Take server down before event ends?

Jaraal

master_vanargand wrote: »

I have 24 pieces, but if the event ends due to maintenance, I won't be able to get the 25th piece.
Is it appropriate for the 10th anniversary to punish the many players who played the event in a planned manner?

Unfortunately, ZOS designed the event so that players could not earn the mount simply by playing the game. They introduced the variable of having to acquire part of the reward with tickets. So people planned out their strategy for getting the extra tickets... but circumstances and decisions on timing made it so some were unable to get the mount, through no fault of their own.

I was fortunate that I made a mistake at the beginning of the event and pre-bought my make-up tickets based upon the timeframe that they initially presented to us. 20 days of getting one confetti per gold box left 5 tickets to purchase, so I did just that. And then later, they stated that the event would last two days longer for us folks on PC/NA, so at that point, I and others had wasted six tickets unnecessarily. However, they didn't actually extend the event two ticket days... they extended it one ticket day and shut down the server 30 seconds into the second ticket day, leaving many people who didn't pre-buy tickets short, and with no mount to show for it. And to add insult to injury, those who were able to summon their cake and get their 3 tickets in the 30 second window were not able to get to the Impresario in time to get the final one or two confetti fragments.

Is it appropriate that they did things this way? They feel so. But many players don't share that view.

James-Wayne

So now we suffer from no access of last hours of event AND miss out on any daily events we need to do because of the long down time always because of an error we never created.

This has been the worst event in 10 years let alone it being a 10 year event of utter disappointment

Jaraal

James-Wayne wrote: »

So now we suffer from no access of last hours of event AND miss out on any daily events we need to do because of the long down time always because of an error we never created.

This has been the worst event in 10 years let alone it being a 10 year event of utter disappointment

Yes, I was running dolmens for purple boxes in the last few minutes, and it was sad to see the frustration and despair of the folks who had been trying unsuccessfully for days to get the Staff of Worms style page. I can only imagine how they felt riding or running as fast as they could for that last chance to get it, only to see the plug get pulled on them.

Kelinmiriel

The whole point is, that we were promised two additional days, and the NA got one, not two. EU didn't even need two additional days - the EU server wasn't shut down because of the PTS fiasco in the first place, but I don't mind that they got the benefit. (I expect there isn't a way to have different event end days on one server vs. the other.)

I'm in favor of locked accounts being restored as soon as possible. I'd guess that this is the soonest that they were ready to do that, and it's a coincidence that it happened to be on the last night of the event.

It's a shame that the event will be gone by the time all the locked accounts are back.

So - why wasn't the event extended one more day when it became clear that this shutdown would coincide with the end of the event?

That way, NA players wouldn't get cheated out of what we were promised, and locked-out people would have at least SOME chance to do something.

And support wouldn't be as inundated with issues about things that we were counting on finishing up that last day.

NanoTechnicianHQ

From what I've garnered over the years is that each team has their own time frame, and trying to juggle them has always been difficult. Its like that in larger organisations, sometimes (I can speak for myself) you just get shovelled work that would be 3 times the average week of work and still expect to punch though it. Sometimes it feels like a bad meme with maintenance and events, its just one of those things. At least those that used the test server will be recompensed for the errors, I think that it was good that nothing more nefarious came of it, probably lucky.

Akylles

This is definitely a bummer! I had no idea that they were going to take the server down all morning today. If this had been prominently displayed and appropriately planned out, I would've spent more time yesterday evening to farm knowing that the event ended once I went to sleep (because the servers would be down for the remaining time once I woke back up; I'm in NA EST).

I definitely have to agree with those that are frustrated at being told "2 extra days" and then having the last morning (for those in NA; for those in other timezones it can be even worse, as this is primetime for you glorious aussie folks). Forget all the math about whether it technically equals 48 hours or not as is being debated in some other threads on this topic. The truth is that I need to sleep, eat, take care of family, work a job, etc. So, the morning hours on the last day, that 6-10am slice, is important because it represents the "last day" of the event. Those 4 hours are not something to just scoff at. And it sucks to be led to believe something would be there, only to have it ripped away in a disturbingly disorganized way.

