Downtime? now 2 times in one week?

[druidmagus]

<p>Ok i am sorry but this is to much to bear!</p><p>3 days last week now 2 days this week? Who is in charge of the constant downtime? Sorry this needs to be fixed. I play in the morning 8a-11a EST and work 3pm - 11pm est. This constant downtime is making me think about quiting! Sorry enough is enough!</p><p>Downtime must be in early morning not my day! before 6am est!</p><p>I know i am only one player but i have had enough of downtime!</p>

[druidmagus]

<p>I submitted a support ticket requesting information. doubt it will even help.</p>

[Alvane]

<p><cite>druidmagus wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Ok i am sorry but this is to much to bear!</p><p>3 days last week now 2 days this week? Who is in charge of the constant downtime? Sorry this needs to be fixed. I play in the morning 8a-11a EST and work 3pm - 11pm est. This constant downtime is making me think about quiting! Sorry enough is enough!</p><p>Downtime must be in early morning not my day! before 6am est!</p><p>I know i am only one player but i have had enough of downtime!</p></blockquote><p>Would you prefer a job where you work 2-4AM so you can accomplish what you need to do before someone wants to play at 8AM your time? Then come back to work at 9AM-5PM for your normal work schedule. Bet you would complain, too.</p>

[Blakkmantis]

<p>I'd like to add I demand an all you can eat breakfast buffet served at our nearest local restaurant for all players affected by all these downtimes.  Bad enuf we can't play lately, but you force us to resort to eating instead.  So you must feed us!</p><p>/snicker</p>

[druidmagus]

<p>No this is a service that i am paying for! I am an active paying customer! And yes at my job we have times we need to come in early or stay late. Their job is to provide for the service! as a paying customer I expect better service. But I quess i am wrong.</p>

[Seidhkona]

<p><a href="http://patch.everquest2.com:7010/patch/eq2/motd/en/updates_live.html" target="_blank">The December 13 patch notes are available</a>. Bookmark this page, it usually has the patch notes earlier than anywhere else, and tends to be most accurate as to which servers are up or down.</p>

[Flobdeth]

<p>Try being a Euro player............</p>

[Enica]

<p><cite>druidmagus wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>No this is a service that i am paying for! I am an active paying customer! And yes at my job we have times we need to come in early or stay late. Their job is to provide for the service! as a paying customer I expect better service. But I quess i am wrong.</p></blockquote><p>If they accommodate every single player, there would never be any downtime, nothing would ever get done and you'd not have a game to play at all.</p><p>I'm off today and tomorrow.  Downtime today and with another merge going on tomorrow there might be some issues that spill over into the other servers.  And if I can't play, I'll find something else to do. </p>

[Blakkmantis]

<p>You know Real Life really ain't so bad once you get past the EQ2 withdrawls.</p><p>Try it.  <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" /></p>

[Ddraig99]

<p>Thank you for thr link Sigrdrifta, not ofc your fault but nothing on there referring to sp being down today, which it is. Different day, same promises from soe, same complaints. Just shoddy customer service all round.</p>

[druidmagus]

<p>I have my job for real life. But this is a paid service. that I pay for.  I know i am wasting time with the game. I quess I will go to another game. Thanks for making feel that I am not needed. Just another number</p>

[BMonkeeus]

Dear Lord.../rolleyes

[Uinael_Guk]

<p><cite>druidmagus wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>No this is a service that i am paying for! I am an active paying customer! And yes at my job we have times we need to come in early or stay late. Their job is to provide for the service! as a paying customer I expect better service. But I quess i am wrong.</p></blockquote><p>If your only play time is basically when the game does down time, maybe it's not a good idea to pay for the game?</p>

[RogueSpideyChick]

<p>yes, let's NEVER have ANY downtime to fix any bugs or add new content. let's play with the same broken stale game all the time just so the servers NEVER come down (including no restarts so u cant even move because it's so lagged).</p><p>seriously...is that what u really want?</p>

[Pakhet]

<p>There is more downtime atm because of server mergers - which need to happen because a lot of servers are dead... once they are over service should go back to normal, or at least once a few are done so they have most bug fixes done. Every service has downtime, paid or not, when they change something. </p><p>Will probably also be some downtime for new expac that is above normal...</p><p>Then they are upgrading hardware, which will also cause downtime.</p><p>But all these things have been requested by so many players, they can't fulfill both your desire for the game to be up all the time and the desire of a large section of the game to have better performance/more players on their server. </p>

