More server maintenance?

ancienthero

I'm a bit of an MMO butterfly. I have been there for the start of LotRO, GW2, AoC, TSW, Neverwinter, SW:TOR and played other MMOs like PW, Aion, WoW etc. I don't recall in any of those games (even at the start) as much server downtime as there is in ESO.

I understand that it's important to make sure the hardware is doing its job, but this is not a free to play game. There's a subscription, so currently I am paying for nothing.....again.

Does the rest of the community share my frustration or am I over-reacting?

Masadi

I sense you've not been at any of there release dates/beta...wow was unplayible for the first month due to lag, Aion wasn't great, lotro was abit laggy and maintance now and then, swtor you couldn't get on servers due to 10k+ queues.....the list gos on.

ancienthero

Masadi wrote: »

I sense you've not been at any of there release dates/beta.

I'm excluding beta. Beta is beta after all. But we're in a live game now. But as I mentioned I was there for the launch of LotRO, GW2, AoC, TSW, Neverwinter & SW:TOR. I don't 'remember' this much down-time.

I agree with you that all had their issues. I didn't play WoW or Aion at the start, so I'll take your word for it on those. But SW:TOR the queue issue was fixed really fast, same in TSW.

Thanks for your comment though. It's good to get anothers perspective.

human151

Yeah, it does seem to be going down quite often. If it is just down to upload new code and assets, then why do they need 4 to 5 hours everytime?

I could understand 1 hour....but 5? What, are they waiting until downtime to write the code?

IKilled007

WoW went (goes?) down once a week for like 8 hours. This game goes down like twice per week for maybe 3 hours each time, minus hotfixes. Obviously, I'd rather the game never need maintenance, but I haven't found it frustrating yet.

Thejtprb18_ESO

Being in Australia and having had a really bad day at work I was looking forward to getting online and belting the crap out of something. Now I will need to find another way to vent. Not happy.

Stormynature

ancienthero wrote: »

There's a subscription, so currently I am paying for nothing.....again.

Afaik no one has yet started paying the subscription as we are still within the 30 day free period. Yes, people may have had funds held by the bank inline with having subscribed but as these funds are merely held in suspension and not handed over I do not consider this as having yet paid.

I am not a fanboy, nor do I think that the release has been the best (by a long shot). I share and agree with your frustrations about the game as it stands. Despite all that I am enjoying the game, I do see that ZoS is making attempts to stabilise the servers, deal with the gold sellers/bots, repair quests and whilst I might disagree with some of their approaches (strongly disagree at times) I must at least give them credit for continuing to push forward, closing servers down aggressively to try and fix things (which is never a great PR moment in anyone's book) and generally try many different approaches to resolving the ever-evolving invasion of RMT bots and spam (PR-wise - a blue glowing GM smiting the wicked bots down with instakill ban-hammers is always an uplifting experience only surpassed by the crushing despair as a few minutes after the GM has left a new group of bots spawn in).

Do I often feel like ZoS has stepped into set of boots 5 sizes larger than they can wear? Yes. Do I have every hope (possibly desperate, possibly delusional I admit) that they shall continue until succeeding? Gosh darn I hope so. I don't mind paying a subscription (when it finally activates) for the real possibility that this venture will succeed despite the many doubting Thomas's and naysayers. The future will out what eventuality we end up with until then I merely hope...and where I can try to help...by providing bug reports and bot reports.

Arundo

Every major MMO had these down times, i played most MMO's and most if not all had issues at launch. WOW had major lag issues, GW2 had tones of down time @ launch. Age of Conan wasnt even done when launched. And lets not talk about SWTOR which had so many issues at launch the server were down for a long time @ launch.

So long as ZOS is making things better I dont care about downtime, plenty of years to come to play the game.

human151

Arundo wrote: »

Every major MMO had these down times, i played most MMO's and most if not all had issues at launch. WOW had major lag issues, GW2 had tones of down time @ launch. Age of Conan wasnt even done when launched. And lets not talk about SWTOR which had so many issues at launch the server were down for a long time @ launch.

So long as ZOS is making things better I dont care about downtime, plenty of years to come to play the game.

I think we all realize the need for maintenance and I am glad they are doing it. I just do not understand why every maintenance is 4 to 5 hours or more. They should be ttesting the patch before hand, i am sure they are. What takes so long? I played SWTOR at launch and do not recall them having frequent multi hour DT.

But, I understand that this is not SWTOR. SO, whatever, if they need the time, they need the time. It is a just a bit fustrating for those of us who can only play during these hours thoough.

That said, I really like the game and have no plans on stopping.

Arundo

human151 wrote: »

That said, I really like the game and have no plans on stopping.

Same here, as always things will smooth out eventually.

antspants

Are they going to scale down to doing it one night a week when the teething problems settle? Otherwise saying you get 30 days time is a bit of a false impression. It's ok if you're in America and the maintenance times are 5 am and the like but other countries come home wanting to play and every two nights a week they can't.

Ulvich

RIFT went down at least twice a week if not more.

geff.bb16_ESO2

What's the point in moaning about maintenance. It has to be done, just go and find something else to do for a few hours instead of whining on these forums.

ancienthero

May 1. Third morning in a row that I can't log on due to server maintenance. I wonder if they will extend the game time as a gesture of goodwill?

ancienthero

Stormynature wrote: »

ancienthero wrote: »

There's a subscription, so currently I am paying for nothing.....again.

Afaik no one has yet started paying the subscription as we are still within the 30 day free period.

Really? 'cos I feel like I was supposed to get 30 days of access when I 'paid' for the game. Not simply a 30 day waiting period before they bill me again.

Anyway, I still maintain there is an absurd amount of server maintenance for a game that is not in beta. Also I find the timing of the maintenance a pain, but that might be me. I've no idea when the minimum number of players would be on-line.