There is a reason I have several games installed on my machine. If one game is not available, the others are.

It really comes down to what ZOS chooses as their objectives for this game's User Experience (UX). UX is all about delivery of your product or service from end to end, every interaction and how you make your customers FEEL. Usually the UX design is very carefully crafted to attract and keep the customer base the business needs to make money. Some examples:

1. Downtime -yes, downtime happens. If ZOS chooses to position this game as having a premium UX, then internally they should have some measure of what constitutes a reasonable amount of downtime for a premium UX. If/when they exceed that, they would need to do something for the user base to bring the experience back up to where their customers FEEL they still have a premium UX. WHAT they do is also a choice based on their goals - could be free game time, could be an apology, etc. If on the other hand "premium" is not a UX goal, then they would not. The games mentioned in this thread that have provided free time have made a conscious decision about the UX they need to provide for their business to be profitable.

2. Subscriptions - In a subscription model, there is usually an extra benefit provided to the subscribers that entices customers to pay the added cost for a better UX. A good subscription model is VERY CLEAR about what this added UX will be and makes sure it is delivered. But, the subscription is NOT a promise that the entire UX will be better. For example, every time game crashes and I have to wait in Cyrodiil queue for a second time I get angry because as a subscriber I feel like I should not be punished when the game crashes. However the description of the subscription does not explicitly promise that type of UX and because it is rather vague I always FEEL cheated. Customers feeling cheated is a sign of a very bad UX design - unless, of course, the company has explicitly decided that is all the need to provide.

3. Support - ZOS had made some very clear but ugly decisions regarding support UX. However, to be fair, support can be very costly to provide. On the other hand, it can be a cash cow for companies that do it well because it causes huge customer loyalty. Think about the companies you are extremely loyal to and I'll bet their customer service is great and you feel treated well.

My personal theory is that the poor UX we all experience with this game is related to the history of these games in general. When your customer base is largely 12 year old boys (like it was years ago), you can get away with a lot of bad UX design. However, ESO has a LOT of customers who are adults. We have some expendable cash but we also know what a premium UX is like and that is what we expect. If you have ever purchased an Apple product, what you were really paying for was a superior UX. I think if ZOS doesn't figure this out, ESO won't be long for this world if another company comes along with a game that provides the type of UX that mature gamers want.

if the devs decide they WANT to give some form of compensation for the downtime, then great! but demanding it because the servers for a game were offline is ridiculous.

Bouldercleave wrote: »

Beerbong_Ginn wrote: »

Afortunado wrote: »

Beerbong_Ginn wrote: »

I've personally experienced many times when I haven't been able to play because of circumstances out of my control. Specifically while downloading the game after a crash, or installing a patch. Or waiting at a load screen.

All in all, in the nearly 2.5 years that I've been a paying subscriber, I've probably lost upwards of 5 or 6 hours of gameplay. This is not including the countless minutes and seconds I've spent queueing for Cyrodiil. Or running back to Wayrest because I forgot to pick up the pledge. Or going to the bathroom. Or getting a beer from the fridge.

ZoS should compensate me for the time that I could have been playing yet was unable to. I will be expecting my compensatory cheque of $.10 to be mailed to me as soon as possible. Or 10 crowns, which would just about cover the left hind leg of a new bear mount.

Thank you.

Lol, I loved the meme. And what anemic bear mount are they selling that 10 crowns covers the left hind leg?

I don't know, but they better come up with something. Quick.

Or what?

OR THE TRIGGERINGS WILL CONTINUE!!!!!

Magic_Doogies wrote: »

Afortunado wrote: »

Magic_Doogies wrote: »

Afortunado wrote: »

Magic_Doogies wrote: »

Afortunado wrote: »

Magic_Doogies wrote: »

Afortunado wrote: »

That doesn't change that it happened. Or that they didn't even bother to banner announce they were taking the servers down like they should.

This is a straight up lie.

Andddd, you're wrong.

Context dude.

I was referring to banner announcing in game. You know, like they usually (and should always) do?

Which they also did. When I got booted out after successfully logging in the message at the bottom stated that the servers are under maintenance. Before that you had errors saying the servers were down come back later. At that point most people went on the site, saw that the error was reported and being dealt with and moved on. Its only a select few people throwing tantrums with rant threads that are mad about this.

There was no message in game for PC NA for anyone in our trial( and thus likely anyone else). I asked them on TS after we got booted. It simply went down.

Which is ridiculous. Anytime unexpected maintenance needs to be done, and they voluntarily take down the servers (meaning no crash) there should be a banner announcement. There wasn't.

Nothing ridiculous about it.

Wrong.

ZOS nearly always announces in game when they are taking down the servers. Because that is their policy. It keeps players from starting content they cannot finish and is simply polite.

Saying it's acceptable... lol. Saying it happens because of a mistake? Sure.

As for the rest of your post, I couldn't comment. As you noted I was in game, as were many other players. It is on that circumstance I am commenting.

