Update on NA server status

SilentVigil

floydmurphy.kg_ESO wrote: »

neomage84ub17_ESO wrote: »

Well....I didn't care much about the pets and crap. The Imperial is cool but I paid the extra money to get the 5 days of early access. So...

No you didn't. You paid the extra money on the IMPERIAL EDITION to be able to play as the IMPERIAL RACE.

There were several things promoted for each edition- early play time was one of these options and they promoted this heavily. Since we don't technically own the game (we pay for the right to play) having early access to play a game via the Internet is as valid an option as to play as an Imperial and I would wager is the main reason why many chose to pay for the pre-order.

Kaspar

Server Update #11:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6LcedD6NwMI

it's actually the first book.

floydmurphy.kg_ESO

http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/discussion/64824/eso-north-american-megaserver-downtime-4-1-to-4-2#latest

Everyone go do something!

zamiel

floydmurphy.kg_ESO wrote: »

Look, you can argue over spending the same amount of money as the next guy all you want because of a PATCH FIX for the game that you want early access to.

They are fixing the game. Do you want it to work or not? We get it, you all spent the same amount of money as me, and Betty, and Jim and Hank...the difference is, we understand that fixing the game we paid for is the only way to play the game. It is the risk you take when you pre-order something. I'm not sure if you tested, but if you did, you can't tell me that you expected the game to be perfect by launch 3 days before launch.

First, by the time you posted what you did, it was not known that it's a patch at all.
Second, no matter what, your point of this early access being 'free' and something of a 'gift' is flawed due to the fact that it was available only for those who paid in advance. If it was free you could join and pay only at launch.
Third, I'm not sure if you ever made a program. Or anything of a project for that matter. If something's not ready 3 day before the launch - well, I have bad news for you, it won't be perfect at launch either. Last two weeks or so in a long project are totally worthless, you can't fix anything in that timeframe.
Fourth, their communication is unsatisfactory. If you don't think that something's off with a service which is not provided for 12 hours and all you get is 'we are maintaining stuff, will be back later' then 'oh, yeah, it was a patch', well, your skin is probably thicker than most.

Also, I don't know why you presume I'm mad or something. I was stating facts - ESO was unavailable for 12 hours in its first 96 hours. That certanly doesn't live up to the hype.

Darzil

It's probably moot for 3 days early access (like I had), but anyone who ordered Standard version from directly from the store to get 5 days rather than 3 days early access certainly did pay for that. Personally I saved myself £15 by buying from another retailer, rather than getting 2 extra days, but some wanted the early access more.

chrisiavb14_ESO

If you dont think we paid for, and they got a financial benefit from, the privilege of early access, then you dont understand business or money. I'll break it down easy for you: I pre-ordered for early access. They had my money. I didn't.

floydmurphy.kg_ESO

zamiel wrote: »

First, by the time you posted what you did, it was not known that it's a patch at all.
Second, no matter what, your point of this early access being 'free' and something of a 'gift' is flawed due to the fact that it was available only for those who paid in advance. If it was free you could join and pay only at launch.
Third, I'm not sure if you ever made a program. Or anything of a project for that matter. If something's not ready 3 day before the launch - well, I have bad news for you, it won't be perfect at launch either. Last two weeks or so in a long project are totally worthless, you can't fix anything in that timeframe.
Fourth, their communication is unsatisfactory. If you don't think that something's off with a service which is not provided for 12 hours and all you get is 'we are maintaining stuff, will be back later' then 'oh, yeah, it was a patch', well, your skin is probably thicker than most.

Also, I don't know why you presume I'm mad or something. I was stating facts - ESO was unavailable for 12 hours in its first 96 hours. That certanly doesn't live up to the hype.

I never expected this game to be perfect at launch. No MMO's are. That is why I'm not complaining that the server is down.

BTW,
http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/discussion/64824/eso-north-american-megaserver-downtime-4-1-to-4-2#latest

Stienbjorn

These threads make me weep for humanity.

Do I want to play, yup. Do I feel entitled to recompense, nope, but I also been privileged enough to have seen the other side of these issues, having worked on a major MMO.

I can promise you, these people are scrambling to get these servers back up. I can promise there were many late night calls sent out to get team members out of bed and back to work to toil through the night to find and squash this issue. These same people have just finished what I can bet was several months of crunch time, for those not in the business that means they were working overtime, a LOT of it. I know on the title I work on, before launch, the engineering team alone was working 70-80 hours a week for almost 6 months straight before our launch. These same people, who were woke up in the middle of the night, were asked to come back to work, will still be on crunch for the next couple weeks as well, to tackle any major issues that crop up from launch.

After about two weeks though I would wager they will be given a well deserved vacation to decompress, spend time with their families, some of whom may have forgotten what they even look like, and maybe even spend some time playing the game they just spent the last few years of their life working on.