[Orienne]

<p>While I understand your frustration with this downtime, imagine being an Australian or Asian player on the American servers. Every time there is any sort of update it falls during their prime time hours, and I'm sure this happens a few times a month. The recent updates you are speaking of are affecting them as well, so you are not alone. Hopefully it gets back to a once a week at most thing shortly and it won't affect you as often as it has these past 2 weeks.</p>

[Umarth]

<p>you know sometimes i just wish SOE would let the moderators Care Bear threads like this, I mean you make it sound like 2-3 days off a computer game would kill you. Yeah fine your paying for it, but read the small print, it also says you accept any and all necessary downtime, so yep you subbed for this, and you subbed for its upkeep and service, and thats what theyre doing. Get Used to it. Theyve been doing it on EQII for 6years, its not about to change for a PITA like yours truely.</p><p>barring that, think of us lot that played through the first 6 months of launch, daily reboots for lag removal, stability patches constant changes, oh and at that Time the EU patches went through most week days at around anything from 3pm to 8pm gmt so we missed most days all together. Get over yourself</p>

[Amnerys]

<p>Hey guys... everyone is entitled to their opinions, and as you probably heard your grandma say... if you can't say anything nice, you really don't need to say anything at all.</p><p>The EQII forums are an open place for all of our players to talk. You don't have to agree with everyone. If you don't agree with someone, you can find a nice way to explain why you see error in their logic, or help to explain why things are the way they are.</p><p>Adding criticism and personal attacks is not necessary, and doesn't foster a feeling of community that will encourage new or returning players to want to stick around.</p><p>It's up to the moderators and me to point out the rules, but it's up to the entire community to set the tone of our forums. Please try to stay friendly and open-minded.</p>

[Thodur]

<p>Will be some free days to my subsripcion? Because 3 days in prime time are EU servers down in one week, i canot play, but i PAY for it! Today Runnyeye will be down again... What??? Hey guys this is really bad, really!!! I am paying customer for non functional game, and couldnt play what i pay?</p>

[Keikoku]

<p><cite>druidmagus wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>I have my job for real life. But this is a paid service. that I pay for.  I know i am wasting time with the game. I quess I will go to another game. Thanks for making feel that I am not needed. Just another number</p></blockquote><p>Can I have your stuff?</p>

[Rothgar]

<p>We do our best to minimize downtime but there is a lot going on right now.  Instead of the Tuesday hotfix this week, we are doing it on Monday, so you shouldn't experience any extra downtime.  In fact, it looks like you were only down for about an hour even though there was a 2-hour ETA and this happened at the absolute lowest peak time for your server.  In terms of the overall population, we couldn't have picked a better time.  Unfortunately no matter what time we choose, there will always be some people inconvenienced and for that I'm truly sorry.</p>

[Thodur]

<p>You are wrong Rothgar sorry, i couldn log in yesterday more than 30 min and dont know how many before. In the Thursday it was from cca 17,00 to 21,00 CET. One day before more than 2 hours. BG was down yesterday all night. Everything in prime time EU servers. ETA is always wrong, it is not always accurate. Yes i am angry because this merges (or what was the problem?) affect playing almost every day, i am feel like playing some free game...</p>

[Rothgar]

<p><cite>Thodur wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>You are wrong Rothgar sorry, i couldn log in yesterday more than 30 min and dont know how many before. In the Thursday it was from cca 17,00 to 21,00 CET. One day before more than 2 hours. BG was down yesterday all night. Everything in prime time EU servers. ETA is always wrong, it is not always accurate. Yes i am angry because this merges (or what was the problem?) affect playing almost every day, i am feel like playing some free game...</p></blockquote><p>Battlegrounds will always be down after the U.S. hotfix until the UK hotfix due to version mismatch.  This was explained when we decided to merge UK battlegrounds with US so you'd have more people to play with.  The alternative is we can put you back on your own battlegrounds world with no extra downtime.</p>

[Thodur]

<p>Thx for explanation.</p>

[ccarro]

<p><cite>druidmagus wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>I have my job for real life. But this is a paid service. that I pay for.  I know i am wasting time with the game. I quess I will go to another game. Thanks for making feel that I am not needed. Just another number</p></blockquote><p>I think some of your emo got on me....ewwwwww!</p><p>/runs away</p>

[Notsovilepriest]

$15 a month/30 days in a month...SoE will be sure to credit you the $1.50 so you can get almost 2 packs of gum!

