Weekly server maintenance EU times?

[Urdnaxela]

Hello everyone, we wanted to let you know that we will be performing scheduled maintenance for eight hours on January 4th, 2012 from 11AM CST (9AM PST/12AM EST) until 7PM CST (5PM PST/8PM EST) for North American servers and 3AM GMT (4AM CET) until 11AM GMT (12AM CET) for Eruropean servers. All game servers will be offline during this period. This maintenance is expected to take no more than eight hours, but could be extended.

 

Generally speaking we are aiming to limit our scheduled maintenance period to once a week, on Tuesdays. However, this week we will perform maintenance on Wednesday due to the New Year’s holiday. We are aiming for this weekly maintenance period to take place in an off-peak time for both North American and European players. We are also aiming to inform players of the precise duration of any weekly maintenance period at least 24 hours before the maintenance begins.

 

For our new players, this weekly maintenance is done in order to make general improvements and to check performance of the game so that we can continue to provide a consistent, quality experience. Quite often (but not always) after a maintenance period there will [EA/BW is still learning english: >>be<<] a patch to download. Please be sure to update your launcher after any maintenance period.

 

Scheduled Maintenance

 

Date: Wednesday, January 4th, 2012

 

Time:

 

4AM CST (2AM PST/5AM EST) until 12AM CST (10AM PST/1PM EST) for North American servers

 

3AM GMT (4AM CET) until 11AM GMT (12AM CET) for European servers

 

All game servers will be offline during this period. This maintenance is expected to take no more than eight hours.

 

Thank you for your patience as we maintain service for Star Wars™: The Old Republic™.

 

We apologize to our European customers for not being able to see that it is indeed possible to have night time maintenance exactly like we do it for our North American customers. We ensure our European customers that our newly hired team of quantum physics experts tasked with solving the scheduled maintenance timeframe problem, which was incredible difficult to solve as our most limited understanding of the world is, of course, centered only around US, will continue to deliver solutions to several other problems and actively pursue and strive to assure that EA/BW will deliver the highest quality of service.

 

there ya go EA/BW, fixed it fo' ya and your US fanboys.

Edited January 2, 2012 by Urdnaxela

[iorlas]

Agreed, I have actually cancelled my subscription until they show that they give a crap about EU players.

 

Same + my 2 sons.

[Maidel]

Hello everyone, we wanted to let you know that we will be performing scheduled maintenance for eight hours on January 4th, 2012 from 11AM CST (9AM PST/12AM EST) until 7PM CST (5PM PST/8PM EST) for North American servers and 3AM GMT (4AM CET) until 11AM GMT (12AM CET) for Eruropean servers. All game servers will be offline during this period. This maintenance is expected to take no more than eight hours, but could be extended.

 

Generally speaking we are aiming to limit our scheduled maintenance period to once a week, on Tuesdays. However, this week we will perform maintenance on Wednesday due to the New Year’s holiday. We are aiming for this weekly maintenance period to take place in an off-peak time for both North American and European players. We are also aiming to inform players of the precise duration of any weekly maintenance period at least 24 hours before the maintenance begins.

 

For our new players, this weekly maintenance is done in order to make general improvements and to check performance of the game so that we can continue to provide a consistent, quality experience. Quite often (but not always) after a maintenance period there will [EA/BW is still learning english: >>be<<] a patch to download. Please be sure to update your launcher after any maintenance period.

 

Scheduled Maintenance

 

Date: Wednesday, January 4th, 2012

 

Time:

 

4AM CST (2AM PST/5AM EST) until 12AM CST (10AM PST/1PM EST) for North American servers

 

3AM GMT (4AM CET) until 11AM GMT (12AM CET) for Eruropean servers

 

All game servers will be offline during this period. This maintenance is expected to take no more than eight hours.

 

Thank you for your patience as we maintain service for Star Wars™: The Old Republic™.

