Redoubtable

The Sister Psyche TF was run and won last night, and I believe that a Citadel TF also ran on Justice at the same time. We'll be looking to do more TFs over the next few weeks, keep watching the Australia channel to see what's happening.

I picked up the Bad Luck badge mission just now, so I'll save that for tonight as well.

This group has shifted to 9pm AEDT to fit in better with the participants' schedules. We're mostly around level 20 now, but new additions are always welcome thanks to SSK.

In case anyone's concerned, I have the required badge mission ready to go as well, and I'll be running it at the end of the event in case anyone still needs it.

On the other hand, the pink breadcrumbs were very useful when we got lost in Calystix's caves the other night.

Do you mean yesterday? I logged off five minutes before the scheduled time so I didn't notice.

Incidentally, the halloween event actually isn't off yet - looks like it will be around until tomorrow's maintenance.

I accidentally created a character on Virtue a while back (meant to create it on Victory). I'm Justice all the way these days, though I am occasionally tempted to put an alt on Virtue for when there's nobody else on. I gather that it's like Freedom for grown-ups.

Thanks for posting Ocho, I think that a little feedback and forethought in this area goes a long way.

I'll be turning up around 9pm as well. Looking forward to this, I haven't played heroes in ages.

We were waiting for you to break the ice.

While I do love Lady Grey (and her TF), I have to wonder whether there'd be code to prevent the two events from happening in the same zone. Or do you have some inside information on this one?

Incidentally, the supernatural event's stubborness meant that I only got four hours of sleep last night. Totally worth it. :P

Such is the problem with drive-by critiques...

One night a week is a definite improvement, and it's pleasing to see that the devs are prepared to try and modify their processes to address our concerns. My thanks to the people that made sure our voices were heard in the halls of power, here's hoping that the trial goes well.

Had you considered applying for a refund? If the times were changed after you bought the sub then you'd arguably have grounds, since this affects your ability to access the game. I'd be interested to at least hear their response.

This is obviously not a problem that's unique to CoX, and I'm sure that the powers-that-be feel that they have no choice but to do things this way, but it disturbs me that NCSoft apparently doesn't feel that an issue which is causing long-standing customers to cancel their accounts warrants any kind of official response - even if it's just "sorry, but we can't do anything about it for these reasons".

Inconveniencing people will upset them, ignoring them will make them quit.

The last time a split outage happened was when the base bug was getting fixed in April. I remember because I posted a rant about having maintenance four times in the same week (and three times the week before) on the S.I.N.I.S.T.E.R boards, in response to which Min Min and Lili were all level-headed and reasonable. I hate to see a thread like this, because it tells me that I'm not just being reactionary this time.

Sorry, got all shorthand on you there. Yes, 2100 = 9pm AEST.

There'll be a Strike Force or two running on Justice on Thursday night, starting at around 2100 AEST. We'll most likely be looking to do a Cap run, since there have been a lot of low level characters attending the Thursday events lately, but we'll do our best to accommodate anyone who's able to make it. Contact @Redoubt (me) or @Min Min, or holler in the Australia global channel for an invite.

Sure, someone has to be affected - but why the same people on both nights. For instance, starting maintenance an hour earlier on Mondays and an hour later on Fridays wouldn't drastically affect the number of players online, but it would help to reduce the impact on any individual player.

It's not really relevant what other MMOs do with their downtimes - Age of Conan had lots of outages during the Australian evenings in the first month, and their general attitude to the issue was a big factor in the cancellation of my subscription.

The Australian community in this game provide some of the best free marketing that NCSoft could ask for, because the generally low populations mean that we need every new player that we can get. I can only imagine how guys like Lili and Min Min must feel, knowing that this move has the potential to undo all of their hard work towards keeping the game vibrant in our timezone.

If I could put my finger on the thing that bugs me the most, it's that there's no real acknowledgement on NCSoft's part that they appreciate the extent of the impact that this will have on the typical Australasian player. The impression that I have is that they don't care enough about our subscriptions to find a way to keep us happy, especially now that I see another outage tomorrow night which is again scheduled smack bang in the middle of our primetime. I would have thought it was better business sense to mildly annoy a slightly larger number of customers, rather than totally shafting a smaller number to the point where five year veterans are actually considering leaving the game. I've said this before when we've had multiple patch outages in primetime in the same week, and I've yet to hear a good reason why the Monday outage has to be at the same time as the Friday outage. I'm sure it's more difficult to do it this way from a management perspective, but frankly I'm not paying NCSoft to do what's convenient for them.

As it is I'm going to be cancelling my second account - not out of bitterness, but because I simply can't justify paying two subscriptions for a game that I can't access during a fair proportion of my playtime. Like Min, the next little while is going to be make or break on whether I stick with the game at all.