TL;DR;
Patience is a virtue that requires practice, well here is your chance to gain some inspiration points in the skill tree patience.

Baogo

CheeseMachine wrote: »

We all know that the babies crying about this will shut up once they get their pacifier back, and it'll be like none of this had ever happened.

So just relax little ones. Mummy's trying her best to get it back to you! xxx

Oh it's another one of "you" people. Someone complains about something and automatically they are a child? If you truly are an adult and do not complain about something then you are either a liar or a fool. Your choice, I prefer to think you tell the truth so what does that leave. I have kids that are older than you that know how to speak a little bit less ignorant than this filth.

Not all "adults" think the same lines as this guy/gal.

Bunzaga_ESO

Most of the fixes posted are superfluous or cosmetic. The only thing I would warrant _needing_ a fix, would be low levels getting high level recipes and being able to get high level swords from fishing.

I think the idea to make the quest for killing 20 players in Cyrodiil is a bad move, and will make people log in for 5 mins, jump in a large raid, and then log off after they get their daily 20 kills.

Dumb, dumb, dumb decisions being made. Even more asinine is the fact that they took the server down for almost 12 hours now to do it.

Looks like I may get a refund and buy Wildstar instead, but we'll see.

DracoBlanc

whitemetroid wrote: »

That's completely and utterly bullcrap, rwood. Here's why. I guarantee you most gamers purchased this at early access under the impression that the game didn't need an extra 5 days til release date to be completed. They felt the game was so completed that gamers could get access early before the release date! The game had its time for testing not to mention if the game wasn't complete take away the early access to the game and people would understand because the game is incomplete. What actually happened, is they gave us this "early access" and a few random in game items, but they literally conned us into purchasing the game before the release date. The reason why most MMOs are like this at the get go is because they are hard pressed to release the games on time and by giving us stuff like "Early access" we are literally paying them to beta test their games instead of them finishing and polishing the games before release.

I have to disagree. The difference in load and scaling between alpha, beta, and first light is so great as to be different kinds.

Something which worked fine in a limited beta can very well not work fine in first light simply because of the higher load. A loop that takes 35ms to execute might be fine in a world with a few thousand players. That same loop might be causing a performance bottleneck in world with one million players. This is the reason that every MMO will have teething problems. It is not that the developers are not talented, it is that MMO software is extremely complex and the hot spots shift based on load and player activity. I guarantee that players in the last few days have done things not done in beta, and that some players (gold spammers especially) are actively looking for bugs to exploit.

While playing a found a piece of geometry that allowed me to fall through the world (most likely an inverted surface). I reported it, then logged out and back in and continued on with a very enjoyable game. This downtime is no different. Bugs have been exposed and are being fixed, no reason to panic.

One last thought, you did not if fact pay for early access. You paid the exact same price that someone on the 5th will pay.

Bunzaga_ESO

floydmurphy.kg_ESO wrote: »

neomage84ub17_ESO wrote: »

Well....I didn't care much about the pets and crap. The Imperial is cool but I paid the extra money to get the 5 days of early access. So...

No you didn't. You paid the extra money on the IMPERIAL EDITION to be able to play as the IMPERIAL RACE.

You don't know the motivations behind my purchase. I purchased it for an additional 5 days head start. I could give a *** less about the imperial race or monkeys(pets), even the treasure maps are more of a burden than a bonus, due to all the bank slots they take up.

Don't interject your own reasons onto others man.

ThomasRiddle

rwood0604_ESO wrote: »

whitemetroid wrote: »

That's completely and utterly bullcrap, rwood. Here's why. I guarantee you most gamers purchased this at early access under the impression that the game didn't need an extra 5 days til release date to be completed. They felt the game was so completed that gamers could get access early before the release date! The game had its time for testing not to mention if the game wasn't complete take away the early access to the game and people would understand because the game is incomplete. What actually happened, is they gave us this "early access" and a few random in game items, but they literally conned us into purchasing the game before the release date. The reason why most MMOs are like this at the get go is because they are hard pressed to release the games on time and by giving us stuff like "Early access" we are literally paying them to beta test their games instead of them finishing and polishing the games before release.

As I said already man 99% of MMO's even on release date and don't offer prepurchase rewards are still incomplete and unfinished upon release, bugs will always happen and maintenance will always be needed, to push back release for these reasons most games would never have happened

Actually, we pre-purchased a game. We gave money to the company with an explicit understanding that we would have a full 5 days of early access to reward giving Zenimax our money instead of spending it on other games... bills... child support.

Meanwhile Zenimax reaps the benefits of having millions of dollars of money pour in before the actual release date. Money that will find its way back to the players, undoubtedly, in the form of stabilizing infrastructures and content.