 

We apologize to our European customers for not being able to see that it is indeed possible to have night time maintenance exactly like we do it for our North American customers. We ensure our European customers that our newly hired team of quantum physics experts tasked with solving the scheduled maintenance timeframe problem, which was incredible difficult to solve as our most limited understanding of the world is, of course, centered only around US, will continue to deliver solutions to several other problems and actively pursue and strive to assure that EA/BW will deliver the highest quality of service.

 

there ya go EA/BW, fixed it fo' ya and your US fanboys.

 

DONT DO THAT!

 

I got all excited and thought they had changed it!

[Grinstone]

I'm left scratching my head about what they'll do once the game becomes officially available in Australia / New Zealand. These maintenance times will fall squarely into their peak play times.

 

Are the Oceania players going to miss out on being able to play once a week? Are they going to get their own maintenance window?

[Kaarina]

I'm left scratching my head about what they'll do once the game becomes officially available in Australia / New Zealand. These maintenance times will fall squarely into their peak play times.

 

Are the Oceania players going to miss out on being able to play once a week? Are they going to get their own maintenance window?

 

 

As someone who has to get up at 4 am for work, I can say the maintenance time presently falls right into my main play time. And in Finland school is normally out around 12 so this again would be in their main play time.

 

Welcome to the Crap still that is Global Bioware

Edited January 2, 2012 by Kaarina

[dgwebb]

Hate to break it to you but yes, they don't care about our time zones when it comes to updating and downtime. When they sat around the table talking about downtime they knew that there would be people in the EU who would quit the game over it, so that have already factored that into their decision.

 

The only way they will take a look at the schedule for downtime and consider altering it is if people *don't* buy the game, cancelling won't make a difference, they already had the bean counters work out how much (as a percentage) they expect subscriptions to drop off in the first month due to it, if that figure was unacceptable they would have worked the downtime better for EU players.

 

How can you make a difference? Negative publicity. FFXI has a monster called Pandemonium Warden, one group popped the monster and started to fight it, 18 hours later and with people physically ill they gave in the fight. There was a bit of negative publicity over it and SE (who never listened to their player base at the time) made major changes to the monster. If there is a lot of negative publicity in the EU over the downtimes, enough that BW/EA consider that it's going to affect people buying the game then they will have no choice but to make changes to the downtime. Eurogamer and CVG are doing a 2 part review of the game, part 2 isn't out yet, if you can influence the review so that it puts the game in a negative light due to the down time issues (in other words make the review focus heavily on the fact that downtime is 8 hours when most EU players are awake) then BW/EA may start to take notice.

 

They are expecting 9 or 10 out of 10 scores from reviews, if the review is heavily critical of the downtime, so much so that the majority of comments for the reviews are "well, I was going to buy it but if they treat us EU customers like that, no chance" the bean counters will have to recount the beans.

[Goreson]

I'm left scratching my head about what they'll do once the game becomes officially available in Australia / New Zealand. These maintenance times will fall squarely into their peak play times.

 

Are the Oceania players going to miss out on being able to play once a week? Are they going to get their own maintenance window?

 

Well, there are 2 possible answers to that:

 

1. Just having looked at the maintenance schedules for DAoC (which is obviously running now under the same umbrella of BioWare) they seem to be rather flexible about doing overall as well as cluster specific maintenance which may hit a bit at random times - though not really in what would either be primetime for the EU or the US (EST).

 

Which obviously means it may well be for the AsiaPacific community (and potentially even US (PST).

 

BUT they are quick when doing their maintenance with work scheduled for 4 hours you have a server up again in less that 2 hrs.

 

Going purely by assumption now this could mean just about anything for SWTOR ;-)

 

IF BW sticks to doing their 8 hrs maintenance as a longterm, routine concept, well, honestly, unless they get their heads out of their butt and smell the roasted beef it'll probably mean that yes, US will get the shiny night service maintenance, EU will get the 'keep your fingers crossed that there will be no extension, that maybe they even finish early' service, and AsiaPacific will get the kick in the rear end...

 

because right now BW is not even considered of those Americans that are living just a wee bit further west than PST...

