PC-EU Server Update - April 11

Riverlynn

ZOS_MattFiror wrote: »

[*] At some point next week we will do the same for PC NA - even though we haven't had to turn on queuing for PC NA, we want to make sure additional capacity is added there as well to keep up with the growing population on that megaserver.
[/list]

That's my favourite bit - being proud that they're fixing something BEFORE it breaks.

Newsflash for you @ZOS_MattFiror - a professional company does this as a matter of course, without needing to list it as a bullet point positive.

DJfriede

ZOS_MattFiror wrote: »

Everyone,
I know that this has not been an awesome couple of weeks for our EU PC players, which is why we have worked so hard to get additional capacity online as soon as possible. While having a growing player population is great, we know it’s not a good experience to have the population outgrow the current server hardware, or to have to wait in a queue to get into the game you love to play. We'll definitely keep an eye on things and will keep everyone updated as warranted.

I truly wonder how long it took their marketing spin doctors to come up with this newspeech marketing blabla. Not a single bad word in those lines, only a lot of negated positives.

magicsprout

xbox na performance is totally hideous now hint hint

FlyingSwan

Riverlynn wrote: »

ZOS_MattFiror wrote: »

[*] At some point next week we will do the same for PC NA - even though we haven't had to turn on queuing for PC NA, we want to make sure additional capacity is added there as well to keep up with the growing population on that megaserver.
[/list]

That's my favourite bit - being proud that they're fixing something BEFORE it breaks.

Newsflash for you @ZOS_MattFiror - a professional company does this as a matter of course, without needing to list it as a bullet point positive.

I read it like that too. I was sat at home thinking, "so this guy is shouting out loud about simply doing his day job?"

What a time to be alive.

DrOuttaSight

ZOS_MattFiror wrote: »

Adding server capacity should alleviate load-causing server problems and enable us to raise our "concurrent" supported user number well above our nightly maximums, while also removing the queues. We are still working on overall client architecture and performance fixes, which are unrelated to this particular issue. You should see more information about our client performance progress in the coming months.

I know that this has not been an awesome couple of weeks for our EU PC players, which is why we have worked so hard to get additional capacity online as soon as possible. While having a growing player population is great, we know it’s not a good experience to have the population outgrow the current server hardware, or to have to wait in a queue to get into the game you love to play. We'll definitely keep an eye on things and will keep everyone updated as warranted.

Thanks,

Matt

@ZOS_MattFiror

Please I really do hope you have added enough hardware, to future proof server capacity,
to ovoid the implementing queuing system again.

If you have been monitoring the masses of players that play ESO,
you should have by now understood, that you have customers past, and present that wish to logon to play.

Queuing to get onto a really good online game is a deterrent, there is nothing worse than waiting in a que with a count down timer that counts down to 30 seconds freeze..., to wait..., then having to wait minutes more....., to get into the avatar section, then another 2min load screen...., before entering the game.

Then once in the game, having to wait along time to travel.... from wayshrine to..... wayshrine, or wayshrine to..... houses

Spend/invest the money now, to avoid implementing a queuing system in the future.

Alucardo

ZOS_MattFiror wrote: »

I know that this has not been an awesome couple of weeks for our EU PC players

Naww don't say that. I'm not sure what gave you that impression.

Sanctuary_Reaper

ZOS_MattFiror wrote: »

I know that this has not been an awesome couple of weeks for our EU PC players, which is why we have worked so hard to get additional capacity online as soon as possible. While having a growing player population is great, we know it’s not a good experience to have the population outgrow the current server hardware, or to have to wait in a queue to get into the game you PAY to play. We'll definitely keep an eye on things and will keep everyone updated as warranted.

Thanks,

Matt

@ZOS_MattFiror fixed that for you.

Mayrael

FlyingSwan wrote: »

NupidStoob wrote: »

todokete wrote: »

Nice renewing my 6 month sub

At least wait and see how this plays out.

Indeed. I'll certainly hope for the best, but this is a company that has consistently failed to deliver on their promises, so I'll assume it's more hot air until proven otherwise.

Exactly my thoughts. They claim they fixed something nevery patch just to turn out it's still bugged after all, but thanks to to "fix" new things are now bugged to. I'll renew my sub only when I see how this will work and I will see some improvement.