[Thodur]

<cite>Notsovilepriest@Nagafen wrote:</cite><blockquote>$15 a month/30 days in a month...SoE will be sure to credit you the $1.50 so you can get almost 2 packs of gum!</blockquote>

[Thodur]

<p><cite>Notsovilepriest@Nagafen wrote:</cite></p><blockquote>$15 a month/30 days in a month...SoE will be sure to credit you the $1.50 so you can get almost 2 packs of gum!</blockquote><p> Yes thank you i take them, because there is some principle. In my work if i had delay or something like this, i must give a discount everytime, this is life <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" /> And i am sure that downitme is not at the end while there is still many merges.</p><p>Sorry for my reply, i cant delete it.</p>

[Notsovilepriest]

<p><cite>Thodur wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Notsovilepriest@Nagafen wrote:</cite></p><blockquote>$15 a month/30 days in a month...SoE will be sure to credit you the $1.50 so you can get almost 2 packs of gum!</blockquote><p> Yes thank you i take them, because there is some principle. In my work if i had delay or something like this, i must give a discount everytime, this is life <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" /> And i am sure that downitme is not at the end while there is still many merges.</p><p>Sorry for my reply, i cant delete it.</p></blockquote><p>Here is a principle, When dealing with technology things can and do fail to go according to plan and needing to patch things so the players aren't playing with someone broken helps, and also helping them out by merging servers, yet players still have the audacity to complain about it. They are doing us a service by merging, which does benefit them too, but still helps us.</p>

[Thodur]

<p><cite>Notsovilepriest@Nagafen wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Thodur wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Notsovilepriest@Nagafen wrote:</cite></p><blockquote>$15 a month/30 days in a month...SoE will be sure to credit you the $1.50 so you can get almost 2 packs of gum!</blockquote><p> Yes thank you i take them, because there is some principle. In my work if i had delay or something like this, i must give a discount everytime, this is life <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" /> And i am sure that downitme is not at the end while there is still many merges.</p><p>Sorry for my reply, i cant delete it.</p></blockquote><p>Here is a principle, When dealing with technology things can and do fail to go according to plan and needing to patch things so the players aren't playing with someone broken helps, and also helping them out by merging servers, yet players still have the audacity to complain about it. They are doing us a service by merging, which does benefit them too, but still helps us.</p></blockquote>

[Thodur]

<p><cite>Notsovilepriest@Nagafen wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Thodur wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Notsovilepriest@Nagafen wrote:</cite></p><blockquote>$15 a month/30 days in a month...SoE will be sure to credit you the $1.50 so you can get almost 2 packs of gum!</blockquote><p> Yes thank you i take them, because there is some principle. In my work if i had delay or something like this, i must give a discount everytime, this is life <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" /> And i am sure that downitme is not at the end while there is still many merges.</p><p>Sorry for my reply, i cant delete it.</p></blockquote><p>Here is a principle, When dealing with technology things can and do fail to go according to plan and needing to patch things so the players aren't playing with someone broken helps, and also helping them out by merging servers, yet players still have the audacity to complain about it. They are doing us a service by merging, which does benefit them too, but still helps us.</p></blockquote><p> I understand, its ok, but need to do in time like US servers, not in prime time at EU servers (i am EU) etc etc... Like in my work, <span><span>I can not afford to modify these things at a time when the customer uses, and then could not.</span></span></p>

[Bacci]

<p>Downtimes are part of the service as well.</p><p>They are done to improve the game.</p><p>Just they way of communication is not proper here. It could be better.</p><p>If we would get information about downtimes that have to be done fast and unexpected in time, or information about extended downtimes, then it would be a very nice and smart move from SOE.</p><p>I like the way Rothgar communicates actually with the server communities that get merged. Very good <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></p>

[Peppto]

<p>Part of the service or not, I am not paying to NOT play, with all the downtime in this month and more server merges to come, I really do believe SOE should give us our money back this month...  Ya can't even screw up a chicken order at A&W, expect someone to wait around an hour for their meal, and NOT give some some form of reimbursement, So why on earth does a multi-million/billion dollar company get away with it???</p><p>I personally work and go to school so I have gotten VERY LITTLE playtime in the past 2 weeks, why should I have to pay a full 2 weeks just to SAMPLE the game...</p><p>This is just another show of how little consideration SOE has for their players.</p><p>Love the game, HATE the company.</p><p>Look at it this way, if SOE were to reimbuse everyones sub this month, it would just be paying us back for the scam they pulled by putting crappy looks on the tier9 fabled cloaks and forceing us to pay 10$+ for fabled looking cloaks with $C. (Pretty soon their isn't even going to be any point in raiding, just buy the good looking stuff with $C and toss it on your lvl 1 toon >,< )</p>

