They are not telling you anything since IF they said maintenance "may last 2 hours but expect delays" the forums will be flooded with "you promised they would be down for only 2 hours" stuff. Resulting in even more mad players then they already have.

I too have worked in IT for 30 years, in a 24/7 environment, what difference does that make?

It's a completely different thing working on a game like this and most people with the slightest IT or mmo knowledge know that in the first few weeks following launch its very common for servers to have to go down at zero notice.

I have worked at numerous large companies with multimillion pound super computer installations and while it's nice for planned upgrades and planned maintenance, I have often seen emergency maintenance where we would simply be making it up if we gave an estimate of when the servers will be up

What Krees28b14 says is 100% correct.

The idea is to over inflate the down time, if a quick patch is going to take 30 mins, tell the client 4 hours. Anything less makes you look good, anything more and you probably deserve the flack you're going to cop.

Flayme wrote: »

If this was a free game or still in beta maybe? I paid to play early. One of those days is gone now. Do I get 20% refunded?

So you haven't ever updated anyone during an outage? But it's a game? It is a paid service. I am asking for updates, not notification in advance that it is going down.

If you have something helpful to add, please do.

You didn't pay to play early at all.

If you bought the CE edition or the standard edition from zenimax you got 5 days early access. If they are giving the same early access for standard edition, then it obviously isn't what you are paying extra for with the CE edition.

If you buy the standard edition once the game is officially released, it will still cost the same as it did last week, the only difference being no early access.

In other words, early access is an additional bonus and not part of what you paid for. Anyone with the slightest experience of mmo releases knows that the likelihood of smooth non stop playing during early access is almost guaranteed to be a big not a chance.

It's why when early access was being discussed in many forums, many players said they were waiting for official release and will happily let those with early access help sort out all the unexpected launch problems first.

That said, I wish all game companies worded their Web pages better for early access so this sort of confusion doesn't happen.

Katanako wrote: »

The idea is to over inflate the down time, if a quick patch is going to take 30 mins, tell the client 4 hours. Anything less makes you look good, anything more and you probably deserve the flack you're going to cop.

You would think so but that also doesn't work.

With this game you will have those who complain that they had just 3 to 4 hrs of playtime today but due to the announcement, went shopping with their spouse or whatever, and had they not been told it would be 4 hrs, wouldn't have done so, hence they are fuming.

In other situations, I've seen this done where people have decided to take a 1/2 day off due to the estimated down time and when the following day they are working until 10pm Friday night to catch up, again they are fuming at the miss information.

What ever they say, a lot of people will always be unhappy.

Ojustaboo wrote: »

You would think so but that also doesn't work.

With this game you will have those who complain that they had just 3 to 4 hrs of playtime today but due to the announcement, went shopping with their spouse or whatever, and had they not been told it would be 4 hrs, wouldn't have done so, hence they are fuming.

In other situations, I've seen this done where people have decided to take a 1/2 day off due to the estimated down time and when the following day they are working until 10pm Friday night to catch up, again they are fuming at the miss information.

What ever they say, a lot of people will always be unhappy.

But we could rest easy knowing that we have given them some quality time with their spouse, girl/boy/it friend or dog.

I would rather see the servers taken offline in my free 5 day early access, knowing that they are resolving problems that have arose in the past couple of days, saving them having on going issues that are not attended to building up and causing issues in expansions to come.

Take your time Zenimax, if you need another hour, then take it if it will make sure that you actually fix things that are broken. these early access hours are free and there for you to make sure the game is working and playable on release.

Ojustaboo wrote: »

Katanako wrote: »

What ever they say, a lot of people will always be unhappy.

That's true however it doesn't change the proven fact that remaining regularly engaged with your customers even to relay bad news is orders of magnitude better for the long term relationship than ignoring them and leaving them in the dark.

It is clear reading the responses in game and the activity on these forums that the customer service is going to be poor for this game and that's just plain terrible for a game with such a huge capital backing. There are a lot of simple mistakes being made even though such mistakes have been seen before in other MMO's. Its like they never did a potential problem analysis (or even know what one is) before early access.

Customer service should be all over these forums like a rash at launch and backed out as issues fade away.

Schmackei wrote: »

Just updated on their server status page.
http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/discussion/comment/507901/#Comment_507901

That 'update' basically says "we don't have an ETA for when we can post and give you an ETA for when the server will be online".

Darquer wrote: »

You got your early access for free?

Everyone did, early access was offered as a bonus to the game you purchased, the price of the game will remain the same when early access has finished.