Prime Time Maintenances?

raglau

I think it's fair to say that Zenimax have all the appearance of a company in a self-perpetuating crisis of their own making, and therefore they probably DID think that the sooner they fix the bugs the better. Because that means less support tickets on things they have internally fixed, and therefore more resource to attend to probably a very long queue of other bugs.

And you know what, that's actually OK in a lot of ways. Not least of which, once this wave of bugs is fixed, we'll tend to forget the sour taste fairly quickly.

However, they should have mitigated the impact of this emergency release with better communication to the players.

"Ojustaboo wrote: »

But someone had the bright decision,

"I know, lets release the patch now, that will make them all happy as the bugs will be fixed earlier"

What concerns me most about this is that it's so obvious yet you cant see it.

Atwa

Twistedmind wrote: »

elros26 wrote: »

It's not whining, we all paid for the game and we want to play, but because the way the maintenance is provided, we lose precious time that we paid for. I will not be able to play at night becouse early morning i need to go to work, so i have only few hours per day to play, and i can`t becouse server maintenance is on. This sucks.

Picture for you - @elros26‌

And for you:

Shut up!!

Morthur

.

RoosterSix

ZOS_JessicaFolsom wrote: »

Hey folks,

We posted this in another thread, but it bears repeating:

The patch we're pushing out right now was planned for tomorrow, but it was ready today and will fix some of the issues people have been running into while playing. We understand that the time is not ideal for some, but we felt it was critical to get the fixes out now before it gets much later in Europe.

Sounds fair enough, thank you.

Vannor

Inconvenient maintenance is always going to happen in the early days and weeks of a new MMO. It;s usually because it's something to do with the code rather than the servers themselves.

This is nothing new, every MMO I've played there has been whining on the forums that maintenance is the wrong time. Normally I'd be at work and the servers would be coming up just as I got home so actually this maintenance is perfect for me. But I'm not so it is what it is.

tiffy961

ZOS_JessicaFolsom wrote: »

Hey folks,

We posted this in another thread, but it bears repeating:

The patch we're pushing out right now was planned for tomorrow, but it was ready today and will fix some of the issues people have been running into while playing. We understand that the time is not ideal for some, but we felt it was critical to get the fixes out now before it gets much later in Europe.

It's a great thing that we got an answer from you guys. BUT.
You just kinda try to make the problem sound nicer.
"Not ideal for some" is just a lie. It's not ideal for MOST europeans.

Also: Some people plan their days a bit for playing the game. So we expected to have maintenance on tuesday, so maybe made other plans for tomorrow, thinking we could play the game all evening tonight.
But then you came and thought "Ah well. Let's give them a surprise!" not consdering that it could backfire.

I think you are just not used to how I run an MMO, but that's exactly why you need to listen to us now, take it in and then change something.
There is no MMO without players.
And there won't be a EU Megaserver without many eu players because loads left out of frustration.

adlplumbingb16_ESO

thanks @zos_jessicaFalsom, but how long will this take?

p.s. at least your actually giving some explanation unlike swtor

Juponen

why would I camp the scabby server status page when there's nothing wrong with the game? I'd expect messages of this sort to be displayed on the launcher when I log in.

This. The ONE place you can't fail to notice info on future downtime.

Hilandra

The fault lies with the company.. they want to launch EU servers in US.. but aren't determined to "work" on the times when it's morning in EU. That's a bit dissapointing for such a major project.

Tavore1138

One of the biggest problems is that a decent chunk of players are new to MMOs and are trying this because of TES, we don't know to expect that the game will be offline frequently during prime time. Waiting for bug fixes on offline games is different because once it is bought you have it forever - online every bit of prime time downtime is a bit of your money that you 'wasted'.

In actual fact so far as an EU player I would be better off on the NA server.

And yes I get that it is always someone's prime time somewhere but my personal expectation was that a server named after a particular region would be optimised to service players within that region.

Of course I wouldn't care unless I liked the game but as ME3 demonstrated there is a critical mass of this stuff that a player base will live with before campaigns begin and it hits the mainstream news and the bottom line for Zenimax.