However, those that were locked out....HOLY ****! That's a long time that you haven't been able to play at all (F the event, you couldn't even log in and have fun with friends/guildies/pugs/frenemies in cyro, etc.). For whatever it's worth, and to whomever may be reading this, you've got my respect that you love this game enough to stick through this kind of bull****. You've been done raw, absolutely no question about that, and you should be back in the game as soon as possible. It's already been too long; it's just crazy. On behalf of the ESO community, we've missed you and we look forward to having the game pop made whole again!

There's literally zero point in blaming one group or another. As others have pointed out, none of this was dictated by those who've already been locked out a long time. And, the frustration on the part of those who got jipped out of the last day (again, stop arguing that it's only 4 hours; we all can't stay up all friggin night to play, and so the morning time before going to work is often the only window a number of us poor shlubs have to play this game and enjoy the festivities) is entirely justified as well. BOTH GROUPS, who all belong to the SAME gaming population, are getting a bad deal. NEITHER group is in control of the decisions, and are being affected by others'. So, let's drop any finger pointing unless it's directed at ZOS.

I really look forward to the jubilee event every year, mostly because it's a massive gold rush and I get to recoup a lot of materials and gold, which really sets up the rest of the year. And, I have to admit, I did alright for myself this year. However, the grinding for the motifs from VVard WBs and Summerset geysers, which inevitably yielded zero motifs for me (along with many others), was quite frustrating and really weird to have such a looooow drop rate for a jubilee reward. I'm not crazy disappointed I didn't get them, but I am let down that ultimately I wasted time grinding those WBs when I could have been putting my limited time to better use (while that's still on me and my choices, the outcome is also heavily related to the crappy drop rates and relatively poor planning for this jubilee). All this is to say that, for something I was really pumped about for at least two months leading up to the jubilee event, and for something as hyped up as the 10th anniversary of the game, this was pretty lacklustre. Really poor communication (the specific daily endeavours that gave a bunch of extra seals, the maintenances, the ACTUAL drop rates of things so you'd know if you wanted to try to grind something so rare or not, etc.) led to pretty poor outcomes, in my opinion (I shouldn't have to hunt around, check forums and twitter feeds and other places, for information about a game; it's a game, anything we should need to know should be upfront and center when we log in).

Anywhoo...I've wasted enough of my morning ranting about this, I reckon. I couldn't help myself, though, this is quite a messy debacle and I'm actually appalled by the ad hoc decision-making that's been going on during this event. But let's not start going after each other. @ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_Kevin and any others that should be tagged, I think we deserve a response on this. I'd love an extension, but I imagine that once this maintenance is done, you will have already removed the event from the game and there's no hope for the extension. But maybe someone can RESPOND and just put all that to rest for everyone? It would seem the courteous thing to do.

EmperorShinigami

I agree wholeheartedly that getting the users who are locked out unlocked is a priority and should be done ASAP but you shouldn't shaft the users who weren't locked out either.

Why not extend the event until tomorrow's reset so that those of us who planned to get the mount during those last 4 hours of the event by what ever means they had planned can do so?

xclassgaming

Just extend the event over the weekend ZOS, simple. Everyones happy. We actually get to play SOME OF IT, as remember, we were locked out for the majority ofi t. End it next tuesday, the 30th, right at the end of the month.

AzuraFan

It makes me wonder if the person who makes the maintenance decisions has no idea what's going on in the game. Which would be bad, obviously. But better than if the person knew about all the problems with the event, and the extension to make up for it, but still decided to do maintenance this morning. Which would show a complete disregard (contempt?) for players.

