Add a clock into forums or stop giving us maintenance times in some vague time zone offsets

Katinas

We will be performing our regular maintenance on the North American megaserver on Monday at 8:00AM EDT.
We will be performing our regular maintenance on the European megaserver on Monday at 10:00PM EDT.

To figure out when exactly that is I need to find out a) what the Americans consider AM and PM, b) what time zone is EDT, c) look up how many hours that is from GMT which is the standard time from which all + and - zones are calculated, d) add or remove the hours that my country is from GMT.
Can you please add a clock into the forum with a simple "Convert to my time zone" and "Convert to forum standard time"? Furthermore there is the vague 12 PM and 12 AM which can be the same or twenty four hours difference depending on how you see it. Why does it have to be so complicated? Yes, this is a game made by the USA company and yes it is probably trivial for US community but it's so frustrating for many others. If adding a clock is too complicated can you please start announcing times in GMT? And yes, GMT is the only standard with which you cannot go wrong.

Induron

I would vote for you if you ever decided to run for office.

Couldn't have put it better.

ers101284b14_ESO

http://everytimezone.com/

Katinas

ers101284b14_ESO wrote: »

http://everytimezone.com/

Thanks for the effort but this completely misses the point. I'm suggesting that they would stop announcing maintenance times for international community in Eastern American and Canadian times.

ers101284b14_ESO

Katinas wrote: »

ers101284b14_ESO wrote: »

http://everytimezone.com/

Thanks for the effort but this completely misses the point. I'm suggesting that they would stop announcing maintenance times for international community in Eastern American and Canadian times.

Being an American company they aren't going to. A lot of companies will only announce it for their time.

freespirit

On the F1 official site they have a little box which gives the times of practice, qualifying and the actual race in the time of the country the race is in.....

At the bottom of this box is an interactable 'convert to your time', so with a simple click the times are converted for you......

Something like this would be great.

AlexDougherty

Katinas wrote: »

We will be performing our regular maintenance on the North American megaserver on Monday at 8:00AM EDT.
We will be performing our regular maintenance on the European megaserver on Monday at 10:00PM EDT.

To figure out when exactly that is I need to find out a) what the Americans consider AM and PM, b) what time zone is EDT, c) look up how many hours that is from GMT which is the standard time from which all + and - zones are calculated, d) add or remove the hours that my country is from GMT.

Americans follow the same rules for AM and PM as everybody else on the planet.

Google will tell you what you need to add or subtract to GMT to find the time, it's very simple maths, even a five year old could do it.

Oh and Britian isn't on GMT at the minute, we are on BST or British Summer Time, there is a difference.

twev

Katinas wrote: »

We will be performing our regular maintenance on the North American megaserver on Monday at 8:00AM EDT.
We will be performing our regular maintenance on the European megaserver on Monday at 10:00PM EDT.

To figure out when exactly that is I need to find out a) what the Americans consider AM and PM, b) what time zone is EDT, c) look up how many hours that is from GMT which is the standard time from which all + and - zones are calculated, d) add or remove the hours that my country is from GMT.
Can you please add a clock into the forum with a simple "Convert to my time zone" and "Convert to forum standard time"? Furthermore there is the vague 12 PM and 12 AM which can be the same or twenty four hours difference depending on how you see it. Why does it have to be so complicated? Yes, this is a game made by the USA company and yes it is probably trivial for US community but it's so frustrating for many others. If adding a clock is too complicated can you please start announcing times in GMT? And yes, GMT is the only standard with which you cannot go wrong.

I'm assuming, for the sake of argument, that CUT, UTC, UT0, UT1, UT2, or UT1R, wouldn't work for you, then?

Just asking.....




(Just trying to inject a little humor here).

Katinas

AlexDougherty wrote: »

Google will tell you what you need to add or subtract to GMT to find the time, it's very simple maths, even a five year old could do it.

As Abnur Tharn famously put it, "We don't have a child of five."
I can do my maths, I appeal to the absurdity that Zenimax crew that announce times here on forums do so in the way they do. If Zenimax were an English company would you be happy if the spell and ability tooltips read not meters but furlongs?

AlexDougherty

Katinas wrote: »

Furthermore there is the vague 12 PM and 12 AM which can be the same or twenty four hours difference depending on how you see it.

