Discussion: Extended Live Server Maintenance - Thursday, September 22, 2011
By
Aggelakis,
Posted on: 2011-09-21 10:36 in News, Events and Announcement Discussion
Quote:
This pretty much sums up my position. Tired of this now.
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Originally Posted by Gideon
This. we accept downtimes are necessary. We accept long ones are sometimes necessary.
But almost every significant downtime lately has pretty much wiped out EU peak playing hours. This is starting to get distinctly frustrating now. When they merged the communities and teams, they said we'd get the same class of service as everyone else. We were promised we would not be second class citizens. They said it again during the server list merge. Guess what? We're getting the sharp end of the stick again. Downtimes in peak hours: Check. Losing our global names: Check. What's next? |
@Dante EU - Union Roleplayer and Altisis Victim
The Militia: Union RP Supergroup - www.themilitia.org.uk
Do what ya gotta do, I'll be waiting patiently for the restart and I look forward to the increased server performance.
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I'd say it's PRECISELY because they're going to try and maintain a Freebie player-base that they're MAKING the upgrades.|
Originally Posted by Brimmy
seriously though.. how can you expect to maintain a "Freebie" player-base if you're gonna keep this up? heck how're you even expecting to keep us VIP's around if you're gonna keep this up?
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They did a monster upgrade to their systems less than a month ago. The influx on several servers during head-start brought the NEW machines to their knees. Paragon actually is doing the right thing by opting to throw megabucks at it NOW and beef up their server infrastructure.
If they don't CHOOSE to do it NOW, they're going to be FORCED to do it LATER. AFTER they pick up the F2P crowd. And something like a day-long outage once you've gone F2P can REALLY destroy any traction they get in mindshare because of this.
I've disagreed with some of the development choices Paragon has made of late. But this is NOT one of them.
Does it suck that people are going to be locked out of the game for the better part of a day?
HELL YEAH!
Would I rather the servers come crashing down AFTER F2P commences, knocks everyone of the servers for the better part of a day, then be subjected to an additional day-long outage for upgrades ANYHOW?
**** NO!
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Originally Posted by SolarSentai
I'm with you on this. Unless it's something major like 2+ days without service, it's not worth my time or effort to sit on hold for 30min+ and deal with CSR for a $2 refund. |
Funny enough with this second down time, it will be close to 2days of down time in the last two weeks, just for EU players.
Brawling Cactus from a distant planet.
OOOOHHHHHH I know!
Lets not do any server maintenance ever to interrupt anyone's game time and when the servers break really hard we can have no game for weeks, ya that's better. You all are so right!!!!
�One of the best lessons children learn through video games is standing still will get them killed quicker than anything else�
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Originally Posted by Blue_Shocker
OOOOHHHHHH I know!
Lets not do any server maintenance ever to interrupt anyone's game time and when the servers break really hard we can have no game for weeks, ya that's better. You all are so right!!!! |
[read what people are saying, read that people are asking it to be done during NON EU primetime/daytime for a change
]
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Quote:
Learn to read.|
Originally Posted by SolarSentai
For argument's sake, let's say everyone pays $14.99/mo for access.
Let's also say for argument's sake there's been 24 hours worth of downtime over the last week. So with my handy-dandy calculator, that would be $14.99 / 30 = ~$0.49 per day. You're basically asking them to refund you 50 cents. |
I said I want game time crediting, not a refund.
@FloatingFatMan
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Quote:
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Originally Posted by Blue_Shocker
OOOOHHHHHH I know!
Lets not do any server maintenance ever to interrupt anyone's game time and when the servers break really hard we can have no game for weeks, ya that's better. You all are so right!!!! |
Let's not do it to the same ******* group of customers each ******* time, how about that?
Brawling Cactus from a distant planet.
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Well now you'll have plenty of time to waste customer service's time to get your dollar/euro back to really "stick it" to them. |
Originally Posted by CactusBrawler
Funny enough with this second down time, it will be close to 2days of down time in the last two weeks, just for EU players.
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I was figuring for 24hours total downtime over the past few weeks :P Either way, it still seems silly.|
Originally Posted by Lothic
We're only talking 12 hours here so it really just a matter of $0.25 for this one time.
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It's one of those things where you have 168 hours in a week, and there's a tizzy over 12 of those hours. That's .07% play time.
