Discussion: Extended Live Server Maintenance - Thursday, September 22, 2011

I didn't see anyone state that complaining was stupid and childish, let alone a concerted effort to belittle and silence complaints, but if so, then I agree with you. I believe that's counter-productive, too. I have said, I think more than once, that complaints about this issue are likely fruitless, and can potentially create more unhappiness. Which, if it is fruitless, is a net loss of Utils. Furthermore, it may also lead to complaints being tuned out by those that can do something about them. And that would be an even bigger loss of Utils. I can't prove them fruitless, though, and I admit that. I also said that even though I don't think it's a good idea, that I'd acknowledge your right to make a decision, even if it is counter-productive.

Hope that clears up my position. I speak for myself alone in this, others may or may not agree, but I can't address that.

As I pointed out earlier, you were given at least 400, maybe more, above your contracted amount. If 110 is fair for the inconvenience, can I have the rest of yours?


Edit: Yes, I know, I'm not returning mine either, so I admit, that was a bit of a jab. Meant to illustrate a point I made earlier, not intended for maliciousness.

The thing is though, i am not bothered by scheduled downtimes...

I know that they do them when they do them for a reason...

If the servers kept on falling over repeatedly in spite of that (once the typical post Issue launch bugs are resolved) then yes, i do get annoyed with it, but i do have other games to complete as well before their sequals get released, so it gives me the chance to play them

I saw those points as an incentive for people to continue subbing until i21 hit, or indeed come back earlier than they might; nothing to do with disruption of service.

Sorry I was under the impression that the 400 points/month were like the previous loyalty programs. Bribes to the existing playerbase to stick around so when or if the new players/returning old players got here they wouldn't see a ghost town.

So says the guy on the forum LOL

Here's a key point brought up right here.

Some of the people affected by all the downtime have other things to do if they weren't playing this game, so it doesn't bother them as much. Others have zero else to do. Perhaps it's time they found a secondary hobby. Getting on the game forum to complain about the downtime doesn't count.

good thing your hear to tell us what counts ............

This plus the fact we were having these issues prior to the forum merger, which the NA players would not of seen the EU posts about...

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Creator of: Coolio's Tech Beacon Replacements

AE arc 402506, 'The Rise and Demise or Otherwise of Tekna Logik...'.

The EU ones appear to be down again. That'll teach us to complain

Make that "all" of the EU servers.

Curious how selective that is really - maybe, if the servers are all in the same room now, the EU ones (being the recent adds) are furthest from the plug socket, so they go first if the new hardware fails

I guess I should...learn to be happy with what I have. :/

They were up from about 4pm...

I have *just now* been kicked from my mission (mapserver problem), so i dont know as to *when* the server problem started.

Some people could log in, anyone past a certain point who tried it, would get dumped to log in screen.

I was quite amused by the circumstances of my mapserver d/c actually - I was doing a carnie tip mission, defeated everyone, and was JUST clicking the last glowie...when the dreaded Mapserver message popped up.

Classic carnie timing and sense of humour there! lol

This. If they knew it was going to be a number of extended downtimes for server upgrades and could provide a schedule so people could do a bit of planning around that. I do not think that would be too much to ask.

If they did not know ahead of time, then I would be more than a little worried about the whole operations, not just which time zone would be most affected.
Emergencies can happen of course, but more than once or twice in a relatively short period of time is cause for concern.

It seems it's not all a Nemesis plot.

It's a Carnie plot.

I was in a Carnie tip mish, too, and had just dispatched the last group and was about to lead the 3rd hostage out, when I got that same dreaded message...

I see a difference between weekly maintenance, emergency fix and these so called 'scheduled downtimes'. Weekly maintenance is mentioned already on the site and are that commonly done i never seen anyone really have issues with those, emergency fixes announced ingame and last quite short to not bother about.

As for the 'scheduled' downtime, a day prior the downtime (or in several cases a few hours if you take 'sleep' in consideration) doesnt really feel like a 'scheduled' but more like a waking up and thinking about things u gonna do this day. If my timezone is set correctly on this board, the downtime of today was posted 22.00 lastnight, a noticed that in 14,5 hours later the game will go down for a considerable long time. The 22nd downtime was done about 17 hours prior the shutdown. Add up the 'nighttime' of EU (wich is kinda playtime on NA/US), thats not really a 'in advance' notice.

You cant really tell me that they didnt know that today downtime wasnt know prior today, or even bother to write down a 'possible' downtime for continues serverupgrade and movement. I gues if they should have told us 2 weeks ago there will be alot of downtime due transfer and upgrades, people would have been pissed and mad, but it would made each 'daily downtime' a bit easier to cope with. Specialy if they already said these downtimes will cover EU primetime/daytime mostly.

Sadly, that's not how it works, in my experience. I *should* have heard the warning bells, when they said they'd be giving us goodies for staying through the transition, but I didn't. I sometimes forget that my fun game world is housed in someone's work servers out there. I tend to think of it as a game, not as a work environment. But it is. And transition can mean a lot of changes at once. In an ideal scenario, things can be done to minimize interruptions. Things are seldom ideal. When things fail to be ideal, you respond as quickly, and promptly as you can.

They *could* have explicitly stated that things could go wrong a lot over the next few months, but that's not really a stellar idea from a business point of view, either. If things are as I suspect they are, they hoped for the best, and hoped we'd never notice the transition. It didn't, we did. But they did specifically already offer us a reward above what they were obligated to so we'd stick through the transition.

I'm sure we all wish it had gone better, but it didn't.