Durnik

This isn't the first time that the server has gone offline during the last few hours of an event and caused people to miss tickets. Let's make this the first time that ESO recognizes this and extends the event by 1 day. ESO, be better.

sarahthes

Durnik wrote: »

This isn't the first time that the server has gone offline during the last few hours of an event and caused people to miss tickets. Let's make this the first time that ESO recognizes this and extends the event by 1 day. ESO, be better.

I do not think they are capable of extending these events without doing maintenance. As in they would have to do another maintenance to change the end date of the event.

I suspect had we not had maintenance on Monday, the event would not have been able to be extended at all.

Thee_Cheshire_Cat

kumenit_taeynav wrote: »

shadyjane62 wrote: »

For me this cuts off the last 4 hrs of event. You can't wait one more day?

arent the players whove been locked out already getting a whopping 16k endeavours, the jubilee horse, AND literally all the replica style pages? can those players not just sit tight for a couple more hours so everyone else on pcna can get their tickets?

cripes, if they are getting all that, i'd happily accept to be locked out for the same amount of stuff. even just for the endeavors alone.

Khressandra

I was able to summon and eat the cake, but I was not able to turn in a daily repeatable, so no confetti pack. Do I have to wait a year for this to be available again?

code65536

sarahthes wrote: »

Durnik wrote: »

This isn't the first time that the server has gone offline during the last few hours of an event and caused people to miss tickets. Let's make this the first time that ESO recognizes this and extends the event by 1 day. ESO, be better.

I do not think they are capable of extending these events without doing maintenance.

No, they, done these extensions before without maintenance.

They did wait until Monday to do the original 2-day extension of this event, but that doesn't mean that was the only time they could've done it.

onyxorb

Lillisia wrote: »

However they could have done this and just given everyone the style pages extended the event and we would all be chilling. I would have been very happy with that. And I truly think that would have actually been the most fair route.

Seriously, this would have been a great idea, and everyone could have had fun actually enjoying the event the way they liked.

Blazyn

This is OUTRAGEOUS! ( In Ben's voice of course)

If ya know ya know.

dnbranch

Get everyone back into the game. And then send everyone 3 tickets. Problem solved.

Runecrow

They have a really bad habit of adding a maintenance on the last day of an event. This isn't the first, and won't be the last, time they do this. As has been mentioned, for some idiotic reason they also have event ending at 9AM Eastern instead of at midnight or right before maintenance like any competent gaming company does. I feel bad for those of you who were planning to get your last needed tickets after reset. ZOS, get your crap straight already! You've screwed people over so many times. Tame your money hunger and treat your players right for once!

code65536

Runecrow wrote: »

They have a really bad habit of adding a maintenance on the last day of an event.

That's incorrect.

It's "had". Not "have".

Ever since they changed the daily reset times so that events and daily quests rolled over to the next day at 1000 UTC (0500 EST / 0600 EDT) on NA, this has only been the second time they scheduled maintenance in a way that cuts into an event.

The first time, there was an uproar and they extended the event. They've since been careful about doing maintenance the day before or the day after an event ends and not on the day of.

Now, people are probably remembering the days when the daily reset was the same for both NA and EU and happened 4 hours earlier at 0600 UTC. Back in those days maintenance that interfered with the final partial day was more common, but back then, the final partial day was 8 or 9 hours long and maintenance never cut it off completely since it was a much larger window.

Araneae6537

code65536 wrote: »

Runecrow wrote: »

They have a really bad habit of adding a maintenance on the last day of an event.

That's incorrect.

It's "had". Not "have".

Ever since they changed the daily reset times so that events and daily quests rolled over to the next day at 1000 UTC (0500 EST / 0600 EDT) on NA, this has only been the second time they scheduled maintenance in a way that cuts into an event.

The first time, there was an uproar and they extended the event. They've since been careful about doing maintenance the day before or the day after an event ends and not on the day of.

