Communication 101

So... can the dev's let us know what is going on with all this downtime and possibly even let us know if this is going to be an all day thing or not?

I mean it's COMMON CURTESY to your PAYING, PATIENT, AND LOYAL PATRONS!

And not for nothing but I'm really starting to hate this game I can't even play with any regularity, what the dev's say is NOT dependable or they don't say anything at all, and now as someone having several lvl 50s the only thing to do is incarnate trials because that's what everyone else is doing... either that or fly solo peppered with the occasional raid.

And I wait for this? MAJOR UGHHHHHHH!!!!

On GOOGLE finding another game to play and pay my money to... WITH ALL THIS FREE TIME WHAT ELSE AM I TO DO?

can't this extended server downtime be done at night? why do it on our time?

All consumer confidence is now lost...

Is this a slap in the face?

In my ongoing attempts at improving efficiency, I start every day by slapping myself in the face and saving the world the effort.

1. This depends on the nature of the problem. Software solutions requiring nonlinear development times are fundamentally difficult to test and implement. The nature of the problem may also be something of a harmful nature to discuss in public (eg: exploit fixes, security vulnerabilities). The end time may have been predicted for over two hours ago at the time of this posting, but as above, the nature of the problem can make this difficult to predict.

2. The downtime was announced (see here). This is the usual scope of a "common courtesy" in the gaming industry.

3. Their advance indication of Issue 20 going live last week was both vocal and dependable, to cite a recent counterexample. As for things to do with level 50s, there are also badge hunts, new task forces and WSTs going on with reasonable frequency when I've looked for them. You may also try running lower level characters/content or running with a supergroup. (Well, when the servers are running)

4. Yes, wanting to run the game and finding it unavailable is a nuisance.

5. I find minesweeper to be quite a bit of fun, and assuming you're a Windows user, you won't have to pay for it. Given that you seem to be interested in teaming, however, I can imagine there are a wide variety of games out there for you to enjoy.

6. Perhaps, but considering that a lot of people actually like playing the game "at night" (which, by the way, varies substantially by time zone), you'd simply be shifting your own inconvenience on to them. I'm sure the game use statistics might provide some backup for when maintenance is done, not to mention that devs do have lives (and families) of their own.

7. I believe this to be an unnecessary exaggeration.

Communication 101: Making sure you post something for the devs in the right forum.

Communication 101: It's 12:07pm EDT and No Patch Notes Yet... ZOMFG!!! The World Is Ending!!

Communication 101: It's 12:08pm EDT and no Red Name has commented outside of letting us know that there would be a maintenence today... ZOMFG!!! The World Is Ending!!

Communication 101: I remember when Daily Maintenence was the Norm... ZOMFG!!! The World Is Ending!!

Suck it up and Shut it up. Stuff happens. Would you rather they spend their time trying to analyse and compose messages to keep us abreast of every little detail that changes from minute to minute, or actually fixing the issue?

Don't answer that. You have exceeded my patience for listening to your whining.

Whenever they have a patch, at least in the recent years, its been applied Tuesday mornings. They may not always have a patch, but I've just grown to expect the servers to be down for a bit Tuesday.

Now, historically, the first month or two after a new issue has come out, like one did last week, you could expect bigger maintenances on Tuesdays (or more often than that) as bugs and exploits get fixed that weren't caught until after they went live and had true stress laid on them, which Issue 20 has had more of that happening that any issue in recent memory, but even light issues have it to some degree, and issue 20 isn't a light issue.

I would venture to say that you can probably expect situations like this to happen more often around issue releases. Its always a possibility whenever they apply any patch which will happen every week or so just after an issue.

Relax. Its going to happen from time to time. Nobody and nothing is perfect and no amount of QA testing or planning will catch EVERY possible problem EVERY time and things just go wrong sometimes. This is the devs trying to make the game better for us. Just some things can't be done when there are thousands of people playing it.

As far as them not telling us that its going to take longer, usually they have if its been more than just a little bit over. If they aren't, it probably means they are getting close and to formulate up a post and put it up here to tell us they're going to be late actually would take longer than actually getting the game running. Usually they don't know they'll be done that long until they're in the middle of it and they are already down. In that case, I would rather have them back there hunkered down trying to fix it than spending their time and responding to everyone and posting about the servers being down for an additional 15 minutes.

You tweet happy, facebook status update junkies out there need to lay off the double espresso shots and Red Bulls, take a deep breath or two and realize that everything ever scheduled are ideal guesses only. This included doctor appointments, car repair, cable installation and server downtime.