 

IF on the other side the maintenance right now is just a bit of birthing woes because BW doesn't really quite totally 100% trust their systems but a few weeks down the diapers will come off and the guys in 'mission control' will relax, it may well be that maintenance is reduced to something a bit more random that happens every few weeks, potentially even at rather mixed times that overall hit none harder than the other and all with very little primetime lost...

 

and there is option 2:

 

SWTOR will not be handled by BW in AsiaPacific!

 

They may give the license to some company locate on that neck of the woods (Question for all you AUS folks: are there any such providers?) and thereby obviously keep the AUS maintenance (hours, frequency, duration) completely off their back.

 

You pick which on you prefer... though I personally would obviously love to see them cave in and take the servers down by region... which may still be a pain in the bum if you are playing on a server that is outside your region i.e. EU gamer on US server but at least I'd have alternatives...

 

Though, really, there may already be the alternative of the PST being up during those maintenance hours ;-) (I think I read that people were saying that it was up much longer than all the other ones plus, obviously, it already has the latest patch release so if there was 'maintenance' it would really be maintenance not patching...

[Urdnaxela]

DONT DO THAT!

 

I got all excited and thought they had changed it!

 

I'd rather you not get mad, it was a bit of a joke... unfortunately.

 

I'm just watching a documentary about the Big Bang with Joao Magueijo (quite a smart fellow). He can at least explain what the Big Bang theory's flaws are, if not solve them altogether. Please EA/BW, if this is such a difficult problem, contact people like him. I bet they can give a solution for this maintenance crap, even though he might know nothing about IT and such...

 

/sarcasm

Edited January 2, 2012 by Urdnaxela

[Keadin]

I'd rather you not get mad, it was a bit of a joke... unfortunately.

 

I'm just watching a documentary about the Big Bang with Joao Magueijo (quite a smart fellow). He can at least explain what the Big Bang theory's flaws are, if not solve them altogether. Please EA/BW, if this is such a difficult problem, contact people like him. I bet they can give a solution for this maintenance crap, even though he might know nothing about IT and such...

 

/sarcasm

 

Thanks for the tip, watching it now (which for some reason I'd rather do than play TOR while I still can)

[Maidel]

I'd rather you not get mad, it was a bit of a joke... unfortunately.

 

I'm just watching a documentary about the Big Bang with Joao Magueijo (quite a smart fellow). He can at least explain what the Big Bang theory's flaws are, if not solve them altogether. Please EA/BW, if this is such a difficult problem, contact people like him. I bet they can give a solution for this maintenance crap, even though he might know nothing about IT and such...

 

/sarcasm

 

Well I'm not 'actually' mad, in the same way as when people rofl they aren't actually rolling around on the floor laughing uncontrolably.

[Edaros]

cancelling won't make a difference.

 

 

Wrong.

 

Other games have already closed down due to customers not bothering with them anymore.

 

Even though they were F2P games, it still hurts when they can't make enough money from their customers.

 

Cancelling a sub fee will cause even more issues since the company relies on their monthly income from these subs (And the US players are not enough, not by a long shot, to make up for that loss of cash)

 

If enough players does indeed cancel their subs, they will either shut down or remove all other regions from being able to play and just keep the NA region active, until they see things in a bigger and wider perspective, and shuts down that region too, since the US has the smallest player base in the mmo gaming industry compared to EU as a whole, and ASIA.

 

Seperate Maintenance windows will ensure that the game stays healthy with lots of active subs.

[Grinstone]

 

and there is option 2:

 

SWTOR will not be handled by BW in AsiaPacific!

 

They may give the license to some company locate on that neck of the woods (Question for all you AUS folks: are there any such providers?) and thereby obviously keep the AUS maintenance (hours, frequency, duration) completely off their back.

 

 

When Europe got its own service center I thought that meant that Europe would get its own service. So far BioWare is seeking to avoid that for some reason. I don't care to try to guess why that is, since to me their stated reason (giving everyone patches at the same time) sounds like an excuse of convenience.