Also, FWIW I'm not saying people don't have a right to complain. I believe that when it comes to your money, you can praise/complain all you want. I'm just trying to put things into perspective.
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And how many prime time downtimes have you had since I21 went live? Thought so.|
Originally Posted by Blue_Shocker
OOOOHHHHHH I know!
Lets not do any server maintenance ever to interrupt anyone's game time and when the servers break really hard we can have no game for weeks, ya that's better. You all are so right!!!! |
We realise downtime happens and why, we're just a tad sick of the amount of it that's happened during our prime time lately. But by all means, continue to be a ***** about it.
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Originally Posted by Captain-Electric
One thing I am ALWAYS pleased to see is a server upgrade announcement. Complaining about them is like asking to please be shot in the foot.
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So will having like an extra day of time tacked onto your account really provide you any satisifaction here?|
Originally Posted by FloatingFatMan
Learn to read.
I said I want game time crediting, not a refund. |
Is that going to "punish" them enough for trying to make the game better for you in the long run?
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Quote:
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Originally Posted by Zwillinger
We certainly understand frustration with extended downtime, which is a reason we're starting this maintenance at 3:30 AM Central/1:30 AM Pacific/9:30 AM BST as opposed to our normal time of 6:30 AM Central. We will have staff working to support this, and continually monitoring once we bring the servers back online.
Another thing to consider is that as OCR, we never give you the estimate that Ops/Publishing/Engineering/Whatever gives us. We *always* significantly pad our estimates with additional time. So there is a chance the servers will be back online prior to what we estimated (there's also a chance it could go longer...that's just how these things work). With hardware upgrades, especially significant ones, we cannot rush things. I understand there's been a more than the usual amount of maintenance for the last month or so. We've got a pretty significant change happening right now and we need to be sure that the servers can handle a huge influx of players; Not just for the Free players, but for *everyone*. It's important to us that your in game experience isn't going to be hugely impacted on a performance level when we open the doors to returning and free players, and as such we are making the necessary investments, such as hardware upgrades, to do everything within our power to ensure as much. Thank you for bearing with us, thank you for your understanding and thank you for your continuing support. |
It's actually been the past 2 months that the servers have been down for much more than usual. You could throw the community a bone of some paragon points just as a consideration.
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I feel for all of you EU players (NA daytime hours are my peak gaming hours, too.). However, anything that makes our fellow players across the pond feel like 2nd class citizens, also makes me unhappy. It's NA workday hours messing up your evenings, not specially catering to the NA player base. But nobody can contest that the downtimes ARE affecting our EU fellows more than anyone else.
EU players are as much "us" as any other player group - almost more so. Everyone I know was thrilled when the servers merged (Personally, I was rather hoping you guys would class up the joint with all your posh continental ways. Mostly now am learning many new words I can't repeat in forums. But still, enjoying it fully!). Now I'm hoping that wasn't idiotically naive - I would hate to think that the only players who were happy for the server changes were those of us in NA. Bugger!
No one can give you your playing time back, or change the daytime working hours of the our continent, so it doesn't suck for you yet again. But am thinking there are all kinds of nice things our brilliant Community Reps have done to make players feel important. I vote (what do you mean, there's no vote for this stuff??) for a big EU-only perk!
Downtime affects lots of us, but when it affects one specific group significantly much more than any other, some sort of response is definitely warranted!
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Originally Posted by _eeek_
No one can give you your playing time back, or change the daytime working hours of the our continent, so it doesn't suck for you yet again. But am thinking there are all kinds of nice things our brilliant Community Reps have done to make players feel important. I vote (what do you mean, there's no vote for this stuff??) for a big EU-only perk!
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This, this is what bugs me. How ******* good is the server crews union, if they can't come in nights once in a blue moon?
Brawling Cactus from a distant planet.
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Yup.|
Originally Posted by Aquila_NA
I thought they JUST UPGRADED the hardware.
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| No? |
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| Then what were they doing while they said they were? |
Seriously. They did a beefy upgrade that they thought could handle the new loads.
Then they found out that the combination of i21 and a bunch of people bum-rushing a server drove server loads higher than they'd ever been before. Pretty much MANDATING that bigger, beefier upgrades be put into place ASAP. Because if it's this bad NOW, imagine what it'd be like once we get an influx of F2P'ers.
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It'll refund the lost game time, sure.|
Originally Posted by Lothic
So will having like an extra day of time tacked onto your account really provide you any satisifaction here?