MikaHR

Tandor wrote: »

Ek1 wrote: »

ZOS_MattFiror wrote: »

Everyone,
We will take PC EU offline tomorrow (Thursday, April 18) morning at 12pm CEST/6am EST for maintenance to configure the megaserver to recognize the additional hardware.

Hey Matt,

while the server problems are bad and they originate mainly from the design flaws that haven't been corrected since beta (need help with that? I charge only 130€/h) but you got bigger problems at hand.

Lets face it, you have failed to address an issue that affects 90% of your user base, every day for as long as six long years. Yeah, since pre beta. For potential customer base the ratio stays the same so the problem has even bigger impact on your sales and incoming customers. Think about amount of ass whopping there would be if market division would know about this? And the most saddest part is that it could be addressed with affordable actions inside the firm.

So Bethesda, please stop using date format that originates from mid 20th century that even The Chicago manual of style (that Americans so love to use with its RollerCoasteR WritTing Style) directly discourages. There is international standard that works and is comprehensible by 90+% of world, even by the 5-7% segment that seems to be your reason of using it.

And Matt.
If you ever work under me, with me, above me or in the same building or city, you are fired if I ever again see you refer midday as morning.
Showing up to work at 12:00 is not morning, no matter what date-time format you plan to use to hide your sleepy ass. Eating breakfast at 12:00 is looong past morning, ask your mom. Returning a report at 12:00 when it was supposed to be done at morning, is NOT on time.

Morning is that period of time between when I get up and when I have my lunch. I assume it's the same for most people.

No it is the time when people have breakfast and prepare to go to work.

We pretty much have good idea who considers lunch time/noon "morning"

JykJax

Mayrael wrote: »

FlyingSwan wrote: »

NupidStoob wrote: »

todokete wrote: »

Nice renewing my 6 month sub

At least wait and see how this plays out.

Indeed. I'll certainly hope for the best, but this is a company that has consistently failed to deliver on their promises, so I'll assume it's more hot air until proven otherwise.

Exactly my thoughts. They claim they fixed something nevery patch just to turn out it's still bugged after all, but thanks to to "fix" new things are now bugged to. I'll renew my sub only when I see how this will work and I will see some improvement.

We will discover pretty soon if they fix the problem or not.

Tonight, if the server will return online at some point, every EU player will be in Cyrodyl.

Miswar

ZOS_MattFiror wrote: »

Everyone,

We've been working very hard on prepping additional server hardware to accommodate our burgeoning player base, especially in the EU - and I'm very happy to say that we've done it much faster than anticipated. We are wrapping up the work, and will have the additional capacity online for PC EU players before the upcoming Easter holiday weekend.

Here's how it will work:

• We will take PC EU offline tomorrow (Thursday, April 18) morning at 12pm CEST/6am EST for maintenance to configure the megaserver to recognize the additional hardware. Stay tuned for messaging from our Social and Community teams on how long the outage will be.
• At some point next week we will do the same for PC NA - even though we haven't had to turn on queuing for PC NA, we want to make sure additional capacity is added there as well to keep up with the growing population on that megaserver.

Adding server capacity should alleviate load-causing server problems and enable us to raise our "concurrent" supported user number well above our nightly maximums, while also removing the queues. We are still working on overall client architecture and performance fixes, which are unrelated to this particular issue. You should see more information about our client performance progress in the coming months.

I know that this has not been an awesome couple of weeks for our EU PC players, which is why we have worked so hard to get additional capacity online as soon as possible. While having a growing player population is great, we know it’s not a good experience to have the population outgrow the current server hardware, or to have to wait in a queue to get into the game you love to play. We'll definitely keep an eye on things and will keep everyone updated as warranted.

Thanks,

Matt

What are you going to do with the console servers?

They been crappy for years now... just nothing and try to cash milk the game?

Blunt question and expecting 0 reply as per usual with ZoS.

Hamish999

ZOS_MattFiror wrote: »

Everyone,
<snip>

• We will take PC EU offline tomorrow (Thursday, April 18) morning at 12pm CEST/6am EST for maintenance to configure the megaserver to recognize the additional hardware. Stay tuned for messaging from our Social and Community teams on how long the outage will be.
  <snip>
  
  Thanks,
  
  Matt

So 2 and a half hours in and not one word from said "Social and Community teams", great communication as always ...

@ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_JessicaFolsom @ZOS_MattFiror

Turelus

Hamish999 wrote: »

ZOS_MattFiror wrote: »

Everyone,
<snip>

• We will take PC EU offline tomorrow (Thursday, April 18) morning at 12pm CEST/6am EST for maintenance to configure the megaserver to recognize the additional hardware. Stay tuned for messaging from our Social and Community teams on how long the outage will be.
  <snip>
  
  Thanks,
  
  Matt

So 2 and a half hours in and not one word from said "Social and Community teams", great communication as always ...

ZOS_GinaBruno ZOS_JessicaFolsom ZOS_MattFiror

Bethesda Twitter has done updates, think the ZOS peeps maybe out of office still. I forget when they get in now we've all had our daylight savings happen.

https://twitter.com/BethesdaSupport/status/1118849042816077824

TequilaFire

Man give them a chance to have their first cup of coffee!

Turelus

TequilaFire wrote: »

Man give them a chance to have their first cup of coffee!

Indeed. One does not want to speak with a community manager before their first coffee (or tea).

todokete

Guild stores are the same...

Hamish999

TequilaFire wrote: »

Man give them a chance to have their first cup of coffee!

The biggest thing that has happened in ESO for a long time and they are out of the office? I don't care about time zones, that is unacceptable.

This could have been their redefining moment, what with the much promised "better communication" from them. A perfect opportunity to build some bridges with the PC EU community. Which rightly or wrongly has felt neglected by ZOS for a while now.

Also I don't use Twitter anymore @Turelus, the fact that not a single member of the Community Team (even a junior member or even a forum moderator) could be bothered to keep us updated is terrible PR.

Sanctuary_Reaper

Never used twitter since it appeared, and shouldnt have to for information, when im a member on the games official forum, where the community managers(still believe there just forum mods with a fancy title) should communicate with the community.

Should never have to visit a 3rd party site for information about the game/servers, simple as that.

ManwithBeard9

Hamish999 wrote: »

TequilaFire wrote: »

Man give them a chance to have their first cup of coffee!

The biggest thing that has happened in ESO for a long time and they are out of the office? I don't care about time zones, that is unacceptable.

This could have been their redefining moment, what with the much promised "better communication" from them. A perfect opportunity to build some bridges with the PC EU community. Which rightly or wrongly has felt neglected by ZOS for a while now.

Also I don't use Twitter anymore @Turelus, the fact that not a single member of the Community Team (even a junior member or even a forum moderator) couldn't be bothered to keep us updated is terrible PR.

The ESO team is likely monitoring all the hardware making sure everything is working properly and observing performance before they say anything is a success.

FlyingSwan

Hamish999 wrote: »

TequilaFire wrote: »

Man give them a chance to have their first cup of coffee!

The biggest thing that has happened in ESO for a long time and they are out of the office? I don't care about time zones, that is unacceptable.

This could have been their redefining moment, what with the much promised "better communication" from them. A perfect opportunity to build some bridges with the PC EU community. Which rightly or wrongly has felt neglected by ZOS for a while now.

Also I don't use Twitter anymore @Turelus, the fact that not a single member of the Community Team (even a junior member or even a forum moderator) could be bothered to keep us updated is terrible PR.

Very probably not the fault of the Community Team themselves, however. ZOS strikes me as a business with a poor management layer, it is seemingly run by a management team who value the wrong things. Put it this way, look at how little they value their customers, and you can see how little they are likely to value their staff.

So ZOS management probably did not allocate the team the time to do the necessary comms, didn't want to pay overtime etc.

ZOS nickel and dimes its customers, so it's bound to be doing the same to the people who have the misfortune to work there.

Turelus

Sanctuary_Reaper wrote: »

Never used twitter since it appeared, and shouldnt have to for information, when im a member on the games official forum, where the community managers(still believe there just forum mods with a fancy title) should communicate with the community.

Should never have to visit a 3rd party site for information about the game/servers, simple as that.

I was exactly of this opinion once. Then SWTOR came out and Bioware would only update server info via Twitter.

