Heartfealt plea to move shutdown day.
By
Aett_Thorn,
Posted on: 2009-07-15 16:18 in Suggestions and Ideas
I would not be opposed to this.
HOWEVER. That said, I understand why they do it on Friday mornings. They are trying to get the servers ready for the weekend high periods of activity, which probably take place Friday and Saturday nights U.S. time. If they moved the maintenance to Thursday, there might be more problems come Friday and Saturday night for us.
Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson
"I was just the one with the most unsolicited sombrero." - Traegus
I guess this begs the question what exactly are they doing during the shutdown. I wouldn't have thought an extra days running between shutdowns would affect the stability of the server however if that is the case then it would help to know to take the sting out of the interuption.
If shifting it to Thursday is out of the question I could live with them holding it off for three or so hours to give us a longer period to play but I guess that would run the risk of them now ticking off more US players whom I imagine outnumber us in this zone.
More or less. Yeah.
Typical maintenance might include a full defragmentation, scandisk, and some performance checking programs running across the servers to make sure things are fine. Shutting them down to remove the cases and clear out any accumulated dust, and other mundane tasks.
Currently they get -about- the same amount of traffic on the server between Monday at noon and Thursday at 6am as they do over the course of Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. (All times Pacific) So shutting the servers down Monday allows them to clear out the Weekend traffic. While Friday allows them to clean up after the week's traffic and prep for another weekend.
Moving the time on Friday back a few hours would, indeed, piss off a LOT of American players. Mostly children and second-shift employees.
-Rachel-
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I would not be opposed to this.
HOWEVER. That said, I understand why they do it on Friday mornings. They are trying to get the servers ready for the weekend high periods of activity, which probably take place Friday and Saturday nights U.S. time. If they moved the maintenance to Thursday, there might be more problems come Friday and Saturday night for us.
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This.
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I would not be opposed to this.
HOWEVER. That said, I understand why they do it on Friday mornings. They are trying to get the servers ready for the weekend high periods of activity, which probably take place Friday and Saturday nights U.S. time. If they moved the maintenance to Thursday, there might be more problems come Friday and Saturday night for us.
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While I don't know the extent of an impact pusing maintenance 24 hours forward would have, I can't imagine it would be all that much. Frankly, I'd be willing to take my game here in America slowing down a bit (due to some more code fragment accumulation and things like that) if it'll give people down under the same prime play time I enjoy.
"If I had Force powers, vacuum or not my cape/clothes/hair would always be blowing in the Dramatic Wind." - Tenzhi
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Frankly, I'd be willing to take my game here in America slowing down a bit (due to some more code fragment accumulation and things like that) if it'll give people down under the same prime play time I enjoy.
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Thats not a bad idea, Ricktu.
I'm pretty sure that we've occasionally missed either the Monday or Friday night (Aussie time) maintenance. This kind of suggests to me that the twice weekly maintenance is not absolutely necessary. By that I mean its not like the servers are in danger of choking on memory leaks in the next 24 hours if maintenance isn't performed at the regular time, but its more being performed for safety's sake.
So moving the maintenance by a day shouldn't have an impact.
Moving the time forwards by a few hours would just shift the problem to New Zealand, who currently get maintenance from around 8pm to 10pm, if my maths is right.
So your first idea is probably better, making maintenance our Thursday night.
Yes it would. I totally understand that shifting the time just screws someone else instead of us. Which is why I was focusing on shifting days. It means us Aussies still take the hit just on a less disruptive day.
Oh and just as an aside remember that whenever there is a server shutdown it is always during our prime playing time so please have a little sympathy for us. For example this week the server is shutting down on Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday nights during our favourite playing times. Would it be so much to ask that the shutdown times be staggered so that it's not always us? 
While I'm not unsympathetic, I have to point out - it's a US based game, on US based servers, being maintained by us 'merkins on US schedules. Quite likely with consideration of overtime if they have to drag people in earlier.
As fun as our Au/NZ compatriots are - when they're making determinations on maintenance needs vs traffic, you're just not making a big enough impact on server traffic or load. When it comes to the overall equation of game needs, server needs, and disrupting the fewest folks possible (both in terms of players and datacenter employees, admins, and the like - not to mention "minimizing how much overtime we have to pay") - it comes around to bite you folks in the butt.
If there were minimal impact, I'd be fine with them moving it. But as mentioned, they're also trying to get the servers as ready as possible for "peak time" - the weekend, US schedule. I can't imagine they haven't had this discussion already when they came up *with* these times.
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While I'm not unsympathetic, I have to point out - it's a US based game, on US based servers, being maintained by us 'merkins on US schedules. Quite likely with consideration of overtime if they have to drag people in earlier.
