arinbjorn wrote: »

It's been down 3 time in the last 4 days, really not good.

This game really does feel like a pay to play beta.

That's because it is unfortunately. Clearly after the mass stress tests it nowhere near ready for release but the marketing juggernaut was rolling.

It's going to be a great game but I fear this short-sighted decision, compounded at every turn by jaw-droppingly inept decisions on maintenance times etc etc etc, means it'll be a great FTP game inside 12 months.

I cannot fathom why ZMO don't think retaining custom is a good idea. But no - let's schedule maintenance on weekends and holidays instead of doing it during the night.

Well, there are upsides and downsides to this.
First, thanks to the team at ZOS for working over the easter weekend to fix issues. It is much appreciated.
Second, though: it is a problem to release a product in a state where it is obviously not quite fit for purpose (yet?).
As much as I appreciate the people at ZOS trying to fix bugs and issues even over the easter weekend, there is a distinct problem with an online computer game sold for actually quite a bit of dosh allegedly 'including 30 days of gametime' if the game quite a chunk of that time is unavailable because of all kinds of unscheduled, scheduled and somewhat irregular regular maintenance, especially on the first long weekend after its release. Game was down now three times on a 4-day weekend (as it is in most of the EU) for several hours each - and most of it during times when people are awake and could possibly play, not in a 1am-7am window when most people are asleep.
However, that is not the biggest problem IMHO. The biggest problem is the communication of this, and the attitude ZOS seems to have regarding its customers. Of the three downtimes on this extended weekend, only one was scheduled - the 'scheduled' maintenance this morning is good fun, but when I last checked the server status board at roughly 10pm BST yesterday, I didn't see any notice of it being given, so I didn't have time to put it in my schedule - rather, it came as an (unpleasant) surprise this morning when I turned on the computer and was hping I could get on playing. What is making matters worse is that none of the maintenance downtimes - not even the 2 'scheduled' ones, come with any indication of when service will resume.
For something to be 'scheduled', it needs to have not just a start time, but also an expected end time. While it is appreciated that end times - otherwise known as 'deadlines' - may sometimes have to be moved due to unexpected delays (which makes the work 'behind schedule' or indeed 'late'), it is minimal courtesy to give customers who pay for the service being available an estimation of when the service will resume (see for example arrival and departure times on public transport: if the service is late, customers rightly expect to be informed how much it will be late, so that they can, if necessary, change their plans).
This makes for a very bad level of service, one that is really not acceptable for a paid product. In fact, any other company I have a contract with for providing me with what is supposed to be a paid for regular and mostly uninterrupted service, if they have more than 1-2% downtime, will have to compensate me (or reduce my next bill). From ZOS, I have as yet not even seen a proper apology - and with proper apology I mean one that isn't just a superficial line like 'we apologize for the inconvenience', but something that shows that they are aware that they are not providing the service they are supposed to provide, and are trying to make some amends for that. Those amends don't need to be much - it may be some pretty in-game item that costs them nothing whatsoever - but at least shows that they are aware that they are providing a service that falls short of what can reasonably be expected. Of course, there would be a more appropriate way of making amends that would cost them something - like extending subscription times by the amount lost due to unreasonable downtimes (say anything above 2% of subscribed time) - but I'm not even asking for that: any gesture that actually shows that they are aware that they deliver sub-standard service would do.
But apparently, none of that seems to have sunk in with them as yet. Which is a shame.

patrikblb16_ESO wrote: »

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

At this time, we are doing the scheduled maintenance one day early, and tomorrow's maintenance is taking the place of the regular maintenance on Tuesday.

Wait what?
You are doing the UNSCHEDULED maintenance now, and tomorrow you are doing the scheduled maintenance.

No, this was written yesterday. Relax.

Btw in America its a bank holiday since Sunday is Easter and thr feds need an excuse to take another day off.

Schools, banks and government tend to not run Monday aftrr Easter.

I'd just like to say that I really enjoy this game and I don't care one bit when the company feels the need to do maintanance to make it better. Thanks.

I'd just love to know who made the call to roll out the fix on Easter Monday morning. Especially given that they have stated that they will have regular downtime on Tuesday.

Seriously bad decision IMO

I can understand the need for scheduled and emergency maintenances. But I do not understand what you guys are doing for "HOURS"!!!! This is an online service and it is meant to be online. Please deal with downtimes ASAP, as professionally as possible, providing valid and frequently updated ETAs on the launcher. "We are doing maintenance" just does not cut it, inform your customers.

I'd like to also say that there's lot of bugs what bloggin progression for players and some of us still have this infinity loading screen issue when moving to another instance. So i dont mind if they have maintenance every day.

Some people are just laughable .. *** about bugs and when they are fixing them *** about them getting fixed, ZOS simply can't win.

I played in the BETA and believe me it wasn't that great, what they released was a far better version and worthy of a release. What people need to understand is that Bugs happen no matter what, it would be absolutely impossible to release something without bugs in it, if people disagree then please introduce me to the developers who always get it right...

Prospero_ESO wrote: »

This is an emergency downtime, yesterday some people revealed an exploit where you could dupe specific items.

They fixed that in the last emergency downtime.

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

At this time, we are doing the scheduled maintenance one day early, and tomorrow's maintenance is taking the place of the regular maintenance on Tuesday.

Not understood, what timeframe are you working on, to me that sounds like a weird way around saying todays "scheduled maintenance" is replacing tomorrows scheduled maintenance but the scheduled maintenance tomorrow is still going to be on?

arinbjorn wrote: »

It's been down 3 time in the last 4 days, really not good.

This game really does feel like a pay to play beta.

nailed it.

All i want to know is HOW LONG ???

Syzmicke wrote: »

So are the servers going to be down again tomorrow for the regular maintenance?

cause that statement is about as clear as mud.

NO!!!!!!!!!!!! for bleeps sake. READ!!!

OMG i read the patch notes and it says they fixed "God of Schemes" !!!! please let this fix work PLEASE i will love you forever! i just want to access my veteran zones.