ricktu

This ^^^ ... every time I see one of those "take my money now" posts I want to reach through the screen and slap the plonker senseless.

Would you walk through a house for sale with a realtor saying "Oh I must have this house at any price" ?

Oh and 500 points for a non combat pet? Not a chance. 200 points and you might have had a sale.

Ummm yeah. For myself and all the group of Oceanics I play with over the last two months 70% of the time we have tried to play has been thwarted. 110 PP can buy what? One part of a costume set? Almost everything I have seen in the shop has been 200 - 800 PP except for a few temp enhancements or single costume pieces. Sorry but to me 110 PP would be a downright insult.

And yes most of this could have been avoided if they had bothered giving decent notice. A few hours before is useless. I don't know about all of you but we try to organise get togethers days in advance. And lately, 70% of the time we come home from work, have dinner, spend time with the kids then after all that sit down to log on and play with friends. The fact that word of the shutdown was posted earlier on that day doesn't help us
a bit. We're stuck unable to do what we planned. Do we then go and do something else? Yes of course we do. That does not mean we aren't annoyed. And when it happens that often we start to question what we are paying for. However had we a couple of days notice of this then we would have planned something else and no one ends up annoyed. Well unless it happens too often of course.

Oh and as regards this freedom of speech bit. Some of you are forgetting that just because you have the right to speak out doesn't automatically mean you should. This threads purpose was for a group of people to express their feelings to NCSoft. Realistically no one else has the right to but in because it was not expressed to you. Nor do you have the right to judge other peoples feelings to be right or wrong. If what is being asked for here is more than the company is willing to give they will simply ignore it and the customers will have to decide if they are willing to keep giving their custom.

I mean for crying out loud if certain, and in particular one, individuals had minded their own business this thread would have been about a fifth this length. It is only that people felt that they had to justify their feelings that inspired most of the posts. Not to mention the meddlers have also caused an increase in passion about the issue for the same reason.

Oh and to clarify something for those pompous prats who try to use it as an insult. Just because people spend 10 minutes posting a complaint about something does not mean they are spending the other 23 hours and 50 minutes worrying about it. So saying things like there are more important things to worry about is plain insulting. You are just making yourself look idiotic saying things like that.

My goodness you really are turning into GG. What a totally pointless and rediculous comment.

Life is too short to waste time reading any more of that drivel. I'm just going to make good use of that ignore function. We really shouldn't feed the trolls. In this case the troll is someone who is jumping in on a conversation between unhappy customers and NCSoft. Telling said customer he has no right to be unhappy. Now to find a post by this individual to access that function. Fortunately that will not be difficult as there are plenty to find.

In all seriousness folks this forum has become unbearable of late. There is an increasing number of smarmy, high post count losers jumping in on most threads trying to put down anyone who says anything remotely against the game or the company. It appears this company and this game are perfect and anyone with any issue is obviously a loser who doesnt know when he is well off. I'm surprised anyone dares talk about anything that they are unhappy with the way you get jumped on in this forum. Long live free speech huh?

Thank you Gangrel. I'm glad someone remembers that it's us Oceanics that get hit every single time there's a patch or maintenance. This has been going on for around two months now but you EU guys are only starting to notice it because the downtimes have been longer and have extended into your peak times. I've stop tracking it now but I noted a few weeks ago that out of ten times my friends and I tried to play we were kicked off the servers an hour or so into starting seven times. It has gotten to the point now most of us are talking about which new MMO's we can try instead.

I must admit though I'm highly amused at the argument that this is all for our benefit. This is being done so that the company can get more players and make more money. (this is not a critiscm) We may benefit by getting more frequent additions to game but please don't treat us like fools by suggesting it's all just for us.

Agreed, Absolutely hate the idea but at least you are being positive

Pedantic much? If you want to be even more so the reality is it's not even the dev's or the server maintenance crew that would make this decision but the management of NCSoft itself. You are quite correct that I mispoke when I typed dev's however I was just typing quickly and trying to not spend any more time on this than I had to.

That may very well be how things turn out we realise that. In which case the devs shouldn't be surprised if their unwillingness to change costs them some ongoing subscriptions. Something most companies would have wanted to avoid I would have thought.

The balls in their court. Frankly I suspect they wont even comment on the issue. So many of us will just have to decide how we want to go on.

Are you even reading what I'm saying? You keep coming back with obvious points that have already been addressed countless times. Yes there must be regular maintenance but no it does not have to be at the exact same time each day.

This argument is going in circles with the initial countering arguments just being constantly respouted. That's not how you win a debate.

NCSoft is no doubt aware of how we feel now anyway and that's who the information was directed towards anyway.

I do want to thank all of you though for keeping the debate civil. Quite frequently in issues such as this where the majority have no interest in it you get the fanboy trolls coming in trying to start arguments so that the mods have to lock the thread which then stifles discussion and stops us being heard.

Yeah okay that makes zero sense. Of course I'm only going to pay for a game that's up when I want to play. Would anyone do otherwise? And the fact that it isn't for such long stetches is exactly why so many of us are questioning continuing our subs. And rather than just quit we are letting NCSoft know first in case they are willing to do something to encourage us to stay.

Oh and I was scheduled to play tonight with friends and have just noticed that there is indeed yet another patch. This makes it the fourth time in a row that we have all tried to play together only to find it will be cut very short. Can you even begin to see why we might be feeling the way we are yet?