 

They've already shown that they can do maintenance during the early morning hours for Europe, so it's not because there is a draconian law in Ireland that forbids people from starting work before 0800.

[Ikkio]

Hate to break it to you but yes, they don't care about our time zones when it comes to updating and downtime. When they sat around the table talking about downtime they knew that there would be people in the EU who would quit the game over it, so that have already factored that into their decision.

 

The only way they will take a look at the schedule for downtime and consider altering it is if people *don't* buy the game, cancelling won't make a difference, they already had the bean counters work out how much (as a percentage) they expect subscriptions to drop off in the first month due to it, if that figure was unacceptable they would have worked the downtime better for EU players.

 

How can you make a difference? Negative publicity. FFXI has a monster called Pandemonium Warden, one group popped the monster and started to fight it, 18 hours later and with people physically ill they gave in the fight. There was a bit of negative publicity over it and SE (who never listened to their player base at the time) made major changes to the monster. If there is a lot of negative publicity in the EU over the downtimes, enough that BW/EA consider that it's going to affect people buying the game then they will have no choice but to make changes to the downtime. Eurogamer and CVG are doing a 2 part review of the game, part 2 isn't out yet, if you can influence the review so that it puts the game in a negative light due to the down time issues (in other words make the review focus heavily on the fact that downtime is 8 hours when most EU players are awake) then BW/EA may start to take notice.

 

They are expecting 9 or 10 out of 10 scores from reviews, if the review is heavily critical of the downtime, so much so that the majority of comments for the reviews are "well, I was going to buy it but if they treat us EU customers like that, no chance" the bean counters will have to recount the beans.

 

This is absolutely right. Companies HATE negative publicity. I run a marketing company and businesses spend a fortune ensuring the PR they get is positive. I have writers who work full time for me who create articles and such for positive PR and for covering up negative reviews and feedback.

 

Hitting a company in the pocket is an effective way of making a point, but you lose out on playing the game. Spreading the word about the negatives of the game achieves the same ends while allowing you to enjoy the game. Just make sure you don't get caught up in defamation and you're golden.

 

However, it's usual to allow a company to respond before making demands and taking action. It seems, at least on the surface that EA/BW aren't interested in engaging with their playerbase, only talking to game journalists. If you get to those same journalists awkward questions will inevitably be asked.

 

As an aside, seeing as Europeans invented America, you would think they would be a little nicer to us...

[CovenantOfDeath]

I'd rather you not get mad, it was a bit of a joke... unfortunately.

 

I'm just watching a documentary about the Big Bang with Joao Magueijo (quite a smart fellow). He can at least explain what the Big Bang theory's flaws are, if not solve them altogether. Please EA/BW, if this is such a difficult problem, contact people like him. I bet they can give a solution for this maintenance crap, even though he might know nothing about IT and such...

 

/sarcasm

 

I bet even a retarded (with all my respect for the people with mental handicap) will do the things better.

 

I begin to think that the people in charge of SWTOR are in the Blizzard's payroll.

[Grammarye]

What perplexes me is why the chosen times are from midday until 5 pm. One error, like last time, that causes the downtime to eat into the evening, and we're faced with significant queues and lost evening time which will negatively affect a large proportion of the playerbase. This is just bizarre.

 

I can only conclude that Bioware do the maintenance remotely from the US and thus the times are to suit their employees. Nobody employed in the EU would pick those times. Who'd want to deploy a patch that has to finish on time or you get to stay late, when they can pick a time where it starts in the early morning and then is finishing when you get in for work, so if there are issues, you have a working day to go at the problem? Oh wait I just described the US times...

 

EVE, which is a global single server and thus has to react globally, at least had the sense to have their daily downtime at 11 GMT for an hour, so that it's at a sensible time for London & Iceland work times (where it's based & developed respectively), and inconveniences as few people as possible around the world. There's never a perfect solution, but the current one chosen by Bioware is just plain weird.

