Should Maintenance have ETAs?

StackonClown

Lots of people in different timezones are affected differently by Maintenance - people outside of US/EU often have maintenance during prime time - Wouldn't it be useful to have an ETA - to the nearest hour?

Tezlakipuka

YES of course maintenance should have ETA's! - even if it is lengthy, I can plan around it

StackonClown

YES of course maintenance should have ETA's! - even if it is lengthy, I can plan around it

Tezlakipuka wrote: »

lol - who is that guy

BohnT

Maintenance takes its time, if you are so desperately waiting to be able to play again I'd make a doctors appointment because that sounds highly addicted.

JasonSilverSpring

Useless poll. I do wish they gave some sort of ETA, but the first time they missed it people would go nuts. Gina has gotten such flack in the past when she would post they would be up soon and then an issue came up.

I am sure they want the servers back online as quickly as possible.

Nermy

StackonClown wrote: »

Tezlakipuka wrote: »

lol - who is that guy

Not sure if that's a joke or not...

Voxicity

NO I'm happy to be underinformed and will happily tolerate the lack of information or updates as a paying customer

ETA's don't work when the company usually has no idea if it will take 2 hours or 8 hours

It happens every single time a new patch comes out

"Should be up within the hour" 4 hours later "We're planning on bringing the servers back up in 2 hours"

So as nice as it would be to have an ETA, I don't really think it's likely, and definitely not likely to be accurate.

StackonClown

YES of course maintenance should have ETA's! - even if it is lengthy, I can plan around it

BohnT wrote: »

Maintenance takes its time, if you are so desperately waiting to be able to play again I'd make a doctors appointment because that sounds highly addicted.

lol - wont be playing for a few for a day or two

Voxicity

NO I'm happy to be underinformed and will happily tolerate the lack of information or updates as a paying customer

StackonClown wrote: »

Tezlakipuka wrote: »

lol - who is that guy

StackonClown

YES of course maintenance should have ETA's! - even if it is lengthy, I can plan around it

JasonSilverSpring wrote: »

Useless poll. I do wish they gave some sort of ETA, but the first time they missed it people would go nuts. Gina has gotten such flack in the past when she would post they would be up soon and then an issue came up.

I am sure they want the servers back online as quickly as possible.

But according to that logic noone will ever give an ETA?
Yes people will be unhappy if it is missed - but thats life -deal with it!

Belidos

NO I'm happy to be underinformed and will happily tolerate the lack of information or updates as a paying customer

Nope. A maintenance will end when it's ready to end. Anything could happen during a maintenance that could extend its time, and if that happened we would end up with tons of posts about ZoS lying to us about when it will be finished.

Vipstaakki

NO I'm happy to be underinformed and will happily tolerate the lack of information or updates as a paying customer

The maintenance is already during prime time in EU

RobDaCool

No, because if it goes one minute over ETA people will complain.

I'm no IT guy, I have no idea what they do during maintenance; they could work hard or they could simply take the servers down to save money.

StackonClown

YES of course maintenance should have ETA's! - even if it is lengthy, I can plan around it

Belidos wrote: »

Nope. A maintenance will end when it's ready to end. Anything could happen during a maintenance that could extend its time, and if that happened we would end up with tons of posts about ZoS lying to us about when it will be finished.

ETA - is an estimate... its not lying, its planning and projecting downtime - its not hard - almost ALL IT departments need to do it - cmon guys - arent a lot of you or at least some faimiliar with this ?

JKorr

ETA, sometime the same day the maintenance starts.

Just looking at your post shows why they would be totally insane to even think about giving more exact information than that. Just the slightest touch of opinionated bias in that poll, no? Divines forbid they go 5 minutes over any eta they give; rabid rants about compensation, refunds, free stuff, and all the other stuff that's been posted with every single longer than the poster thinks is appropriate downtime would show up.

This thread is a case in point.

