Service Level Agreement Terms

Flametyn

I would like to know if is there such a written document.
I have few question to answer me before continue to subscript to the game,
such as "Is there a max amount of maintenance hours you can set up?" or others that i would like to get answered for sure.

Turelus

No MMO will do this because if something like a DDoS happens they would break their own writing and people would use it against them.

Regular downtimes will be Tuesday and Friday mornings in hours which are friendly to most people for that timezone. As the game is out longer there will be less emergency downtimes and the scheduled ones should come down in length.
If you're new to MMO games it's common to have servers offline now and then, you just need to accept that and find other things to do. Now, if servers are offline for long periods of time such as a few days it's not unheard of for a company to compensate it's customers with free game time or other gifts, this doesn't happen very often though.

ZOS_HugoP

Greetings Flametyn,

You can find our legal documents here: Legal Information - Term of Use - Privacy Policy

Saint_JiubB14_ESO

Its in the TOS section 6 available at the bottom of the page "Terms of Use". basically they can do what they want as the law allows, which since you agreed to it is basically anything they want. standard for all games, they won't actually use all the power they have because it would be TERRIBLE PR, but they need to do it for legal reasons. there is scheduled maintenance as @Turelus mentioned, although they only plan on 1 per week with the 2nd being 'as necessary'.

Flametyn

Ty for the answer @ZOS_HugoP‌ ,
so basically Zanimax can shout server down for an entire month couse we agreed with that. Isn't there a general rule that all the companies must follow on this?
For example if my notebook need a fix and it is still in his warrantied period, producers have 15 days to fix it or they should change it with a new one in Europe. This is valid for all the companies as a general rule...

Flametyn

Turelus wrote: »

No MMO will do this because if something like a DDoS happens they would break their own writing and people would use it against them.

Regular downtimes will be Tuesday and Friday mornings in hours which are friendly to most people for that timezone. As the game is out longer there will be less emergency downtimes and the scheduled ones should come down in length.
If you're new to MMO games it's common to have servers offline now and then, you just need to accept that and find other things to do. Now, if servers are offline for long periods of time such as a few days it's not unheard of for a company to compensate it's customers with free game time or other gifts, this doesn't happen very often though.

I'm not new to MMOs but i think they are taking too much time for the maintenance.

Saerydoth

...you think a few hours is too much time for maintenance? You obviously haven't seen WOW's 16-24 hour maintenance whenever they have patches. And 8-10 hours when there isn't a patch.

Saint_JiubB14_ESO

The game just launched the maintenance times vary wildly and are more frequent. when they did scheduled maintenance one week it only lasted about 1hr on the NA server.

Flametyn

Don't misunderstand me,
I know maintenance is good to keep the game "clean" and bug free.
The fact that another games had 24hours maintenance doesn't mean that TESO should also have that or i can for example say that gw2 had non maintenance time couse it was, most of all bug free and patch were available every 2 weeks on tuesday after a max of 5 minutes server downtime.
@saint_JiubB_ESO, is a lack of these rules that allows companies to release bugged games.

KerinKor

Flametyn wrote: »

I would like to know if is there such a written document.

Er, see the TOS. There is NO SLA, it would be absurd to expect one considering the price we pay.

thegamekittenub17_ESO

The down time isn't affecting them much per say. They can do it whenever they want, but truth is come may, this will be just another thing that hurts them in the sub division. There will be drops because with so many MMOs out there and new ones coming, most will not tolerate paying a sub for a lot of down time and not able to play.

They can do whatever they like, I am not even going to debate that, but in the end it is what the customers will tolerate that makes or breaks this game.

Flametyn

KerinKor wrote: »

Flametyn wrote: »

I would like to know if is there such a written document.

Er, see the TOS. There is NO SLA, it would be absurd to expect one considering the price we pay.

Really? 80$+ (15x12)$=260$ for the first year is that not enough?
considering the amount of players that is a lot. I don't pay that much for my bank account but still it has a SLA.
I think there should be a sla couse this is a service that they provide us.

blackevil86

Saerydoth wrote: »

...you think a few hours is too much time for maintenance? You obviously haven't seen WOW's 16-24 hour maintenance whenever they have patches. And 8-10 hours when there isn't a patch.

WoW actually gave quite some free game time due to the extensive downtime in the first year after release and downtime was mostly during night so it wasn't so annoying. i myself remember getting 3x 30days in the first year on the EU servers. did not need a sub to claim that either. just my half cent.

Turelus

GW2 might have had longer maintenance windows but it probably didn't suffer the same issues as ESO.
As I said in my first post there are going to be a lot of downtimes right now because of a lot of issues need to be addressed, now if the game should have been launched with those issues is another question altogether.

However I think by the end of the free month or even the first paid moth we will see a vast majority of the issues fixed meaning shorter and less frequent downtimes. As it stands right now I would much rather have a few hours DT a couple of days a week and be able to finish many of the bugged quests in the game, than sit around with the game running more often but nothing to do in it.

Today's patch fixed the bank bug, personally they could have had the servers offline all day to fix that issue and I would throw up no complaint, I can use my bank upgrades again (when I get them back), that's worth more to me in the long run than the few hours of lost time this morning.