[DrkVsr]

<p><span style="font-size: medium; color: #993300; font-family: comic sans ms,sans-serif;">Twice in one week? There was a time when it went down <strong><em><span style="text-decoration: underline;">5</span></em></strong> times a week, every week</span></p>

[makton]

<p>Hey all. Anyone noticing the massive amount of server farm mergers happening lately??? Also, anyone realize that some of the updates have to happen to all farms at the same time?? hint hint</p><p>I feel for the ones being denied their game time and understand your feelings, but I also work as a server admin and developer and I know what the admins at SOE are going thru right now, with the updates and migrations. Downtime is going to happen, it must happen. For the EU guy, I'm sorry, but the US is the main headquarters and has most of the farms, so the schedule of the multi farm patches are going to be during the lowest overall population time of all the farms which is around morning here and just before your primetime.</p><p>Also, we are having more downtime over the needed patches for the server mergers. I don't want to be down, but I know it will happen till these mergers are done. And remember this, from a post in another forum the EU server look to be after the new year and when those happen, the rest of us will probably feel that and have more down times. This added with the frostfell update and the new expansion coming, SOE has their hands full and doesn't need us complaining over downtime as they are happening to make our gameplay better.</p><p>Sorry, I had to say something</p><p>Mike</p>

[Plagee]

<p>Correct me if I am wrong, but wasn't there at one time a statement in the Terms of Service stating that the monthly subscription provided the user the ability to access the game content and servers WHEN THEY ARE AVAILABLE.  I do believe that game updates, hot fixes and server merges create an unavailable status.</p>

[Wingrider01]

<p><cite>druidmagus wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>I have my job for real life. But this is a paid service. that I pay for.  I know i am wasting time with the game. I quess I will go to another game. Thanks for making feel that I am not needed. Just another number</p></blockquote><p>have you ever read the terms of servce that you agree to each and every time you enter the game (unless you have it turned off of course). In those terms then do not promise 7x24x365 uptime, in fact they indicate that there will be times that the service is ot available. The is no 7x24x365 SLA in place for the game.</p><p>Do not be surprised if you do go to other games and find out that they have the same situations. Only game you wil get 100 percent uptime is a stand alone installed game that plays on your machine alone.</p>

[Leafle]

<p>Nothing in the EULA guarantees that the service will be available <span style="text-decoration: underline;">ever</span>. The game could have 100% down time and SOE would be well within the terms of service. So yes, from a legal stand point, SOE doesn't owe you any amount of up time, or content, or anything. They could legally take your money and provide you with nothing for as long as you keep paying them.</p><p>However, does poor customer service, administration and server maintenance foster the kind of loyalty needed for a healthy game population?</p><p>So yeah, they don't owe us anything, but that kind of relationship works both ways.</p>

[d1anaw]

<p><cite>Enica@Everfrost wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>If they accommodate every single player, there would never be any downtime, nothing would ever get done and you'd not have a game to play at all.</p><p>I'm off today and tomorrow.  Downtime today and with another merge going on tomorrow there might be some issues that spill over into the other servers.  And if I can't play, I'll find something else to do. </p></blockquote><p>How dare you suggest people find something else to do. Shame on you.</p>

[Hanners]

<p>I'm one of those people who can only play the game from about 6am PDT til 9am PDT. I recognize that this is the most convenient time for the developers to patch the game, and that it impacts the least number of people.</p><p>However, some of the responses in this thread to people complaining are unwarranted, in my opinion. I think most of the people who play during my schedule can and will gladly accept a once-weekly downtime for patches. The problem is that over the past few months an awful lot of weeks have had two patch sessions or more and I believe there have even been a couple of weeks where patches were rolled out three times a week. You also have to consider the partial downtime due to the server merges and then the hardward maintenance last week.</p><p>When all is said and done, I've had about two weekdays in the past two weeks where I could play EQ2 when I wanted without any sort of server-side hindrance.</p><p>I'm not going to quit, and I'm not frothing-at-the-mouth angry. However, I do believe if you are paying for a service you should be able to comment if it isn't living up to your expectations. And, of late, I think the EQ2 downtime is starting to push the boundary of what I consider acceptable.</p><p>I hope that the developers will go back to the once-weekly Tuesday downtime schedule once these mergers are all done and their ensuing problems are cleared up.</p>