Now you are progressively switching the goal posts. First you said they never announced the downtime at all in the game client. Which they did do under the news/announcements box. Now you are saying they are still at fault because you were in game when it happened and expected a warning to come up which only happens during PLANNED maintenance downtimes announced each month. Not unexpected and unplanned ones that only came as a result of a major login issue?

Look, you are upset you got booted. But at this point it's clear that your initial comment that ZoS never bothered to announce server downtime is false and misleading. It only applies if you were the minority of users playing the game while login issues were happening and continued to be able to play the game right up until they had emergency maintenance. But the vast majority of the players are aware of what was going on, the status of the problem and which servers were fixed.

Wrong. At this point you must be intentionally misconstruing what I have said. I said ZOS never made a banner announcement. And then I proceeded in latter posts to clarify exactly what I meant. You keep choosing to interpret it into your own context. That's your prerogative if you believed my statement to be ambiguous until I clarify. Then you are lying.

ZOS did in fact, fail to issue a banner announcement in game. Contrary to both their assumed policy and the usual order in which they do things.

You can continue to nitpick, but my post history speaks for itself.

Either way this is offtrack. This thread is about asking ZOS to follow best industry practices and compensate players for repeated emergency maintenance's and downtime's.

What's with the 'bruh" hate? It makes me chuckle when I see it. And anything that makes me chuckle is cool by me.

So it took longer this time, but down during primetime again. Based off the track record thus far, we can likely expect lots of this after OneTam launches.

Would be nice to get a ZOS reply to some of these threads that have been floating around.

@Ch4mpTW apparently ZOS doesn't negotiate with terrorists... No, that's not a shot at you. It's more like a shot at how ZOS seems to view it's money ba...er...player base.

The only thing I would expect to see compensation for would be a serious rollback. Rollbacks are of the Devil.
But for downtime? Nah. I'm a daily player, been playing MMOs going on 20 years, and I've seen a lot worse.

There are, on average, 720 hours in a month.

Let's say the servers are down 40 hours a month. That seems high to me but we'll go with that.

If you're a subscriber you're paying for access to the server. $15.00/month

720 - 40 = 680 hours of availability

$15 / 680 = 0.022 an hour in cost, roughly.

So, if my math is correct, one's out of pocket deficit for downtime is... 0.80 cents?

I realize it's inconvenient and frustrating when the servers go down, but from my experience it is par for the course with this genre of game.

Just my 2cp but I've been a subscriber since right after launch. I play on PC NA and have not once felt that any downtime or problems that have occurred have been so severe that they have made me feel as if I should be compensated in any manner for lost time. *shrugs*

I have yet to encounter one of these server maintenances. Don't know about you, but I'm usually at work when servers are down.

P.S. I'm also on EU/ PC

Magic_Doogies wrote: »

When people make posts like this do you ever stop and consider the fact that

1. The majority of the playerbase who plays MMO's do not go on these forums
2. The majority of players that play online and MMO based games expect things like server hiccups and maintenance?


Like I'm being serious here. Chill out. The mods have been consistently keeping up to date on the issue. Initially the servers were back online and then tech team VOLUNTARILY took down the servers for double checking maintenance. You will live. I will live, we all will live.

I assume you play this game because you like the Elder Scrolls world right? Awesome, this is the perfect time to read up on lore, go to the r/teslore subreddit, indulge in the content creating fanbase.
Read fanfiction, and factoids on your favorite races and civilizations in the game. Anything.

It's a game. I don't want or need compensation. I put in enough time in the game on a daily basis that a few hours of server downtime isn't going to kill me.
If its' really bad I have enough restraint to leave the computer and do something else. Hang out with irl friends, get that project you've been working on finished, catch up on your own shows, etc. If you think you have it bad, think about how bad the staff have it? They have been toiling away at this since 11 a.m EST NA time. With ungrateful, rude, and obnoxious forum users notifying them every other post about how they are the devil and higher up and management yelling at them to get their servers fixed.

And honestly, if it's not server maintenance people are yelling at ZoS for it's yet another useless whine thread about magicka vs. Stamina builds, Maelstrom, or some other petty complaint that seems to warrant huge rant threads with 13 pages.

They are working on it. If you want your refund that bad just go ahead and do it. Hope the money back on 4 hours of lost time was worth it. Jesus.

Couldnt agree more on this.. though im usually at work when the maintenance are on.. SO I DONT EVEN CARE! :P

Asking/Demanding for refunds or compensations are not going to help anyway. Maybe you could go out look at the sun? Or enjoy the feeling of the wind across your face? I dont know.. just a thought?

nimander99 wrote: »

What you are talking about is something I've only seen in certain F2P Korean mmo's. Its not common, as far as my own experience anyways, for western developer's to give free stuff's for down time and glitches unless it was a major snafu.

Are you referring to Maple Story? I remember Maple Story would do that... you'd get their equivalent of crowns. The company that ran MS was Nexxon.