Flametyn

Well fact is overall that if they have the possibility to shout ddown the server when they want and for how long they want, i don't want to subscribe myself

Jitaki

Half of these forums are people complaining about bugs, and quests not working, gold spammers, broken this and that.

The other half of these forums are the same people complaining about downtime while Zenimax fixes the first half's issues.

I love society.

Flametyn

Turelus wrote: »

Today's patch fixed the bank bug, personally they could have had the servers offline all day to fix that issue and I would throw up no complaint, I can use my bank upgrades again (when I get them back), that's worth more to me in the long run than the few hours of lost time this morning.

I totally agree with that.
But still imo a SLA may suggest game developers an higher attention in releasing a more bug free game. I know it is impossible to have a totally bug free game but i think TESO at the launch really had a lot of fixes to do.

Turelus

Flametyn wrote: »

Well fact is overall that if they have the possibility to shout ddown the server when they want and for how long they want, i don't want to subscribe myself

Have you ever read those documents for every other MMO, they all say they can do this. Simply because sometimes they NEED to do so.
Just because they can doesn't mean they will, they're not going to sit around and troll their customer base by turning servers off for no reason, but sometimes it has to happen at an inappropriate time and their legal documentation is there to cover that.
Say someone found a reason to steal items from others banks, then everyone found out and it became a looting-fest (like the NA servers) would you rather they turn it off and fix it ASAP or go "darn, we used our 10 hours of downtime for this month, guess we need to wait a week for the next free time!"

Saint_JiubB14_ESO

so you don't play any online games or subscribe to netflix, or any online based service? because that is in probably every TOS, its standard legal agreements.

Guild Wars 2 User agreement section 10.b

"You acknowledge that Service may be interrupted for reasons within or beyond the control of NCSOFT, that NCSOFT cannot and does not guarantee You will be able to use the Game or any Account whenever You wish to do so, that NCSOFT will interrupt the Service on a regular basis for purposes of maintenance or updates and may do so without providing You with notice before such interruption, ..."

FYI it is way more brutal than ZOS'

Flametyn

Jitaki wrote: »

Half of these forums are people complaining about bugs, and quests not working, gold spammers, broken this and that.

The other half of these forums are the same people complaining about downtime while Zenimax fixes the first half's issues.

I love society.

i know it is impossible to make all of us happy!
Maybe you are right, this may be seen as a complain.
But i'm not complaining for the time they require to fix bugs.
I'm complaining couse of the release of a game that has still a lot of bug.
This last thing is connected due a lack of a SLA but i'm not sure if there is not maybe it is just hidden.

Flametyn

Saint_JiubB14_ESO wrote: »

so you don't play any online games or subscribe to netflix, or any online based service? because that is in probably every TOS, its standard legal agreements.

Guild Wars 2 User agreement section 10.b

"You acknowledge that Service may be interrupted for reasons within or beyond the control of NCSOFT, that NCSOFT cannot and does not guarantee You will be able to use the Game or any Account whenever You wish to do so, that NCSOFT will interrupt the Service on a regular basis for purposes of maintenance or updates and may do so without providing You with notice before such interruption, ..."

FYI it is way more brutal than ZOS'

But still they didn't, and i'm not a fan of gw2, that game has a lot of problems but it still didn't have all those bugs.

Flametyn

BTW i give up i understood that Zenimax didn't give us a SLA but just ToS.
This was what i was asking for, than i decided for myself. All the others can do what they want, i don't have to say you what to do.

Valethar

Can't tell if this guy is trolling or just ridiculously naive.

Carde

Maintenance SUCKS, I know, but its an important thing and we'd be a lot worse off without it. Let them fix stuff.

Flametyn

Valethar wrote: »

Can't tell if this guy is trolling or just ridiculously naive.

i'm not trying to troll anyone i just asked if there were a SLA.
Than i got my answer and others start to reply that is fine to have hours of maintenance and that other games had more than this one.
My mistake was to answer them, thou i think it's not fair to buy/sell something that still need to be fixed. If this makes me naive, yes i'm naive.

Carde wrote: »

Maintenance SUCKS, I know, but its an important thing and we'd be a lot worse off without it. Let them fix stuff.

One that we stated that there are problems yes maintenance is the only way to solve those. I'm not saying it sucks, i'm only saying imo this is the result of a SLA lack.

NoirJ

I think its a mistake to start bandying about terms like SLA, in the context of an MMO, this isn't a technically a Managed Service. I also doubt that ZOS has ISO20000 or even ISO27001, so expecting that they are ITIL Aligned is a bit naïve

Flametyn

NoirJ wrote: »

I think its a mistake to start bandying about terms like SLA, in the context of an MMO, this isn't a technically a Managed Service. I also doubt that ZOS has ISO20000 or even ISO27001, so expecting that they are ITIL Aligned is a bit naïve

I was not expecting nothing. I asked about it, can i ask things?
I added imo service like this should have a sla.
If this makes me stupid, well i think i'm not. Guess which opinion matter to myself? I can be stupid, but i'm not on this.