[druidmagus]

<p>DOWN AGAIN!</p>

[Enica]

<p><cite>Hanners wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>I'm one of those people who can only play the game from about 6am PDT til 9am PDT. I recognize that this is the most convenient time for the developers to patch the game, and that it impacts the least number of people.</p><p>However, some of the responses in this thread to people complaining are unwarranted, in my opinion. I think most of the people who play during my schedule can and will gladly accept a once-weekly downtime for patches. The problem is that over the past few months an awful lot of weeks have had two patch sessions or more and I believe there have even been a couple of weeks where patches were rolled out three times a week. You also have to consider the partial downtime due to the server merges and then the hardward maintenance last week.</p><p>When all is said and done, I've had about two weekdays in the past two weeks where I could play EQ2 when I wanted without any sort of server-side hindrance.</p><p>I'm not going to quit, and I'm not frothing-at-the-mouth angry. However, I do believe if you are paying for a service you should be able to comment if it isn't living up to your expectations. And, of late, I think the EQ2 downtime is starting to push the boundary of what I consider acceptable.</p><p>I hope that the developers will go back to the once-weekly Tuesday downtime schedule once these mergers are all done and their ensuing problems are cleared up.</p></blockquote><p>No sarcasm here, I'm totally serious:  What would you suggest?</p>

[Hanners]

<p><cite>Enica@Everfrost wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>No sarcasm here, I'm totally serious:  What would you suggest?</p></blockquote><p>At the moment, I can't argue with the extended downtime. There are too many issues just falling on top of each other -- regular maintenance, holiday quests, server mergers, and SOE network maintenance.  However, when there aren't hardware issues, holday time-limited quests or servers being merged, I think that the once-weekly update schedule should be maintained, and unless it's absolutely necessary, weekly EQ2 maintenance should be done at the same time or just before any SOE network-side maintenance that would affect EQ2 itself (like last week's Thursday maintenance)</p>

[Thumatos]

<p>Ok, fine, but why a 2 hour downtime to fix stupid bixies?  How about more info on what your actually doing.</p>

[makton]

<p><cite>Hanners wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Enica@Everfrost wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>No sarcasm here, I'm totally serious:  What would you suggest?</p></blockquote><p>At the moment, I can't argue with the extended downtime. There are too many issues just falling on top of each other -- regular maintenance, holiday quests, server mergers, and SOE network maintenance.  However, when there aren't hardware issues, holday time-limited quests or servers being merged, I think that the once-weekly update schedule should be maintained, and unless it's absolutely necessary, weekly EQ2 maintenance should be done at the same time or just before any SOE network-side maintenance that would affect EQ2 itself (like last week's Thursday maintenance)</p></blockquote><p>That doesn't always work as when a network maintenance is don't it's liable to break the farm connection which doesn't allow for the farm to do any updates. I've had this happen to my farm to many times, which is why the network team and I have to work together and stagger our dates for maintenance. This can lead to my farm being down more times then I like, but it must happen.</p><p>Mike</p>

[Hanners]

<p><cite>makton wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>That doesn't always work as when a network maintenance is don't it's liable to break the farm connection which doesn't allow for the farm to do any updates. I've had this happen to my farm to many times, which is why the network team and I have to work together and stagger our dates for maintenance. This can lead to my farm being down more times then I like, but it must happen.</p><p>Mike</p></blockquote><p>I was suggesting that as an alternate, the server downtime could be done before or after the network maintenance -- if the EQ2 team wants to do a weekly update but SOE says all services will be brought down at 9am PDT for work, I think it'd be a good idea to slot the weekly maintenance into the 7am time slot that week. Or, alternately, do it after the network maintenance is done.  I think it'd be better to have the servers down for one longer extended block than multiple times during the same week.</p><p>I know that it doesn't always work this way -- all I'm really hoping is that the devs will recognize that this is a concern and that if there's going to be a weekly scheduled update it'd be nice if that pattern were followed. Not everyone will be happy, but I hope we can see the most people happy with the smallest possible unhappy -- at least because of server downtime =)</p>