Well then you need to reread the thread mate. Staggering any shutdown over the normal 8 hour days seems the most reasonable option and I have yet to see a reasonable issue with it. There may indeed be a good reason why they all need to be within the same timezone but we have yet to hear one.


There isn't a person involved in this discussion that isn't aware of this. Obviously it's only during these change periods that theres a problem at all. And if the busy periods were only a week or two we could easily just grin and bear it but they tend to last for a couple of months at a time. As it is it has already been about three weeks worth of patches and we haven't even got a release date yet for the issue. Not to mention there will be at least a couple of weeks of patches after the release to address bugs etc. And as you said this is a much larger release than normal so god knows how long it will go for.

Oh please. Schedules like this can be worked out months in advance and the people doing this work are far from idiots and should have zero problems working around that. Thats a lame excuse.

There is also the information screen in the launcher which can easily keep the player base informed so no one gets confused.


Kinda pointless since for the majority the maintenance/patches etc. never occur when they play so why would they care when it happens. So how is it a benefit? Certainly not to those of us actually affected by it. And for the record except for the thursday night weekly maintenance we almost never have more than a few hours warning for the other shutdowns so it impossible to shedule around them.


Yep, know thats there. And why should that stop us asking to have more consideration shown to us? If you read any EULA of any software it basically absolves the company of virtually anything. Does that absolve any of these companies from providing the same level of service amongst all its customers?

Anyhow I'm not here to justify our concerns to other players. Especially when they have a vested interest in keeping things as they are. I'm just pointing out to the Devs the feelings of some of their playerbase. Obviously I dont know and can't speak for every Australian player but for the ones I have spoken with every single one has the same concerns to varying degrees.

Agreed we aren't, however since when is it ever good for a company to piss off ANY segment of their customer base if they don't have to? Spreading the load (so to speak) changes that through from one (mostly) pissed off segment to a few mildly inconvenienced segments. Overall better for the business wouldn't you agree?

To me it does for the following reason. Doing things purely because its the cheapest method does not equate to good busiess. Part of being in business often means spending a little money to keep your customers happy and continuing to use you. I'm sure you will agree that any company that does everything the cheapest way possible will not end up lasting long.


You are probably right that there would be some groaning but I seriously doubt they would lose one sub over it. After all at the very worst we are talking about other people having to deal with one extra shutdown every month and no one is going to quit over losing just two hours a month. That being said I accept that no one really knows the answer to that even NCSoft. What I can guarentee though is that they will lose subs if they continue down their current path.

Yet again I will point out that we are not insisting it be done out of business hours. And even if we were it would not be just out of goodwill. They are making money out of us so in essence we would be paying for it.

Why are so many of you against this? Do I take it you would rather we get totally shafted so that you dont even get minorly inconvenienced? Great brotherly spirit there guys.

Sigh no one is suggesting moving the entire shedule foward a couple of hours but staggering so you only get inconvenienced occassionally.

The comment about using the downtime to spend time with families is just plain insulting. If we were that sort of loser who did nothing but play 24/7 we wouldn't be worried about losing the couple of hours in the evening we do set aside for it.

And make up your mind. First you say moving it would greatly inconvience you then you straight away say its a good thing for us to have as we can use it to get a life. So why not have that usefull break yourself then? If its such a good thing that is.

Ahh but I disagree with your premise. If this were just a case of choosing whom to inconvenience then I would completely accept your argument.

In this case it's a choice of majorly shafting a smaller segment of the customer base and minorly inconveniencing a potentially larger one.

A larger amount of people getting a shutdown every one to two months is not going to upset anyone. Whereas putting them all in one timezone does. Surely it is better for a company to upset none of their customers if possible?

Look this is a game after all and I'm starting to feel that I'm putting more effort into this argument than the issue warrents but I hate leaving points unanswered.

No mate I honestly don't take this personally. I know the Dev's are not picking the time they do out of malice however that doesn't change the basic facts. You and I are paying full price for something we are not getting. It is as simple as that and something that could be addressed by the devs with a little effort.

I have made all my points more than once so I won't do it again. I do want to point out thought that I am not just speaking for myself but all the Aussie's who I play with most of whom rarely bother coming to the forums. They all feel exactly the same as I do and this is what I am communicating to NCSoft. Part of their customer base feels victimised because they refuse to stagger the shutdown times. And as paying customers we have every right to do so.

I would like to point out that this is not just another case where you can say "just ignore the wingers they will keep paying and playing anyway". Australian gamers as a rule are getting very tired of being treated badly by overseas companies. Just as an example a recently released game by a large company in the very same genre as this one not only had their shutdowns in the same time period but had the affront to charge us $5 a month more than the US for the exact same service. When we asked why said company could come up with no valid excuse for it. The net result was every single Aussie I know cancelled their subscription and didn't play beyond their first month.

Now I am not suggesting for a second NCSoft are any near as bad as the above company. They have actually addressed issues we've had in the past which were greatly appreciated. However this is something that is bothering a lot of us and quite frankly a lot of us question our susbscriptions during times like this. A lot of us cut down the number of accounts we had last time too. So please believe me when I say no matter what you may think of us this is something we take seriously.

And we would appreciate hearing a response from the Devs directly. Getting attacked by other players for daring to suggest we get the same as them just makes matters worse.