting in this topic don't really understand the larger issue beneath those few hours of inconvenient maintenance times.

 

Up until recently, the EU gamer community (which imo contains many of the most loyal and enthousiastic gamers) have been the underdogs of the gaming industry. For years we've had to put up with long waits for bad localisations (or no localisations at all, having to resort to imports), bad customer service and higher relative pricing.

 

In recent years, things got better. One only has to look at Operation Rainfall for the Wii to see the EU community has been treated better nowadays.

For many of us, SWTOR's lack of a European maintenance window symbolizes a throwback to that Dark Age when there were only NA servers, NA customer support etc.

 

Also, the argument that there are more NA players really doesn't hold. Even if you're a majority, it's only a marginal one, and the EU playerbase is large enough regardless of relativity to warrant an independant customer service.

 

It's not simply a matter of inaccessibility due to maintenance time, it's a matter of respect and consideration for your customers.

 

Well said

[Erelenko]

Well said yeah

[CovenantOfDeath]

Oh well while it was down for maintainance 4th time in the last 7 days.

 

I, luckily enough got time off to play The Secret World Beta. Its shaping up to be something quite horrific and quite entertaining. It is due for release in April, so Bioware I think you need to get this maintainance problem sorted out on the EU servers fairly quickly as it won't just be the other quality existing MMOS you will have to compete with, but the up and coming new ones too.

 

Its not only the poor choice of eu maintainance times it is also now the amount of those times that are getting very annoying. Please don't let a good game fall apart. Help me obi one your our only hope.

 

Secret World is from EA too... good luck!

[Kaarina]

Secret World is from EA too... good luck!

 

Yes EA is publisher but I think they do not handle CS, BW handles or should I say selective handles CS here and I believe FunCom will handle (We hope) the CS for The Secret World