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Yep.. totally understand that. Which is why I initially suggested changing the day instead.
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If there were minimal impact, I'd be fine with them moving it. But as mentioned, they're also trying to get the servers as ready as possible for "peak time" - the weekend, US schedule. I can't imagine they haven't had this discussion already when they came up *with* these times.
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Yes I suspect you're right however if you don't ask you don't get.
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As fun as our Au/NZ compatriots are - when they're making determinations on maintenance needs vs traffic, you're just not making a big enough impact on server traffic or load.
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That's also probably true however at the same time they are also happy to take our money so I wouldn't mind at least a little consideration by them of our plight. If it turns out to be totally impractical to change the day no problems however it would be nice to know it was even considered.
Staggered maintenance has been suggested before.
For example, keep Monday and Friday as they are. Move extra mid-week maintenances to midday US time would cause them to occur during evening primetime in India rather than Australia, whilst still occurring during US work hours and away from prime US gaming time (to the best of my knowledge).
This may be a busier time, I dont know. But is it better to mildly inconvenience 30,000 or greatly inconvenience 10,000?
I PM'd a Community rep with this idea in fact, and got no response. I dont see this changing to be honest, but no harm in discussing it.
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This may be a busier time, I dont know. But is it better to mildly inconvenience 30,000 or greatly inconvenience 10,000?
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So it's a "great" inconvenience when it's scheduled during Aussie prime time, but if it gets changed to another group of players prime time it drops to only a "mild" inconvenience for the new players affected.
No, thats not what im saying.
To be blocked from playing two evenings a week is a mild inconvenience.
To be blocked from playing four evenings a week is a great inconvenience.
My suggestion is to move ONLY the extra mid week maintenance to a different time, NOT the Monday and Friday ones.
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As fun as our Au/NZ compatriots are - when they're making determinations on maintenance needs vs traffic, you're just not making a big enough impact on server traffic or load.
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That's also probably true however at the same time they are also happy to take our money so I wouldn't mind at least a little consideration by them of our plight. If it turns out to be totally impractical to change the day no problems however it would be nice to know it was even considered.
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That's part of what I'm saying though - I'm sure it *was* considered. But it's considered in terms of the overall population and traffic/usage patterns, as well as the other considerations I mentioned before.
Also don't forget we have people on the *other* side of the time zone issue that get affected - European players on the US servers. They create traffic and such, as well - but likely not enough to really make a huge impact in decisions on when to hold maintenance. (Other than, of course, those EU players on EU servers, but that's not what we're talking about.)
It's ... well, it's like stores or restaraunts and an odd work schedule. They'll plan for a lunch rush around noon, and higher traffic to schedule more workers in from, say, 4-7, while the 24 hour places will have perhaps a cashier and a bunch of stock people overnight. Yes, it'd be nice if, when I was having to leave for work at 3 AM, I didn't get stuck in lines at that cashier - but there isn't enough overall traffic for them to put a second one on, nor are they going to reschedule maintenance (in terms of stocking or actual, floor-waxing, vacuuming, etc. maintenance) because that's when I go in. They're getting done what they need to get done while inconveniencing as few people as possible.
(Yes, I did go to work at 3 AM or so for a while.)
No, there's no harm in asking - but at the same time, I don't personally see a change in the works, barring more parts of the equation changing.
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No, thats not what im saying.
To be blocked from playing two evenings a week is a mild inconvenience.
To be blocked from playing four evenings a week is a great inconvenience.
My suggestion is to move ONLY the extra mid week maintenance to a different time, NOT the Monday and Friday ones.
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Thanks for taking the time to clarify what you meant. 
I don't know what the company can do about this situation but it would be nice if something could be done to make it better for you guys down under.
I think the perfect solution is to do maintenance to whenever I'm not playing. Basically, Positron calls me and asks what time is good for me. That way everybody wins!
Can I please very humbly ask the developers to shift their weekly Friday shutdown to Thursday? Why? Because here on the other side of the planet to you guys this is causing us significant disruption.
Here in Australia, New Zealand and several other countries this weekly shutdown occurs anywhere from 10 pm to 1 pm on a Friday night. Now as Friday night is "the" night to play for a lot of us this is incredibly disruptive. For a lot of us older players Friday night is the only real night we get to play late into the evening as Saturday evening most of us are doing things with the family. And of course we can't play late on Sunday as we have work in the morning.
Not to mention the fact that it is hard to do any task forces as there is often the problem of the server shutting down before it finishes and more often than not half the team members wont be back to finish the TF once the servers come back up.
Now I appreciate it is very hard to keep everyone around the different timezones happy but I would suspect most would rather have a free run on Fridays rather than thursdays.
Thanks for your time.