Technically there is no 12PM or 12AM, they would be 12 Midnight and 12 Noon, AM and PM are relative to them, but that's just being a Smart Alec (pun intended)

For digital clocks and computers though, 12PM is midnight and 12AM in noon, but only because they are built to handle temporal anomalies like Noon.

Taself

AlexDougherty wrote: »

Katinas wrote: »

Furthermore there is the vague 12 PM and 12 AM which can be the same or twenty four hours difference depending on how you see it.

Technically there is no 12PM or 12AM, they would be 12 Midnight and 12 Noon, AM and PM are relative to them, but that's just being a Smart Alec (pun intended)

For digital clocks and computers though, 12PM is midnight and 12AM in noon, but only because they are built to handle temporal anomalies like Noon.

Well don't know about rest of the world but 12AM is midnight and 12PM is noon in Australia.

But do agree I'd love a button to do an auto convert to the local time zone.

JKorr

Katinas wrote: »

AlexDougherty wrote: »

Google will tell you what you need to add or subtract to GMT to find the time, it's very simple maths, even a five year old could do it.

As Abnur Tharn famously put it, "We don't have a child of five."
I can do my maths, I appeal to the absurdity that Zenimax crew that announce times here on forums do so in the way they do. If Zenimax were an English company would you be happy if the spell and ability tooltips read not meters but furlongs?

They have the tooltips set to meters? I never noticed.

Strange. I'm much more used to inches, feet, and yards. Very few things require metric measurements. Meters, as far as I'm concerned, track the use of utilities like electricity, natural gas, and water for your home. Furlongs are used in horse racing.

They could be more helpful for the time. I don't have an issue with it however, since I live on the same side of the country as Zenimax and don't have to convert anything.

Auralia

It's not hard to work out, you can find time converters with a google search.
Maintenance usually happens at 8pm GMT+8 Perth time.

But guess it's handy for people who don't like to use their brain and can't figure out how to convert time themselves to have an auto convert clock.

Katinas

JKorr wrote: »

I don't have an issue with it however, since I live on the same side of the country as Zenimax and don't have to convert anything.

That's why you don't understand how awkward it is for the majority (non-Americans are a majority in this game) to always have to convert time from a time zone (EDT) which is itself a conversion from GMT. Why not get rid of it entirely and announce times in official, proper format.

Sethowar

Precursor - I'm Australian.

I think that every international game should run the game and the forums on GMT. I play many non-british games that do this and it makes life so much easier.

Everybody knows how much +/- they are from the middle, nobody wants to deal with the *** that comes with the 4 different time zones across the US and then deciphering who is in daylight savings and whatnot.

GMT conversions are easy for everybody. They invented the clock there, just go back to base. Life would be better.

Rosveen

I always read French announcements because of this. I'd check the German ones, but what the hell is MEST?

Katinas

Auralia wrote: »

It's not hard to work out, you can find time converters with a google search.
Maintenance usually happens at 8pm GMT+8 Perth time.

But guess it's handy for people who don't like to use their brain and can't figure out how to convert time themselves to have an auto convert clock.

What I'm asking is for the administrators to be pragmatic about how they announce things. If they want to say that server maintenance is at four o'clock they should say that it is at four o'clock, instead of saying it is at seven o'clock summer time which means it is at six o'clock but we are two hours away from the universal time so there you go isn't it complicated we will continue announcing times and dates as we see fit. And if they want to say that a certain achievement adds you a beige dye colour, then they should say beige instead of saying well you know what this achievement gives you a colour which is sorta brown but then again it can be called grey yellow but you will see what you mean when you get the achievement.
The absurdity here was added to point out that times are announced in an absurd manner. Very little is asked to make it pragmatic and understandable - announce it in GMT.

Induron

ers101284b14_ESO wrote: »

Katinas wrote: »

ers101284b14_ESO wrote: »

http://everytimezone.com/

Thanks for the effort but this completely misses the point. I'm suggesting that they would stop announcing maintenance times for international community in Eastern American and Canadian times.

Being an American company they aren't going to. A lot of companies will only announce it for their time.

If you are providing a service in the EU, for your EU based clients, why not make the effort and state the time as most are accustomed to in that Continent.

