PaintsOfDust wrote: »

Also, please stop with the never-ending "some players experienced" stuff... its ALL PLAYERS during ALL peak-times.

How do you know it was all players? Maybe you're right, maybe you are not.
This is why ZOS keeps saying "we're investigating" each time an issue shows up. Because assuming things and making wild, overarching guesses just leads to more issues.

PaintsOfDust wrote: »

its like you purposely try to hide, that the servers were designed for lower player-numbers. which is okay... every server needs to be updated or re-stocked at some point, especially for a growing game like ESO. there is no shame in admitting, that you need to add more server capacity, and that you are not up to the job at the moment.

Except that's not how servers work.
Modern servers are designed to adapt, shrink, expand, and change their behavior and properties, depending the load, timeframes, etc.

Saying "The EU server has a lower capacity" is a gross oversimplification. The issue might not even be related to capacity in the way you expect. It's not that the servers are full. It's that they fill too quickly, leaving it not enough time to expand and adapt.

Some aspects of the game also behave differently based on the amount of players.
For example, when the server is near full, matchmaking will try to find you some Battleground opponents near your level.
But at 3 AM? The matchmaking system will probably stop caring about skill levels, and just match whomever it can get.

The issue is complicated. This is why ZOS can't immediately communicate and say what's happening. Because ZOS are human, and often times, they do not know what's happening.

...we deserve a Raven pet as apology, yes we do!

Omg really , I can’t believe a generic all words and no action statement from Gina (ZOS) the same statement that’s used every time and your all HAPPY now. Lmfao

It’s Called ACTION not words , how long has this been going on . I was taking PITY with the EU. Guys but now forget it. When the next event happens just please don’t post the EMD OF THE WORLD threads when a general statement of the same stuff makes you all happy.

Nemesis7884 wrote: »

stop praising them for doing the absolute bar minimum

You nailed it.

LFG tool was fine b4 1 tam, maybe you guys should revert all the way back to pre 1 tam

No test system? just a pts that no one uses?

Marto wrote: »

How do you know it was all players? Maybe you're right, maybe you are not.

let me rephrase... i "assume" its all players, because >95% of the sample size (aka me and my friends) can't login. This is how every empirical study works, this is how the industry works. Generally, i was able to re-produce the non-functionality of the servers amongst different platforms at different times. so yes. maybe im right, "maybe" im not. the probability im not is about alpha <= 5%. thats usually scientific standard and its enough for me. if you could stop trolling serious comments with serious implications now, id appreciate it

Well, whatever... Of course it was some issue with the way the system has been implemented, obviously it was due to whatever got changed with the last update, and obviously ZOS will try to fix it. I don't see much reason in celebrating a company doing what it obviously has to do to fix an issue with the product they are peddling.

The real damage is done anyway, people are pissed, people are miffed, another day wasted, another day of subscription down the drain, and it's not as if this is the first time something like this has happened either. The reliability of the service ZOS is providing has a dubious reputation and things like this will not make it any better, or nurture customer confidence.

The lesson for ZOS to learn here is, that they really need to amp up their game and make sure that disasters like this won't happen again. I mean once or twice would be perfectly understandable, but when every single time there is an event, the game just breaks down, signals something about the ability of ZOS to provide the things they claim to offer.

You guys at ZOS really need to make sure things like this won't happen again, and that maybe you need to allocate a bit more resources into testing things before you push the changes through. Or at the very frigging least, do not push major updates out couple of days before a big event you know will see a large increase in daily traffic. That's just common sense.

AS for what else should be done... Well, it really wouldn't hurt to offer some sweets to the angry crowd congregating at your gates brandishing pitchforks and torches...

Extending the Witches festival is obviously like the bare minimum you need to do, but that will not placate the restless natives.

Distributing some extra glass beads or something is strongly advised.

Look at it from the end user perspective - Satruday is prime gaming time. People set out time to do a bunch of stuffs during the weekends they don't have time for during weekdays. I for example can't really see myself having the time or opportunity to do trials except during weekends when there are a lot more people online,

That was not possible today. I mean I lost an opportunity to get a crucial Dremora coffer containing the only motif pages I need. I got two full sets for my primary and secondary crafters last year, and was planning on getting the missing pages for my tertiary and quaternary crafters this year. Now I an not so sure I can do that except by buying the missing pages from other players. Or by going though the extra hassle needed to get a trial group going during a weekday.

Now all of that is, of course, meaningless in the bigger scope of things, and am sure I will still manage to meet my goals for the event even with the lost evenings taken into account, but it will induce a tad more stress and urgency in my mind, and make the whole event feel that much less entertaining and rewarding. Which is already soured by all these technical issues we are having.

And am pretty sure I am not the only one feeling the burn, feeling the disappointment, and who has this nagging growing resentment building inside then towards the whole darn game.

So... whatever you do, remember that doing the bare minimum (i.e. fixing the servers and adding a few more days to the event) will not really make all the unhappiness and anger and resentment go away.. At the end of the day, the truth of the matter is, that you went and *** it up, and people are pissed about the state of things. If you want to retain customer goodwill, then I strongly urge you to do something extra.

Like, I dunno, throw us some Crown Crates, send as a day's worth of dremora boxes in the mail, or something - but don't just expect that people will shrug and be okay with things constantly being borked in this game.

Anyway... that's all I gotta say, time to go to bed I think.

Server up and running. First BG game - 15 min loading screen. This just isnt fun.

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

This is why we put a cap on the number of concurrent players that can log in last Friday, and then published the patch this morning trying to alleviate that issue.

At this time, we have another hotfix that we plan to deploy tonight (around 10:00pm EDT) that we believe will allow everything to run as normal, but frankly, we'll wait to see what it does before making any more promises.

We are already discussing additional options - besides directing all of our resources to identify and fix this issue, of course - which include extending the Witches Festival for a couple days.

This made my dog puke. So your fixes basically mean you put a cap on the number of concurrent players, restricting players to use the service they pay for.

You still need to wait to see what your hotfixes are doing? You don't know? Who makes them? How come you need to wait to see what it does?

Extending this witches event is not debatable, extend it for sure, it's not a favor you're making, it's an obligation of common sense.

Get your [snip] together.

[Edit for minor profanity]

Lots of generic words, making it plan obvious that apperatly some people don't even know what they are coding and how to handle their infrastructures and coding.

How is that acceptable?

lRaiden wrote: »

Besides extending the witches festival, as to which you shouldn't but you MUST, you MUST also extend ESO+ subscribers for the period the servers started to behave like this. It started on Saturday around 1am GMT+1

September or October 2018 more like the start date, and PC/EU should have a free ESO+ until the hardware/software issues are fixed (and verified by users or a not related to Zenimax third party)

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

Update: To ensure that the game can run as smoothly as possible, we are going to disable the Activity Finder until we determine the root cause of the issues that are impacting game performance. As stated before, we’ll look into extending the Witches Festival, but first we need to identify and fix the problems that are impacting player experience.

For this change to take place, we'll need to reboot both PC NA and EU to stabilize everything, then turn off the Activity Finder; maintenance for this will begin around 3:30am EDT and should take an hour or two. Note that you'll still be able to form a group manually, but you will not be able to queue for Battlegrounds while the system is disabled.

We'll have another update for everyone on the situation later today (Sunday). Thanks again for your patience as we get to the bottom of this.

Hallelujah! Thanks for the update.
Any news is better than no news.