Now, people are probably remembering the days when the daily reset was the same for both NA and EU and happened 4 hours earlier at 0600 UTC. Back in those days maintenance that interfered with the final partial day was more common, but back then, the final partial day was 8 or 9 hours long and maintenance never cut it off completely since it was a much larger window.

Having the last “day” of the event be only four hours is rubbish anyway (not defending ZOS for how they handled this one nor blaming players on counting on being able to get the tickets). But ZOS really should have changed the event end time to match reset when they changed the time of the latter. The last day was always shorter but four hours is just ridiculous and feels a bit like false advertising in how many “days” the event is running, and in this case, retroactively becomes so.

I hope all accounts and servers will be up and running smoothly by the end of the day. But I hope ZOS also makes some changes to things like these (event/reset times) to minimize needless aggravation.

Jaraal

Khressandra wrote: »

I was able to summon and eat the cake, but I was not able to turn in a daily repeatable, so no confetti pack. Do I have to wait a year for this to be available again?

The mount was a 10th year special prize, not a recurring annual prize, so it's unlikely to be made available again. Same with the 5 unique style pages. But I guess we'll have to wait a year to find out for sure.

I'm sure a large number of players were left out from completing the mount due to the design and implementation of the means to get it. Maybe they'll make it right.... we can only hope.

Carcamongus

Well, the deed is done. Can the people who were locked out at least confirm everything is in order now?

vesperghost

Carcamongus wrote: »

Well, the deed is done. Can the people who were locked out at least confirm everything is in order now?

I'm back, everything mostly looks where I left it. some hard-to-get leads expired, I think I lost a few more-or-less inconsequential pieces of mail. trait research progressed, at least.

I'm just glad it's over. this one's not going into the "happy memories" scrapbook.

ZOS_Hadeostry

Greetings,

After removing some unnecessary back and forth from this thread, we would like everyone to keep posts on the subject at hand, civil, and constructive.

If there may be any questions in regards to the rules, please feel free to review them here

Serpari

I've gone ahead and cancelled my ESO Plus. The lack of communication, constant downtime/poor performance and abysmal drop rates have made it so I can no longer justify giving this game money. The abysmal drop rates wouldn't had bothered me as much if the communication regarding the event extension + constant down times wasn't terrible. If I hadn't been gifted Gold Road I wouldn't had bought it, which is a shame because I love Imperial anything. For a supposed anniversary celebration, I can't say I'm celebrating anything here.

Money talks and this is my wallet speaking loudly.

OtarTheMad

Serpari wrote: »

I've gone ahead and cancelled my ESO Plus. The lack of communication, constant downtime/poor performance and abysmal drop rates have made it so I can no longer justify giving this game money. The abysmal drop rates wouldn't had bothered me as much if the communication regarding the event extension + constant down times wasn't terrible. If I hadn't been gifted Gold Road I wouldn't had bought it, which is a shame because I love Imperial anything. For a supposed anniversary celebration, I can't say I'm celebrating anything here.

Money talks and this is my wallet speaking loudly.

I mean I don’t blame you and I get it too but ZOS’ communication was pretty good on the downtime and the account issues. They posted about it in this thread:

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/656543/temporarily-taking-down-the-pts-the-pc-na-live-server

If that’s what you’re talking about anyway. If that’s not what you’re talking about then my bad.

Araneae6537

For some things, the communication seemed to me as good as possible given the circumstances, specifically the situation regarding the PTS. Personally, I think the issue there was that not enough was done to make things right. Some bonus cosmetics would have been a nice gesture for missing several days, but not enough for being locked out the rest of the event IMO.

For the rest of the players, my feeling is that the communication was good regarding the PTS and PC NA downtime and followup, but very poor to change the end of the event with only a day’s notice, especially when ZOS designed acquisition of the Jubilee mount in precisely such a way as to encourage careful planning of fragments obtained and tickets spent.

huntgod_ESO

My year sub lapses in a couple of months, will not be renewing for now. I pretty much own all the content anyway, so only losing the craft bag...which does kind of suck to not have.