 

There is also something very odd going on if it takes this long to deploy patches. I'd be the first to say that it's not a trivial task and there's plenty of setup & testing to do, but five hours that so far the first time tried ran more like to eight hours is a heck of a long time.

Edited January 2, 2012 by Grammarye
Formatting

[Goreson]

There is also something which is really bothering me: People think that server maintenance automatically means patch.

 

IF SWTOR were to get patches every week, that wouldn't really speak well for BW at all!

 

They are running a PTS. The PTS is meant to be an environment where gamers can test the latest patch that is in public testing.

 

Anybody here thinks that maybe 3 - 5 days testing is okay?

 

Because from the looks of it that may well be the timeframe between BW putting it on the PTS and then pulling down the normal servers for maintenance.

 

Feels a bit like 'well, you had your chance to help us make sure that SWTOR is top quality, but hey, you blinked so you lost it'...

 

So why not give it a bit of time, wait for a few patches to add up, and then as part of the maintenance load up the patch 1.0.1 to 1.0.5 in say 4 weeks down the line?

 

What that would mean is that every single server could be brought down at a different maintenance time for regular maintenance and only once in 4 weeks we'll see a longer general downtime...

 

or even better: detach the patching from the maintenance cycle completely!

 

You bring down one server or server cluster at a time, do your maintenance, it's up again in an hour or so, and then you go to the next. And when the patch comes, well, you bring all the servers down, you load up the patch, you start up all the servers and make sure all the parameters for the new version are fine, and you got the newly patched servers up and running in probably less than 2 hrs.

[Keadin]

I've taken to badgering mister Reid's Twitter about it. 2 tweets per day, here's to hoping he'll take the hint at some point. I'd ask people to do the same, the worst possible thing to happen to this issue is for the noise to quiet down, that must not happen. So if you have a twitter account, ask @Rockjaw the tough questions, and keep doing so.

[jihn]

Certainly hope people will not stop making noise about this, its something all europeans should be together about.

[prmsntrcrps]

Certainly hope people will not stop making noise about this, its something all europeans should be together about.

 

I agree 100%, keep these threads on the first page. I got the feeling it will take alot of noise to make them change this.

[ArSo]

canceled sub

[Keadin]

I agree 100%, keep these threads on the first page. I got the feeling it will take alot of noise to make them change this.

 

On the other hand, the SGRA topic had over 14 incarnations and didn't get a reply until 3 or 4 versions áfter Corey Butler dropped the "no"-bomb on the supporters.

 

I'm guessing it will be another 2 weeks or before we get any reply, and another 3 or 4 weeks after that for something official, and IF they decide to implement European maintenance, it won't be for another 3 or 4 months.

 

Is my optimistic guess.

[Tarka]

There is also something which is really bothering me: People think that server maintenance automatically means patch.

 

IF SWTOR were to get patches every week, that wouldn't really speak well for BW at all!

 

Actually it WOULD speak well for BW, because it would give the perception that they are on top of fixing things asap. However, that can cause issues too.

 

Essentially it's a "balancing act" between getting the patches out asap, and making sure they really DO fix things and not break others.

 

They are running a PTS. The PTS is meant to be an environment where gamers can test the latest patch that is in public testing.

 

Anybody here thinks that maybe 3 - 5 days testing is okay?

 

It depends on WHAT is being tested. Some fixes may be "no brainers".

 

How much testing time is necessary? Well, how long is a piece of string?

 

Because from the looks of it that may well be the timeframe between BW putting it on the PTS and then pulling down the normal servers for maintenance.

 

Feels a bit like 'well, you had your chance to help us make sure that SWTOR is top quality, but hey, you blinked so you lost it'...

 

So why not give it a bit of time, wait for a few patches to add up, and then as part of the maintenance load up the patch 1.0.1 to 1.0.5 in say 4 weeks down the line?

 

Whilst I agree that patches do need testing time, don't be fooled into thinking that player testing is the only testing being done. Prior to a patch being released on the PTS, Bioware will have run it past their internal testing / QA team first.