Jambler

If Zenimax do go for a companion app at some stage, I think one of the features should be a server status notifier, sends you a little smiley face when the servers are up.

That would be great.

Better than sitting waiting for "Several hours"

Arragnox

Would be nice to get the patch notes so we could actually see what the rush was, why you decided to push it as critical and not wait for it to be pushed tomorrow when you are scheduled to have maintenace.

steveb16_ESO46

simon24eb17_ESO wrote: »

Inconvenient maintenance is always going to happen in the early days and weeks of a new MMO. It;s usually because it's something to do with the code rather than the servers themselves.

This is nothing new, every MMO I've played there has been whining on the forums that maintenance is the wrong time. Normally I'd be at work and the servers would be coming up just as I got home so actually this maintenance is perfect for me. But I'm not so it is what it is.

No. They decided for no particularly good reason that we can see to:

1. Throw out the published maintenance schedule and do the patch they planned a day early.
2. Not tell anyone about the decision until 25 minutes before.

They (hopefully) did not do this on a whim. They must have known for hours what they had planned. They simply did not mention it to us except as an afterthought.

stefan9

ZOS_JessicaFolsom wrote: »

Hey folks,

We posted this in another thread, but it bears repeating:

The patch we're pushing out right now was planned for tomorrow, but it was ready today and will fix some of the issues people have been running into while playing. We understand that the time is not ideal for some, but we felt it was critical to get the fixes out now before it gets much later in Europe.

Presume this means no maitenance tomorrow.

Also we need an eta several hours doesn't cut it...

Mememe

I know Americans think they are the centre of the universe....well this game has one hell of a big EU base. Hence the EU mega server. The clue is in the name. I don;t understand why many find this such a difficult concept.

If they keep putting maintenance on EU prime time, people will walk. Without the subs coming in or the players, then the game will just end up being mothballed. So no one will get to play.

It's not hard. USA server, maintenance not in USA prime time. EU server not in EU prime time. It's really not a difficult strategy. It's common sense to not have EU maintenance in EU prime time. Unless urgent. Not because we wanted to just mess around with the schedule, because we are ready.

raglau

I have no issue with maintenance, even emergency maintenance.

But what is worrying is that they did the exact same thing with the 3 hour outage to prepare for live release. Just a sudden in game announcement they were taking it down in 15 mins. And being as they surely schedule and plan changes to core infrastructure way more than 15 mins in advance, it implies the actual process is not cognizant of the customer.

If it happened once, fair enough, a schoolboy error, having it happen twice just makes me more think the company as a whole does not understand the market it is operating in. And that's very bad for the game's longevity.

steveb16_ESO46 wrote: »

.

They (hopefully) did not do this on a whim. They must have known for hours what they had planned. They simply did not mention it to us except as an afterthought.

Atwa

ZOS_JessicaFolsom wrote: »

Hey folks,

We posted this in another thread, but it bears repeating:

The patch we're pushing out right now was planned for tomorrow, but it was ready today and will fix some of the issues people have been running into while playing. We understand that the time is not ideal for some, but we felt it was critical to get the fixes out now before it gets much later in Europe.

It's joke, im bored xD

tiffy961

I don't understand. Why would you think that an unannounced patch/maintenance is better than an announced one that people were actually prepared for?
Sense, it makes none.

RazorRex

Morthur wrote: »

I totally agree with my fellow customers in this thread - the maintenance times are simply terrible for EU. They should be like in WOW: 4 or 5 (04.00 UTC) in the morning on Wednesday for EU and equivalent for US/AUS/ASIA whatever. This can't be too much to ask for 14,99 a month!

Hate to break it to you, but when WoW first launched they did the same things Zenimax is having to do. Same thing happened in Dark Age of Camelot, EQ2, SWTOR.... When MMOs' first launch, bug fixes and maintenance becomes a priority. This supersedes "prime time" zones and yes, it does result in some hurt feelings, but most rational gamers understand that with MMO launches, this is going to happen and would rather trade a few hours downtime for more content and bug fixes.

You even signed an agreement that states this will happen and you understand and are fine with that. ZOS has also stated that once things get smoothed out a bit more they will be moving the maintenance and patch times to more suitable times... But at the launch of an MMO this goes to the wayside in an effort to get bugs and exploits fixed ASAP so that we have a better experience.


