As far as wanting notice, I bet this was more of a, "Oh crap," moment, in which the best option is to shut it down, boom. The team starts working, hoping the shut down doesn't have to be super long, but as time goes on and the problem becomes more complex, the decision needs to be made about when and how to inform the users. Having worked in customer service, believe me, this is the worst part about it all and what usually takes the longest; and it's not the CSR's fault, it's usually their superiors/the ones with the decision making power.

Actually, even if they don't know how long it will take to resolve the issue, they could post something like "Server will be down for at least another two hours. We will post another downtime update in 1.5 hours." That way people would at least know if they have time to run to the store, etc. before the game comes back up...

bjeardoeb14_ESO wrote: »

There are almost NEVER ETAs for Unplanned maintenance from any gaming company, it's a fact of the industry. They can't tell us when it'll be back up, because THEY DON'T KNOW. And giving estimates is a bad idea for companies, because then when it's NOT ready at their estimated time, people on the forums and Social Media whinge about it.

yeah you are right. its not like people are complaining now about the lack of info. we wouldn't want them to start by giving an ETA and missing it.

Budnick wrote: »

bjeardoeb14_ESO wrote: »

There are almost NEVER ETAs for Unplanned maintenance from any gaming company, it's a fact of the industry. They can't tell us when it'll be back up, because THEY DON'T KNOW. And giving estimates is a bad idea for companies, because then when it's NOT ready at their estimated time, people on the forums and Social Media whinge about it.

yeah you are right. its not like people are complaining now about the lack of info. we wouldn't want them to start by giving an ETA and missing it.

Actually I think most of this just shows how difficult these forums are to navigate.

@Jamsinerain‌ I bet it was the same shiny squirrel that broke the server

I wish some of the more vocal forum posters could work on a major MMO for just a month. I know my own views on how these companies work changed drastically after having worked for one for 2 years now.

Yes, they have a team who is dedicated to simply reading forums and handling customer support, they are the Community Team. This team has their work cut out for them, and few people truly appreciate the scale or complexity involved. Their job, when something goes wrong, is to run around talking to team leads, which usually involves the following teams; QA, Art, Combat, Server, Engineering and yes, even management. When these things occur they are trying their best to gather all the information they can on the issue, compiling it and then deciding the best way to communicate it to you, the customer. Do they hold information back, yes. Why you ask, well simply read the forums for a bit and I think you can come to a logical conclusion. Most of the time no matter how the situation is handled they are going to catch flak from someone, that is just the way of the internet.

The other issue at play here is that teams do not always have an answer, or an easy and fast fix. These issues have a tendency to blindside a development team and they can be just as in the dark as you the consumer. However, when an issue is discovered, be it in-house or on a live environment it usually goes through a pipeline that looks something like this.

First, QA gathers all the information that has been uncovered for the particular issue. That information can come from bug reports, forums and sometimes even personal experience with the issue. This information can sometimes be as useless as, "I found a bug", or "This is broke", and yes I have seen bug reports with those exact statements. QA then tries to reproduce the issue in-house so they can come up with a valid and reliable way to reproduce the issue. Once they have that information it is then sent to the team that handles those types of issues. For example, if a combat ability breaks when a user does x followed by y, that issue would be sent to the combat team, who might check their code to make sure it is not what is breaking the ability. In this case, where players are being logged into the wrong account, I would imagine the issue went to the server and platform teams.

Once the team responsible for fixing the issue receives the information on how to reproduce the bug, exploit or crash, they then have to spend time tracking down the cause and attempting to formulate a solution. Once they come up with what they hope is a fix, the change is then submitted to the build team, who creates a working build that is then passed to QA. QA will again sit down and attempt to break that issue using the previous repro steps and usually tossing in a few other ways to break it. If it holds up, QA will green light the fix which is then pushed out to the live environment.

Now, I have no working knowledge of their build process, but what I just laid out is a rough sketch of the pipeline any bug will follow. The speed that it is deployed to the live environment is the biggest variable and usually depends on the severity of the issue and how much it impacts the players. There are usually two types of patches, Emergency Patches, or EP's or regular Game Updates, GU's.

In closing I would like to agree it is annoying to lose game time, especially if you made special plans to work around an early start, but believe me, their teams are doing all they can to fix this as fast as possible. Sometimes however, there is no fast an easy fix and it sucks for everyone involved including the game's development team.

TL;DR:
Game fixes take time, difficult fixes can take a lot of time. Patience is a virtue that requires practice, so take this opportunity to gain some patience inspiration points.

Also a link to the update post in the banner with the server status would probably be the most helpful thing they could do at this moment.