By the way, you really should specify; "paying customer".....is that someone who subbed, or someone who paid once for the game? How long does the cost of the game without a sub cover the right to rant that a "paying customer" isn't getting the value they paid for? Even though that paying customer agreed to the ToS?
{edit; spelling}

StackonClown

YES of course maintenance should have ETA's! - even if it is lengthy, I can plan around it

RobDaCool wrote: »

No, because if it goes one minute over ETA people will complain.

I'm no IT guy, I have no idea what they do during maintenance; they could work hard or they could simply take the servers down to save money.

So then trains, buses, planes everything shouldnt have estimated arrival times - i.e. ETA, since people will complain if its not down to the minute or second... ?

Voxicity

NO I'm happy to be underinformed and will happily tolerate the lack of information or updates as a paying customer

StackonClown wrote: »

RobDaCool wrote: »

No, because if it goes one minute over ETA people will complain.

I'm no IT guy, I have no idea what they do during maintenance; they could work hard or they could simply take the servers down to save money.

So then trains, buses, planes everything shouldnt have estimated arrival times - i.e. ETA, since people will complain if its not down to the minute or second... ?

I don't think you can really compare public transport to a video game.

StackonClown

YES of course maintenance should have ETA's! - even if it is lengthy, I can plan around it

JKorr wrote: »

ETA, sometime the same day the maintenance starts.

Just looking at your post shows why they would be totally insane to even think about giving more exact information than that. Just the slightest touch of opinionated bias in that poll, no? Divines forbid they go 5 minutes over any eta they give; rabid rants about compensation, refunds, free stuff, and all the other stuff that's been posted with every single longer than the poster thinks is appropriate downtime would show up.

This thread is a case in point.

By the way, you really should specify; "paying customer".....is that someone who subbed, or someone who paid once for the game? How long does the cost of the game without a sub cover the right to rant that a "paying customer" isn't getting the value they paid for? Even though that paying customer agreed to the ToS?
{edit; spelling}

You're making baseless assumptions about my reaction - you havent read my posts at all.. Who wants compensations? just keep us informed if you're running late.. Dont assume my reaction and enforce that on me... Why should it matter, people paid for the game and/or subbed - i did both -

SodanTok

NO I'm happy to be underinformed and will happily tolerate the lack of information or updates as a paying customer

StackonClown wrote: »

Belidos wrote: »

Nope. A maintenance will end when it's ready to end. Anything could happen during a maintenance that could extend its time, and if that happened we would end up with tons of posts about ZoS lying to us about when it will be finished.

ETA - is an estimate... its not lying, its planning and projecting downtime - its not hard - almost ALL IT departments need to do it - cmon guys - arent a lot of you or at least some faimiliar with this ?

You never ever estimate to customers unless you really really have to or the damage was already done and the estimate is to stop the panic. They will complain more about not delivering on estimate than not having estimate. Case in point your thread

Swifigames

YES of course maintenance should have ETA's! - even if it is lengthy, I can plan around it

JasonSilverSpring wrote: »

I am sure they want the servers back online as quickly as possible.

I agree, the sooner they are up and running, the more crowns they sell.
The more crowns they sell, the more money they make.

Belidos

NO I'm happy to be underinformed and will happily tolerate the lack of information or updates as a paying customer

ETA - is an estimate... its not lying

You know that, and I know that, but the hundreds of whiny scrubs waiting for the servers to come up as if it's the end of the world don't know, or more accurately will refuse to believe that.

Gadget4

NO I'm happy to be underinformed and will happily tolerate the lack of information or updates as a paying customer

No, don't care, will play whenever

Jim_Pipp

YES of course maintenance should have ETA's! - even if it is lengthy, I can plan around it

And my god please start putting a few more time zones in your maintenance announcements.

I am an idiot and often manage to somehow get the wrong answer when I google "what is 6am edt in gmt." Today google told me 10am, but servers went down at 11am (and I am grumpy because I only realised at 11:15), and now I am being grumpy on the forums because I want to get online to feed my starving horses.