 

What that would mean is that every single server could be brought down at a different maintenance time for regular maintenance and only once in 4 weeks we'll see a longer general downtime...

 

or even better: detach the patching from the maintenance cycle completely!

 

it is not unheard of for patches to be be released outside of the usual downtime schedules. It depends on what is being patched and the urgency for it to be released.

 

You bring down one server or server cluster at a time, do your maintenance, it's up again in an hour or so, and then you go to the next. And when the patch comes, well, you bring all the servers down, you load up the patch, you start up all the servers and make sure all the parameters for the new version are fine, and you got the newly patched servers up and running in probably less than 2 hrs.

 

Bringing down each individual server cluster may not be feasible. However, what DOES seem to be feasible for other companies is to offer "localised" downtimes so that entire server farms can be taken down simultaneously, without affecting the other server farms in other regions.

 

Which brings us right back to the reason for this thread.

Edited January 2, 2012 by Tarka

[Tarka]

What perplexes me is why the chosen times are from midday until 5 pm. One error, like last time, that causes the downtime to eat into the evening, and we're faced with significant queues and lost evening time which will negatively affect a large proportion of the playerbase. This is just bizarre.

 

Agreed. Anyone with half a brain could have seen issues arising from this kind of situation.

 

You would have thought that because of LAST time, Bioware would have realised their mistake and made damned sure they were never going to be in that position again. But moving downtime back by only a couple of hours is still a boneheaded decision.

 

Seriously Bioware, did you honestly think that moving the schedule back by just 2 hours will be enough?

 

I can only conclude that Bioware do the maintenance remotely from the US and thus the times are to suit their employees. Nobody employed in the EU would pick those times. Who'd want to deploy a patch that has to finish on time or you get to stay late, when they can pick a time where it starts in the early morning and then is finishing when you get in for work, so if there are issues, you have a working day to go at the problem? Oh wait I just described the US times...

 

You may be on to something there. Perhaps the Ireland server farm team don't have the same level of automony and that all maintenance is being conducted remotely from the US.

 

Whilst such a concept MAY seem good in theory, often the reality is different.

 

EVE, which is a global single server and thus has to react globally, at least had the sense to have their daily downtime at 11 GMT for an hour, so that it's at a sensible time for London & Iceland work times (where it's based & developed respectively), and inconveniences as few people as possible around the world. There's never a perfect solution, but the current one chosen by Bioware is just plain weird.

 

Weird isn't the word I would choose to describe Biowares downtime strategy. Completely idiotic is more the phrase I'd choose.

 

Obviously CCP has more capabilities when it comes to rolling out patches. It cannot be argued against that CCP's 1 hour downtime is impressive. However, Trions downtimes and rolling restarts of servers have been pretty impressive as well. With downtimes only lasting minutes.

 

There is also something very odd going on if it takes this long to deploy patches. I'd be the first to say that it's not a trivial task and there's plenty of setup & testing to do, but five hours that so far the first time tried ran more like to eight hours is a heck of a long time.

 

I gotta agree, the process of maintenance does take time and a lot of resources. But still, when you look at the competition 8 hours is a LONG time to do this kind of thing.

Edited January 2, 2012 by Tarka

[Keadin]

But moving downtime back by only a couple of hours is still a boneheaded decision.

 

They didn't actually move anything back, they're starting 2 hours sooner, making the entire maintenance 2 hours longer. It still doesn't end until 5 PM, just like last time (ignoring the extensions).

[TheHauntingBard]

What I don't understand is that such a big company and publisher can't figure out that Europe has different time zones.

Taking servers down up to 20:00/21:00/22:00 in most countries is just ridiculous.

That's what happened last time.

 

They can't possibly state that they provide good service to the EU while they take the servers down in convenient times in the US.

 

You expect EA to have learned after warhammer and Bioware to have looked at Blizzard how they managed the EU.

Edited January 2, 2012 by TheHauntingBard