my sig.....
There we go... unexpected kicked off the game in prime time yet again. 
Look NCsoft.. how about a discount for us folks in this time zone.. or a free month a year. Something to make up for the fact we're the ones you continually choose to stuff around.
I should also mention that the Announcements board has Friday's maintenance moving to Thursday instead.
Goodness knows, we wouldn't want to see consistency rear its ugly head.
I vaguely thought about logging in tonight, since maintenance has kept me away for the last week, since the time change. Glad I didn't.
Maintenance means we'll have to cancel the Thursday event, I guess rescheduling for Friday. Although at this point, my motivation is pretty damn low.
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Oh you're kidding me right???? This Friday is the first Friday in months that we won't be playing and its going to be a maintenance free night? We really cant catch a break can we? |
Originally Posted by MinMin
I should also mention that the Announcements board has Friday's maintenance moving to Thursday instead.
Goodness knows, we wouldn't want to see consistency rear its ugly head. |
I've actually got some questions that might not help anybody in the thread whose affected by the times feel any better... but might help clarify the situation.
First Question: Where are the servers actually located?
Second Question: Is it important that the Servers remain in synchronization with the US servers?
Third Question: If the servers are physically located in Australia... or New Zealand... or Korea... or any place where the US servers are NOT... are they remotely accessed from the US Offices? Or are they accessed locally by a dedicated support team?
Fourth Question: If the servers have to be accessed remotely, how many people actually have the login permissions to make changes to the servers?
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The reason behind the questions is clear. Based on when the maintenance times are being scheduled, it would seem that Paragon Studios is trying to keep each server set in synch.
Now, I would think it wouldn't be that big of a deal if the Australian, European, or Korean servers were a couple hours out of synch with the US servers. They are, for the most part, separate login systems.
I'm also not sure it would be that big of a deal to have more people with login credentials who can make the changes during different hours.
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Of course, there are also other factors to consider... such as the Operating System in use. Since I haven't heard one Operating System vendor moaning and whining that yet another gaming company kicked them (the vendor in question) to the curb, I have to presume that City of Heroes is still being hosted on NT5 or NT6 based servers.
Now, since a lot of CoH customers use NT5 and NT6 computers... better known as Windows 2000, Windows Xp, Windows Vista, and Windows 7... you probably know that defragging NTFS partitions takes a long time. You probably also know that implementing one patch that's supposed to change nothing... can cause a hard-system lock.
So, for the game maintenance to complete, there's got to be a hard estimate of how long the initial maintenance can take, in addition to how long it will take to fix any problems that could go wrong.
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Yes, knowing, or thinking, about these factors won't make the loss of a game during the Australian prime hours any less annoying... but... come on. That's just more reason to push Paragon Studios to just drop Windows and use a *nix base instead to host the game.
(on the other hand, if Paragon Studios has actually converted to a *nix base, be it Solaris, AIX, Debian Linux, Suse Linux, Apple OSX, or what-ever... that raises even more questions about "WHAT TAKES SO LONG????")
We don't have seperate Australian servers. We play on the American ones. However the idea of them bringing down the servers in seperate lots has been suggested before but I've never seen a dev's response to that.
As to pushing them to switch to Unix servers I can tell you as a professional programmer that is by no stretch of the imagination a small task. There is no way in hell the bean counters would agree to that and frankly I wouldn't agree to it either in their shoes.
The reason I've seen in the past for not staggering server shutdown is that there are common servers shared across the main servers. Things like the global chat server, the markets servers, the login server and whatever the MA runs on.
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They did actually split the servers East/West coast on one occasion for maint, can't remember why, may have been the name purge, but anything that affects the market has to take all of them down including the European servers which are physically in Germany.
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Originally Posted by MinMin
The reason I've seen in the past for not staggering server shutdown is that there are common servers shared across the main servers. Things like the global chat server, the markets servers, the login server and whatever the MA runs on.
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It's true. This game is NOT rocket surgery. - BillZBubba
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Well no, it takes down the market across all the servers, but the login and game servers over here can stay running. It often happened before when the maintence times over here didn't match the US ones (our servers are indeed in Germany), you could play the game but not access the Market or the Mission Architect.|
Originally Posted by Minotaur
They did actually split the servers East/West coast on one occasion for maint, can't remember why, may have been the name purge, but anything that affects the market has to take all of them down including the European servers which are physically in Germany.
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I've no idea why they changed ours to match the US times either. Not a huge difference to me usually (it happens around lunchtime over here now). Still, staggering it occasionally would show a less US-centric approach which might generate a fair bit of good will. Even just occasionally move them forward or back a few hours.
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Sorry, mine was a sloppy post, what I meant was if they patch, and the patch affects the market software, since it is a common server, the Euro and US servers and clients have to be on the same version of the software, so both sets of servers have to come down at the same time.
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Originally Posted by Carnifax
Well no, it takes down the market across all the servers, but the login and game servers over here can stay running. It often happened before when the maintence times over here didn't match the US ones (our servers are indeed in Germany), you could play the game but not access the Market or the Mission Architect.
I've no idea why they changed ours to match the US times either. Not a huge difference to me usually (it happens around lunchtime over here now). Still, staggering it occasionally would show a less US-centric approach which might generate a fair bit of good will. Even just occasionally move them forward or back a few hours. |
It's true. This game is NOT rocket surgery. - BillZBubba
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The last time I recall the West/East Split was the major hardware upgrades early last year.