StackonClown

YES of course maintenance should have ETA's! - even if it is lengthy, I can plan around it

SodanTok wrote: »

StackonClown wrote: »

Belidos wrote: »

Nope. A maintenance will end when it's ready to end. Anything could happen during a maintenance that could extend its time, and if that happened we would end up with tons of posts about ZoS lying to us about when it will be finished.

ETA - is an estimate... its not lying, its planning and projecting downtime - its not hard - almost ALL IT departments need to do it - cmon guys - arent a lot of you or at least some faimiliar with this ?

You never ever estimate to customers unless you really really have to or the damage was already done and the estimate is to stop the panic. They will complain more about not delivering on estimate than not having estimate. Case in point your thread

Case *not* in point.

if you read above I said provide an ETA to the nearest hour not second, and also said 'even if its lengthy' - I also said elsewhere, if you run late , bad luck - keep going and keep us informed - thats it!

Epona222

I think what might be the thing that people want (although they say they want an ETA, I think after more than 3 years playing this game I think that is probably unrealistic), is just some soothing words from Zeni during the maintenance.

They could probably start an official maintenance thread and program a bot to post on it once every half hour using a phrase from a database of not very specific but generally reassuring messages. And the thing is, I think people would appreciate it

Kind of like a forum version of "on hold" music

eso_nya

NO I'm happy to be underinformed and will happily tolerate the lack of information or updates as a paying customer

Cause its the more biased answer!

im more happy not to know the time, than getting told "in 5 hours" and than in 5 hours getting told "within the next 30 mins" for another 5 hours.

If i would do the maintenance and u'd ask for an eta, i'd tell at least 3 or 4 times of what i would really expect, just to have a buffer for when sht hits the fan. Marketing wont be happy with that eta. customers would not be happy with that eta. And ppl would complain "y u say 24 hours and than do in 4??? we no need eta if it isnt precise!!"

hellcatlizzieb16_ESO

YES of course maintenance should have ETA's! - even if it is lengthy, I can plan around it

They could at least give a minimum time the maintenance will take I.e min 2hr/4hr etc people would at least know a time to pop back and see if it's up yet.

Hippie4927

NO I'm happy to be underinformed and will happily tolerate the lack of information or updates as a paying customer

I can play or I can clean my house. As long as the servers are down, my house wins! If they gave an ETA, I would be sitting at my computer expecting the servers up instead of finishing my cleaning. So, I don't care about an ETA.

LadyDestiny

YES of course maintenance should have ETA's! - even if it is lengthy, I can plan around it

Yes.....most mmo's I have played give some kind of estimate and then update if it takes longer. Zos is good at being silent.........

Belidos

NO I'm happy to be underinformed and will happily tolerate the lack of information or updates as a paying customer

Jim_Pipp wrote: »

And my god please start putting a few more time zones in your maintenance announcements.

I am an idiot and often manage to somehow get the wrong answer when I google "what is 6am edt in gmt." Today google told me 10am, but servers went down at 11am (and I am grumpy because I only realised at 11:15), and now I am being grumpy on the forums because I want to get online to feed my starving horses.

Probably because you searched GMT, we're not on GMT at the moment, we're on BST. UTC (universal time coordinated) is GMT, it's just a another name for it, mainly just to please the rest of the world So at the moment we're on UTC/GMT +1, or as we know it BST.

StackonClown

YES of course maintenance should have ETA's! - even if it is lengthy, I can plan around it

Epona222 wrote: »

I think what might be the thing that people want (although they say they want an ETA, I think after more than 3 years playing this game I think that is probably unrealistic), is just some soothing words from Zeni during the maintenance.

Honestly, it doesnt really phase me how long they take - I said elsewhere 15 hours a week is fine for me. I find it a touch arrogant in principal they choose not to provide an ETA to the player base - and I find it laughable that people actually defend this approach and troll people like me for getting ready to make 'rabid rants' and 'demand compensation'.