I hope this clears things up for a lot of you. It is upsetting, but this is like eating your vegetables... Sure it doesn't taste good right now, but it's for the best.

appe3

1st world problems. Truly all I can say about all these complaints.

Vanen

I don't know how long it will take, but if the server stays down most of the evening I don't get why it was important to patch it today instead of tomorrow morning.
Let's hope "several hours" will turn out to be only a few.

Arwyn

Once the patch notes go up hopefully we will see a ton of the problems we have seen will have been fixed, might make it worth it.

I don't have a massive problem with it going down in prime time, yeah its annoying but not as annoying as no notice (15 minutes just doesn't cut it), its a strange fact but quite a few people do plan their lives around games like this.

Communication it very important to me, I have left games because of poor company communication, things here could have been done much better while still having the patch now, 1, more notice, 2, patch notes up and announced in-game (think if people saw that their big problems were being addressed, would they complain as much?),

Simple really and not a big effort since if the patch was ready to deploy the notes must have been ready too. (and they're still not up!)

I'm sure there's a ton of good work being done their guys but you are only as good as the last bad thing you did!

KerinKor

SuraklinPrime wrote: »

One of the biggest problems is that a decent chunk of players are new to MMOs and are trying this because of TES, we don't know to expect that the game will be offline frequently during prime time. Waiting for bug fixes on offline games is different because once it is bought you have it forever - online every bit of prime time downtime is a bit of your money that you 'wasted'..

That 'wasted' view is crass but I won't go there .. instead I'll simply note that bug fixes, even critical ones can take WEEKS with offline games, just look at Skyrim or Oblivion as examples, in MMOs is a matter DAYS at most, yet still there's a tumult of QQ about how 24 hours is TOO LONG (as has been posted in other threads).

My own personal opinion is that Zenimax were wrong to apply this small patch only a few hours before the planned downtime tomorrow, especially as it hit mid/late afternoon UK time and early evening EU time .. if it wasn't critical enough to have been originally planned for tomorrow it wasn't critical enough to do now.

Valn

Look at all these complaints. It's nice to know that ESO has brought in a new generation of MMO players!

BigM

I have been playing MMO's from the day Ultima Online went into beta. I know no ONE that used the excuse maintenance made them leave the game. If they do use an excuse like that it is very lame. Heck during Asheron's Call days, it made the phrase NEVER PLAY ON PATCH DAY Famous! As far as working on servers any day is fine with me, as long as they make it better to play am all for it. Oh and no one left AC no matter how bad patches were. :-D

Carter_DC

I got nothing against maintenance, but i really like to know it before i login and get a "server down for maintenance in 1 min" popup.
EVE online has a daily downtime and every body's cool with that..because everything goes according to plan.

tiffy961

martinbonkowskib14_ESO wrote: »

Heck during Asheron's Call days, it made the phrase NEVER PLAY ON PATCH DAY Famous!

Fair enough but Patch Day is tomorrow. Just saying.

I'm all for bug fixes and stuff but I seriously doubt it was THIS important to suddenly decide it was better to roll it now than tomorrow.
Let people prepare for the down time with announcements and you'll have a lot less annoyed players.

It's simple.

Duccea

Thete wrote: »

Duccea wrote: »

It was, there is a post in the server status section of the forums. Was only 20 minutes or so before the start of the actual maintenance start though, which I personally consider to be on too short a notice.

I wouldn't have seen it if they gave two days notice. I spend time on these forums but why would I camp the scabby server status page when there's nothing wrong with the game? I'd expect messages of this sort to be displayed on the launcher when I log in.

I fully agree on this, I only saw the message myself after the servers went down and I went to the forums to check for additional information. A launcher message would be much better and reach considerably more players.

Harakh

EU gets treated like lower gamers like always

raglau

There's a certain element of truth in that IME with a variety of games.

Odd really, when you think how much the EUR and GPB are worth compared to USD, plus more people in EU play MMOs than in the USA.

We should be treated like Kings! ;-)

Harakh wrote: »

EU gets treated like lower gamers like always