Serpari

OtarTheMad wrote: »

Serpari wrote: »

I've gone ahead and cancelled my ESO Plus. The lack of communication, constant downtime/poor performance and abysmal drop rates have made it so I can no longer justify giving this game money. The abysmal drop rates wouldn't had bothered me as much if the communication regarding the event extension + constant down times wasn't terrible. If I hadn't been gifted Gold Road I wouldn't had bought it, which is a shame because I love Imperial anything. For a supposed anniversary celebration, I can't say I'm celebrating anything here.

Money talks and this is my wallet speaking loudly.

I mean I don’t blame you and I get it too but ZOS’ communication was pretty good on the downtime and the account issues. They posted about it in this thread:

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/656543/temporarily-taking-down-the-pts-the-pc-na-live-server

If that’s what you’re talking about anyway. If that’s not what you’re talking about then my bad.

I am not only talking about that. I am talking about the compounding issues for months now. Off the top of my head:

• The Scroll of Pelinal's Ferocity was done away for the global buff, so players couldn't complete the achievement this year and get their golden laurel (Star-Made Knight). Was never fixed.
• During the crafting event, there was an issue with how many transmutes stones were awarded, so people were doing an unlimited transmute stones cheat. Needed a patch.
• The day after Patch 41, people lost their entire outfit slot loadouts. Also needed a patch and compensation (outfit tokens).

And now this entire fiasco with PTS and locked out accounts, needing to extend the event but not announcing it properly in the game, shorting NA out of several hours of that extension due to more down time, and the abysmal drop rates for limited time style pages. I'm done. I cannot justify giving money to this company anymore when it has been thing after thing in less than half a year. have no confidence this game's stability and QA will improve in the future because it's been months of constant issues. There are other games I can pay a subscription to that have way less down time, way less grinds, and way less showstopping bugs. Games that respect my time.

OtarTheMad

Serpari wrote: »

OtarTheMad wrote: »

Serpari wrote: »

I've gone ahead and cancelled my ESO Plus. The lack of communication, constant downtime/poor performance and abysmal drop rates have made it so I can no longer justify giving this game money. The abysmal drop rates wouldn't had bothered me as much if the communication regarding the event extension + constant down times wasn't terrible. If I hadn't been gifted Gold Road I wouldn't had bought it, which is a shame because I love Imperial anything. For a supposed anniversary celebration, I can't say I'm celebrating anything here.

Money talks and this is my wallet speaking loudly.

I mean I don’t blame you and I get it too but ZOS’ communication was pretty good on the downtime and the account issues. They posted about it in this thread:

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/656543/temporarily-taking-down-the-pts-the-pc-na-live-server

If that’s what you’re talking about anyway. If that’s not what you’re talking about then my bad.

I am not only talking about that. I am talking about the compounding issues for months now. Off the top of my head:

• The Scroll of Pelinal's Ferocity was done away for the global buff, so players couldn't complete the achievement this year and get their golden laurel (Star-Made Knight). Was never fixed.
• During the crafting event, there was an issue with how many transmutes stones were awarded, so people were doing an unlimited transmute stones cheat. Needed a patch.
• The day after Patch 41, people lost their entire outfit slot loadouts. Also needed a patch and compensation (outfit tokens).

And now this entire fiasco with PTS and locked out accounts, needing to extend the event but not announcing it properly in the game, shorting NA out of several hours of that extension due to more down time, and the abysmal drop rates for limited time style pages. I'm done. I cannot justify giving money to this company anymore when it has been thing after thing in less than half a year. have no confidence this game's stability and QA will improve in the future because it's been months of constant issues. There are other games I can pay a subscription to that have way less down time and way less grinds, games that value my time.

Ah, okay. I was sharing that because other people don’t seem to know about it.

And in that case, I hope you have fun in those other games.