Is that going to "punish" them enough for trying to make the game better for you in the long run? |
As for "punishing" someone, I'm not interested in that, I just want them to get their sodding act together with all the problems lately. Every single bloody time there's a new issue, we get all this grief it's ridiculous.
I work in a software house that provides 24/7 service to the paper industry. If we screwed up a live publish like this, people would be fired over it.
@FloatingFatMan
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Quote:
Fair enough. |
Originally Posted by FloatingFatMan
Learn to read.
I said I want game time crediting, not a refund. |
Hypothetical situation: Your account is set to expire the last day of the month at 2:00 am local time (totally making this up).
If they gave you 12 hours back to your account starting at that point, would you feel satisfied?
And for the record, I'm not trying to be sarcastic or combative. I'm truly trying to see things from your perspective here.
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Quote:
Like that Friday when we were told that the servers were expected to be back up no later than 12:15pm CEST, and it took 2-3 hours longer?|
Originally Posted by Zwillinger
Another thing to consider is that as OCR, we never give you the estimate that Ops/Publishing/Engineering/Whatever gives us. We *always* significantly pad our estimates with additional time.
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That downtime, and a number of others occured after previous hardware upgrades went less than smooth, to say the least, pretty much killing the whole day for EU players with the combination of the downtime, and aftermath. I'm pretty much expecting it to be no different this time, and preparing for lost hours on Friday as well...
One of the things that annoy me most (and others have said the same thing), is that it's the paying customers who have to suffer through this, just so the freebie players who might never pay a cent can have a smoother experience.
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| We apologise for the inconvenience and thank you for your patience! |
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| ...thank you for your continuing support. |
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When are the flood gates even opening, the 26th?
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Originally Posted by Zwillinger
There will still be maintenance when the free players arrive that will impact them just as much as the VIP players.
As I said, this maintenance is in preparation for the influx of players, however it will benefit the experience of everyone, Free, Premium and VIP. |
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Originally Posted by Nuclea
And how many prime time downtimes have you had since I21 went live? Thought so.
We realise downtime happens and why, we're just a tad sick of the amount of it that's happened during our prime time lately. But by all means, continue to be a ***** about it. |
If you realize down time happens then why complain. Since they are located in California and they are accessing it at 1AM (NOT exactly they time there work hour is). I don't care if there taking it down during my play time, which they are, it has to be done but as much complaining as EVERYBODY is doing doesn't make it any better, and if i want to be a **** about it I can. Just as much as everybody else is complaining about it. Just so tired of the devs getting **** on, i personally have talked to several of them and compared to other games there doing pretty dam good, they sure in hell are treating us better then CRYPTIC did. So thats my 2 cents im done with this.
�One of the best lessons children learn through video games is standing still will get them killed quicker than anything else�
Quote:
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Originally Posted by Zwillinger
We certainly understand frustration with extended downtime, which is a reason we're starting this maintenance at 3:30 AM Central/1:30 AM Pacific/9:30 AM BST as opposed to our normal time of 6:30 AM Central. We will have staff working to support this, and continually monitoring once we bring the servers back online.
Another thing to consider is that as OCR, we never give you the estimate that Ops/Publishing/Engineering/Whatever gives us. We *always* significantly pad our estimates with additional time. So there is a chance the servers will be back online prior to what we estimated (there's also a chance it could go longer...that's just how these things work). With hardware upgrades, especially significant ones, we cannot rush things. I understand there's been a more than the usual amount of maintenance for the last month or so. We've got a pretty significant change happening right now and we need to be sure that the servers can handle a huge influx of players; Not just for the Free players, but for *everyone*. It's important to us that your in game experience isn't going to be hugely impacted on a performance level when we open the doors to returning and free players, and as such we are making the necessary investments, such as hardware upgrades, to do everything within our power to ensure as much. Thank you for bearing with us, thank you for your understanding and thank you for your continuing support. |
Ahh, don't worry ZWILL, you gotta do what you gotta do. If you made it white they would complain its not black. If it was black, they would complain it was not white. Overall we know your improving the game and that is what makes us happy. Previously working in the customer service side their was once a stat saying someing like out of the 100% of complaints you here is usually just like 20% of all your customers. The other 80% are usally just fine, or something like that.
�One of the best lessons children learn through video games is standing still will get them killed quicker than anything else�
Good lord. The level of entitlement this player base has developed sickens me.
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