However, I don't think you can take a morally superior stance and just start calling people whiners. Well, you can... I'm not the boss of you. However it is just as unproductive as whining and does not actually address some legitimate complaints-- that customers are not being given what they signed up for.

Okay? Okay.

Inco

ZOS_JessicaFolsom wrote: »

Hey, folks. As of now (noon EDT), we are currently looking at an ETA of 1-2 hours. We'll continue to keep you updated.

Looks like we have about 1-1.5 hours to go. Everyone take a deep breath and hope all goes well during that time.

Vikova

ThomasRiddle wrote: »

However it is just as unproductive as whining and does not actually address some legitimate complaints-- that customers are not being given what they signed up for.

Okay? Okay.

Actually, it can be productive. It is publicly making it known that the loud minority of special snowflakes are just that - a loud minority. It is very easy for a community to get labeled as difficult and entitled. We are trying to counteract that.

Shingeki69

Rather its patient or not to agree with most of you on here technically one of the first few advertisement on the main page is PrePurchase/PreOrder now to gain 5 DAYS EARLY ACCESS!!!....the other one is Hurry up PrePurchase to get CE Edition, the new one is EARLY ACCESS AS BEGUN NOW PREPURCHASE TO PLAY. I feel sorry for those who are actually PrePurchasing it right now at this moment online and not gaining access to the game even today starts 3 day early access for some retail stores. so Technically we should be compensated for the longest downtime ever commited, as i did wake up early just to play lvl up a bit but no game still has to be under maintenance like seriously COMPENSATION!!!.... would be nice at least add some like RARE ITEM to our INVENTORY.

by the way for the caps for certain stuff yes its basically based on the main ISSUES.

Darzil

Bunzaga_ESO wrote: »

Most of the fixes posted are superfluous or cosmetic. The only thing I would warrant _needing_ a fix, would be low levels getting high level recipes and being able to get high level swords from fishing.

The PATCH was happening anyway. The FIX is, hopefully, sorting out the database so people don't end up with other people's mail or banks. That was that important.

Vikova

Darzil wrote: »

Bunzaga_ESO wrote: »

Most of the fixes posted are superfluous or cosmetic. The only thing I would warrant _needing_ a fix, would be low levels getting high level recipes and being able to get high level swords from fishing.

The PATCH was happening anyway. The FIX is, hopefully, sorting out the database so people don't end up with other people's mail or banks. That was that important.

As well as protoprogression-blocking quest bugs. Also important.

Vikova

Shingeki69 wrote: »

i did wake up early just to play lvl up a bit

This is the issue with most of the people raging. You woke up early? This is somehow relevant to the situation and should cause Zeni to give out compensation? Special. Snowflake. Syndrome.

Yes, everyone is frustrated. Yes, we all wish we could be playing. Yes, they did give regular updates, including reasons for downtime, patch notes, and an estimated time when it was available.

Evergnar

When people are getting logged in as other players and in game bank accounts are getting wiped out then it's definitely time to shut the server down (If that's what it takes). Zos did the right thing here and can't ask them to do much more than that in this situation. Disappointing for sure but I doubt they are real happy about it either.

Conifur

RakeWorm wrote: »

zamiel wrote: »

Actually you're the one not getting it. 80 USD now worths more than 80 USD later. Maybe look up PV/FV in wiki.

Give me a break. It is five days. Fine, you can say you paid 80.01 USD instead of 80. Happy?

zamiel wrote: »

ZOS never said the service we purchase is of lesser value.

It's early access. The difference is service is common sense. If it wasn't, it wouldn't be early. You are fully aware of all of this, but are flailing anyway to try to sustain some weird form of righteous indignation.

While I have been able to paint the the bathroom during the down time and have done other things it really is not about playing; you are the one not getting it. It is more then $80.01 - it is tens of millions of $ (if not more) pre-paid (hence the whole Future/Present Value aspect - they made a butt load of money off all of us) to a company for a service - and yes - I expect a product to work when I purchase it. If your phone did not work right when you bought it would you not take it back? If you ordered a steak at a restaurant and got chicken but it came out 5 minutes faster then what the steak would have would you not complain? If your T.V. only turned on from 1 PM to 8 PM would you "take it?" I have paid my money for a product and it is not working as it should be.

viper24_89b14a_ESO

RakeWorm wrote: »

Early access is early access. People have an unbelievably overinflated view of their own importance.

This explains why everyone is complaining about the downtime. Game releases will always have issues and require maintenance. And while your personal loss of a few hours of playtime will become 1000% irrelevant to even yourself in a couple months from now, Zenimax does care about getting the server back up so we can play. It's just more important that they fix what they need to while the servers are down and not open the game up with the same/more game breaking issues, and that takes priority over your personal hours lost.