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Originally Posted by Minotaur
They did actually split the servers East/West coast on one occasion for maint, can't remember why, may have been the name purge, but anything that affects the market has to take all of them down including the European servers which are physically in Germany.
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@Catwhoorg "Rule of Three - Finale" Arc# 1984
@Mr Falkland Islands"A Nation Goes Rogue" Arc# 2369 "Toasters and Pop Tarts" Arc#116617
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.
Expect another maintenance on Tuesday. Double XP has been extended.
Maintenance on Tuesday is guaranteed, Yet Another X8.2 day anihilated.
My patience is almost done. NCSOFT doesn't 'care' for Australian patronage, fine, I'll take my monthly fee elsewhere, there are plenty of other MMO's out there.
After five years, I've got a backlog of good single-player games which I have hardly touched.
Maintenance times shifting smack into prime-time, being extended, and being repeatedly incurred on -any- day of the week, it's a slap in the face for all the stuff-arounds we've endured.
I think I'll be announcing my formal resignation from CoH before Christmas.
Excession.
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Ex.
Part-Troll, who used to be Excession777, now playing pantomime with people's mindlets.
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Another week, another bonus maintenance. Tonight.
I'm paid up until the end of February. I've removed my credit card from automatic billing.
It's plainly obvious that we now have 3 maintenance periods per week and we can't plan around when they will be.
I can't justify paying for a game I can't access as often as not.
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.
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Unforunately, I was stupid enough to renew (admittedly, I set the debit up before they changed the times and days.... well, the ones they actually say are 'regular'), so I'm stuck in this hell for another 12 months.|
Originally Posted by MinMin
I'm paid up until the end of February. I've removed my credit card from automatic billing.
It's plainly obvious that we now have 3 maintenance periods per week and we can't plan around when they will be. I can't justify paying for a game I can't access as often as not. |
It doesn't just hit us though - my only regular gaming buddy is American and chooses to play in their morning (apart from the weekends it's the only time we can sync our schedules) - our teaming has been very heavily hit by this new maintenance pattern.
I will, however, take my card away from the automatic debiting. If NCsoft/Paragon actually sees fit to post a response in this forum, I may revise that.
tech
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.
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Why?|
Originally Posted by techboi
I will, however, take my card away from the automatic debiting. If NCsoft/Paragon actually sees fit to post a response in this forum, I may revise that.
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This isn't a "I'll take my toys and go home dummy-spit". It's simply a facing up to reality. They didn't change the maintenance time without realising there would be consequences to some people; they just realised that they would upset less people by moving it than if it stayed where it was. We just happen to be "less people"*.
The decision is made. We get to wear the consequences. Why would a response from a Developer or Community Rep make any difference?
* And when I say "less people", I'm talking about a very narrow group, even among other Aussies. Maintenance for the southern states hits at 10pm during summer, which isn't intolerable. Like you, I'm a Queenslander, and 9pm just hits too hard, particularly when the scheduled maintenance days are best described as "whenever the hell we feel like it".
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I'll let you know, I've already done so.
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Originally Posted by Redoubtable
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.
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Looks like they've heard the outrage, but not clear they know what to do:
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Greetings Players, Weve heard your concerns, and are going to try this out on a Trial bases. Beginning Thursday, October 22nd, we will begin a Trial Global Server Maintenance schedule. If we find that we need to move to another Maintenance schedule, well re-evaluate our options at that time. Thank you for your continued support! |
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| I'll let you know the times as soon as I know. |
Be interested to see what the new times are. I'm in the UK so makes little difference to me (2pm became midday) but can see the current schedule makes a mess of Australian playtimes.
It's true. This game is NOT rocket surgery. - BillZBubba
It sucks that maintenance times in the US screw things up for people around the world, but it has to be done. If it's not at a time that inconveniences you, it'll be at a time that inconveniences others. It's not true that they don't care about your business. Every company cares about the business and revenue its customers provide. Downtime happens for any technology, it's a fact of life that you can't avoid, and it's going to happen during a time that inconveniences some group of people out of everybody in this world. Speaking from experience, I would believe the maintenance times were selected when they were because the graphs show the least amount of users and activity, not to arbitrarily "screw" any one geographical region.
Threatening to ragequit over something that must be done is a bit silly. Yes, the maintenance times do inconvenience me. I am an American but I play during my night, on up through the morning. I do not threaten to cancel my accounts and make a public outcry stating that NCsoft doesn't care about my business because I've dealt with the same issues, and understand that it's a necessary thing.
If you want to have a fit and scream that NCsoft doesn't value your business just because of your geographical location, that's your prerogative. I just don't think it's warranted.
Look, I know we live in an odd time zone (and mine is odd even for here) and I know it is the least populated. I know that the devs didn't specifically target us when the maintenance time was changed to hit smack in the middle of prime time, but why on earth can't a maintenance "to prepare for double xp and reactivation weekend" be done concurrently with the Monday one just gone?!
Also, the maintenance periods which have historically been 45-50 minutes have now stretched out to about an 1 hour 20-30 minutes.
I want to adapt. I really want to adapt. You're not making it easy.
And I'm really, really sick of seeing "I'm sorry for the inconvenience" on the announcements. You know what would demonstrate that you're really sorry for the inconvenience? Having a bit of consideration for the people you're inconveniencing, and keeping the inconveniences to a minimum, instead of the seemingly constant stream of them!