Circuitous

Hey so this is actually a pretty easy thing to implement. While I don't agree that converting time is such a difficult prospect, I see no reason not to add such a feature.

Inversus

Although I agree putting EU dates/times in EDT seems a little illogical, and I'd prefer GMT, it's pretty easy to convert timezones. Many American games companies will only give an EDT time, it's pretty simple to convert to your own.

I use this one as it's pretty simple, put in the EDT time and it'll show what that time will be in your own timezone. http://www.worldtimebuddy.com/

Night_Watch

Web search: time zone to time zone such as EDT to GMT or EDT to BST or whichever is needed usually brings up many hits that are (usually) accurate.

I just used the first link shown when searching as noted. I got EDT > GMT and BST with cities listed that they apply to.

It is very easy to get a time conversion from a web search.

[pedant]

Ante meridiem (a.m.) means before midday and post meridiem (p.m.) means after midday all over the world!

[/pedant]

LOL

That said;

It is quite nice when forum notices have time listings for multiple time zones as shown in the notice on this thread. An additional link to a world time zone convertor could be useful for some. A 'convert to local (my) time' could be a nice alternate too. Though, for me, non of these are needed.

Khami

Induron wrote: »

ers101284b14_ESO wrote: »

Katinas wrote: »

ers101284b14_ESO wrote: »

http://everytimezone.com/

Thanks for the effort but this completely misses the point. I'm suggesting that they would stop announcing maintenance times for international community in Eastern American and Canadian times.

Being an American company they aren't going to. A lot of companies will only announce it for their time.

If you are providing a service in the EU, for your EU based clients, why not make the effort and state the time as most are accustomed to in that Continent.

Only the English version is in American time. The German and French translations are posted in their local time.

I'm sorry but you missed that.

Tubben

Katinas wrote: »

We will be performing our regular maintenance on the North American megaserver on Monday at 8:00AM EDT.
We will be performing our regular maintenance on the European megaserver on Monday at 10:00PM EDT.

To figure out when exactly that is I need to find out a) what the Americans consider AM and PM, b) what time zone is EDT, c) look up how many hours that is from GMT which is the standard time from which all + and - zones are calculated, d) add or remove the hours that my country is from GMT.

Atleast for us germans they translated the time to MEST (which means CEST, MEST isnt really used anymore).

Thanks for this

smeeprocketnub19_ESO

Actually, all these people are trolling you. Let me clarify how AM and PM work in North America

From 0001 hours to 0300 hours it is AM, from 0301 to 0800 it is pm, from 0801 to 1500 it is APM, otherwise known as NALT (North American Lunch Time) then from 1501 to 2400 it is AM again.

It's not that hard to learn. I mean we all bother to learn AM and PM as you do it, just take some time to learn it our way.

Incidentally, metric is european, we use empirical (I think that's the term) so it isn't even set in american measurements.

Holycannoli

I don't go on european MMO forums and complain that they aren't posting times in EDT.

I also don't play european MMOs. How about that.

And AM is from midnight to noon, PM is from noon to midnight. It's that simple, much simpler than smeeprocketnub said. Plus I think he screwed up the times. It's not PM from 3:01 AM to 8:00 AM, nor is it AM from 3:01 PM to midnight. I actually have no idea wtf he's talking about.

Night_Watch

smeeprocketnub19_ESO wrote: »

Incidentally, metric is european, we use empirical (I think that's the term) so it isn't even set in american measurements.

I'm English and much prefer the imperial [Imperial] system of measurement to the metric system. That said, I use both and know that as much as others do not like metric they use both also.

Yeah! Bring back imperialism! Ermm .... not quite what I meant! I meant to ask for a return to imperial measurements as apposed to the metric system.

Now if I could just fathom which link to send for comparison! I wish I had a grain of intelligence but such is out of my league. Stone me! Here ya go;

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_units

Back on topic;

http://www.worldtimebuddy.com/edt-to-gmt-converter

http://wwp.greenwichmeantime.co.uk/time-zone/usa/eastern-time/convert/

http://www.timebie.com/timezone/gmtedt.php

These three are the first in the list (for me) from the search for 'edt to gmt'. There are other useful 'world time' sites available.