Yes the downtime is frustrating, but in a week from now you probably won't even remember it. To the people that took off work for the early access, I feel sympathetic, but you did that at your own risk. Now you've learned your lesson.

DracoBlanc

Darzil wrote: »

Bunzaga_ESO wrote: »

Most of the fixes posted are superfluous or cosmetic. The only thing I would warrant _needing_ a fix, would be low levels getting high level recipes and being able to get high level swords from fishing.

The PATCH was happening anyway. The FIX is, hopefully, sorting out the database so people don't end up with other people's mail or banks. That was that important.

I'm a bit shaky on getting swords from fishing at all....

Vikova

Conifur wrote: »

If your phone did not work right when you bought it would you not take it back? If you ordered a steak at a restaurant and got chicken but it came out 5 minutes faster then what the steak would have would you not complain? If your T.V. only turned on from 1 PM to 8 PM would you "take it?" I have paid my money for a product and it is not working as it should be.

I'm just going to assume this is your first MMO you've ever played and say good day to you. This is just too hysterical to even have a response to. All my slow claps, sir.

ThomasRiddle

RakeWorm wrote: »

ThomasRiddle wrote: »

However it is just as unproductive as whining and does not actually address some legitimate complaints-- that customers are not being given what they signed up for.

Okay? Okay.

Actually, it can be productive. It is publicly making it known that the loud minority of special snowflakes are just that - a loud minority. It is very easy for a community to get labeled as difficult and entitled. We are trying to counteract that.

People are 100% entitled to the early access that they paid for. When they cannot access what they paid for, their complaints are legit.

I do not see eye-to-eye with people like flipping out, but there are a lot of people... let's call them the "silent majority" to follow suite-- who are genuinely unimpressed and more than a little disappointed. They might not be kicking and screaming for compensation, but they are completely justified in having those feelings and I think that trying to police other people's feelings is not only unproductive, it is just plain short-sighted.

Felarrond

So many of these "I paid for early access" threads going on, it's kind of sad to see how uninformed customers are when they purchase a product as to what they're actually purchasing.

I won't make another "You didn't pay for early access" reply, instead I'll just sit here and read everyone's posts and quietly laugh at all the rage.

This has been a pretty smooth pre-launch so far in my educated opinion! Can't wait for the servers to come back up!

jarrellj

floydmurphy.kg_ESO wrote: »

Only because you pre-ordered! Quit feeling sorry for yourselves! Geeze people, go do something better with your time and check back later.

You know what? Your smug, self-righteous attitude is 10 times more annoying than the down time.

In my opinion we DID pay for early access. Hard not to think that when the words 'VISIT OUR ONLINE STORE TO GET 5 DAYS OF EARLY ACCESS' are spread across the bottom of their ad.

I have no problem with down time for necessary maintenance. I appreciate ZOS for their attempt to keep us updated on ETA and such. But we DID pay for early access and that access has been cut dramatically short. Further... we've been blocked from progressing in the game by bugs that SOME of us reported in the beta at least 10 times.

We have a right to be a bit miffed.

JJ

zamiel

Conifur wrote: »

RakeWorm wrote: »

Give me a break. It is five days. Fine, you can say you paid 80.01 USD instead of 80. Happy?

Just a rough estimation - short term loans are about 10-15% per annum in my country. For four days (with 12,5%) it's 0,14%.
With even a low estimation of 2 million accounts (half normal half imp) this little 'gift' they gave you earned them 20k USD if they invested that money. It's a bit more actually as most people didn't buy it on 30/3, but earlier.

So please excuse me if I ask a company which just earned potentially 20k USD that when they intend to proved something which I paid for.

It's your own problem that you are unable to see this, but don't draw people down who are asking a really relevant question.

tyvar.thorvaldsonb14_ESO

zamiel wrote: »

Conifur wrote: »

RakeWorm wrote: »

Give me a break. It is five days. Fine, you can say you paid 80.01 USD instead of 80. Happy?

Just a rough estimation - short term loans are about 10-15% per annum in my country. For four days (with 12,5%) it's 0,14%.
With even a low estimation of 2 million accounts (half normal half imp) this little 'gift' they gave you earned them 20k USD if they invested that money. It's a bit more actually as most people didn't buy it on 30/3, but earlier.

So please excuse me if I ask a company which just earned potentially 20k USD that when they intend to proved something which I paid for.

It's your own problem that you are unable to see this, but don't draw people down who are asking a really relevant question.

Unfortunately, it really is a drop in the bucket considering it cost an estimated 200 mil to make the game .... the company will not see a profit for a long time.

josephirothb16_ESO

/sigh would all of you just shut up and go do something else, the server will be up when they are ready, I wish they turned off the forums too so everyone that is QQ could go do something else.