Sadly we live in the era of social media as a tool used for updates, if you want to stay connected with a game you need to keep an eye on Twitter. It's worth noting you don't even need an account to keep an eye on them, just bookmark the support page and leave it open in a tab.

Gythral

Are ZOS trying for get the EU yot not play their games in the future?

xxthir13enxx

I hope for the EU community sake that ZoS is taking a more Active role in removing and banning bots from the EU servers to make room for Actual players.
Bots don’t tend to sign out so there would be a Large chunk of the population that would be Always locked.

SammiSakura

@ZOS_MattFiror @ZOS_GinaBruno
and STILL only 5 days Guild History!!!
Why?!?!
This is just taking the micky now!

Ydrisselle

Hamish999 wrote: »

TequilaFire wrote: »

Man give them a chance to have their first cup of coffee!

The biggest thing that has happened in ESO for a long time and they are out of the office? I don't care about time zones, that is unacceptable.

This could have been their redefining moment, what with the much promised "better communication" from them. A perfect opportunity to build some bridges with the PC EU community. Which rightly or wrongly has felt neglected by ZOS for a while now.

Also I don't use Twitter anymore @Turelus, the fact that not a single member of the Community Team (even a junior member or even a forum moderator) could be bothered to keep us updated is terrible PR.

Every English speaking CM are in the US. (yes, I know that the German CMs are also speaking English, but not in this forum...) Europe has no official English speaking CM.

Sanctuary_Reaper

Turelus wrote: »

Sanctuary_Reaper wrote: »

Never used twitter since it appeared, and shouldnt have to for information, when im a member on the games official forum, where the community managers(still believe there just forum mods with a fancy title) should communicate with the community.

Should never have to visit a 3rd party site for information about the game/servers, simple as that.

I was exactly of this opinion once. Then SWTOR came out and Bioware would only update server info via Twitter.

Sadly we live in the era of social media as a tool used for updates, if you want to stay connected with a game you need to keep an eye on Twitter. It's worth noting you don't even need an account to keep an eye on them, just bookmark the support page and leave it open in a tab.

Regardless of the era we live in, if i have to go to twitter for updates/information from community mods, the presence of this forum is null and void. Which to be fair is true anyway, because the community mods dont communicate amyway.

FierceSam

EU Queue just moved to Cyrodiil.

It’s another fine mess from the team, you plan a grand party, but you only book the toilet.

If you spin it right the size of the queue is a mark of success not abject planning failure

ManwithBeard9

FierceSam wrote: »

EU Queue just moved to Cyrodiil.

It’s another fine mess from the team, you plan a grand party, but you only book the toilet.

If you spin it right the size of the queue is a mark of success not abject planning failure

The queue in Cyrodil is because of prime time and the 3rd week event is Cyrodil and Battleground Dailies. Stop being a s-lord for once.

dannyv

I've got to admit I'm possitvely surprised by the speed with which this was picked up and fixed. I was pretty annoyed with the login queue and wasn't to nice about it but I've got to take my words back. Compliments on how you handeled this.

Sandrock

oxygen_thief wrote: »

Sandrock wrote: »

1. All users who had ESO plus or made a purchase above 20 euro's in the crown store in the past 6 months will get priority queueing.(One loyal customer is worth more than 10 new users who are just trying out the game after all

this statement is false. do you know why? because they got your money already. you won't buy white horse again for example but new users can do it 10 times and their $ for ESO+ are same as yours thus you are worthless and don't deserve privileges. I guess that's how Thier model is functioning. they lure new players rip them off while newcomers are under the wow effect and want to support "the best mmo" then throw them away by ignoring bug lags and other problems. Nothing personal just business

That statement is very much true. In most businesses it has been shown that generally 80% of the revenue is generated by 20% of the clients. Video games that have been open about their sales have also confirmed this. That in RMT systems, a small minority is responsible for the majority of the sales.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/davelavinsky/2014/01/20/pareto-principle-how-to-use-it-to-dramatically-grow-your-business/

A loyal customer who has already been spending money in the game store is much more likely to be spending more over the years as new content is put on there.

If you had to pick between 1 paying customer and 1 new customer who just got the game you'd be insane if you picked the latter.