When it's 7 a.m. PDT, what time is it on the east coast??

[Glenolas]

From yesterday's announcements:

Hello all!

We'll be having a hotfix Wednesday 8.26.09.  It will be at the usual 7AM PDT for the US servers.

Our friends in the UK will be patching at 9PM PDT (5AM on 8.27.09 for our friends residing in London).

The update notes are available here.

Thank you and happy gaming!

So today, promptly at 9 a.m. EDT, the servers went down.  

[Barx]

They usually do it at 7am Pacific / 10am Eastern, as for why they took it down an hour early, who knows.

Were there in-game warnings? (IE the "Server is coming down in 15 minutes" system messages). If so then maybe they just decided they needed more time for the patch and took them down an hour earlier.

[Ahlana]

Barx@Antonia Bayle wrote:

They usually do it at 7am Pacific / 10am Eastern, as for why they took it down an hour early, who knows.

Were there in-game warnings? (IE the "Server is coming down in 15 minutes" system messages). If so then maybe they just decided they needed more time for the patch and took them down an hour earlier.

Plenty of ingame warnings, doesn't change the fact that they still said 1 hour downtime.. and while I see my characters and servers are not locked, I can't log into any of them /shrug

[feldon30]

http://www.time.gov/

[Glenolas]

Barx@Antonia Bayle wrote:

They usually do it at 7am Pacific / 10am Eastern, as for why they took it down an hour early, who knows.

Were there in-game warnings? (IE the "Server is coming down in 15 minutes" system messages). If so then maybe they just decided they needed more time for the patch and took them down an hour earlier.

Sure.  Plenty of warnings, all saying 6:00 a.m. PDT.   I know it's usually done at 7:00.  

The previous day's announcement would have been more useful had it noted the fact that the server update would be an hour earlier than normal.   

There are several pet peeves of mine in regards to the forum announcements.

1.  Posting inaccurate messages, just for the sake of posting.  

2.  Announcing fixes that went in to the game when the item wasn't actually fixed.  

3.  Unannounced ninja-ing of numerous  'fixes" with noticeable affect on gameplay.   

This thread's original post fits into category 1.   Generic cut an paste, never mind the accuracy.

As for category 2, has anyone tried /follow in TSO zones recently?  It was twice announced as being fixed.     It still 100% fails at 0,0 in EVERY TSO instance.  That irritating little item affects around 35% of the player base, and is on slow roll on it's 3rd attempt at being fixed.   Zero discussion of when the fix might actually go in.

As for category 3, ninja changes,  did anyone see any notice when they chaged the "key" mob performance a month or two back?   

Did anyone see any announcement when they changed them the 2nd time?  

Of course, we all saw an announcement it when some of the key mobs dissappeared from the game for a while, so they could change them the 3rd time.  

I saw a long multipage threat on the imagined "why they did it" from the player base,  and don't wish to further that discussion.     Had they announced it, they didn't even need to give a reason.   My beef is the total lack of announcement of a game changing adjustment, and they do it weekly.

While I have seen many statements from SOE saying "we are going to communicate better" with the player base,  I see scant evidence of any substatial change from their historic past.

[Landiin]

Life is hard I know..

[Glenolas]

Toran@Oasis wrote:

Life is hard I know..

It's a slow news day.

[Barx]

Glenolas wrote:

There are several pet peeves of mine in regards to the forum announcements.

1.  Posting inaccurate messages, just for the sake of posting.  

2.  Announcing fixes that went in to the game when the item wasn't actually fixed.  

3.  Unannounced ninja-ing of numerous  'fixes" with noticeable affect on gameplay.   

This thread's original post fits into category 1.   Generic cut an paste, never mind the accuracy.

As for category 2, has anyone tried /follow in TSO zones recently?  It was twice announced as being fixed.     It still 100% fails at 0,0 in EVERY TSO instance.  That irritating little item affects around 35% of the player base, and is on slow roll on it's 3rd attempt at being fixed.   Zero discussion of when the fix might actually go in.

As for category 3, ninja changes,  did anyone see any notice when they chaged the "key" mob performance a month or two back?   

Did anyone see any announcement when they changed them the 2nd time?  

Of course, we all saw an announcement it when some of the key mobs dissappeared from the game for a while, so they could change them the 3rd time.  

I saw a long multipage threat on the imagined "why they did it" from the player base,  and don't wish to further that discussion.     Had they announced it, they didn't even need to give a reason.   My beef is the total lack of announcement of a game changing adjustment, and they do it weekly.

While I have seen many statements from SOE saying "we are going to communicate better" with the player base,  I see scant evidence of any substatial change from their historic past.

Communication is up -- look at the developer posts asking for feedback.

But to address your 3 points:

1. Notice of a downtime is better than no notice, even if they ended up bringing the servers down an hour eariler than they expected to. The forum folks like Kiara that typically post such notices aren't the developers... and the developers aren't the Ops folks that actually run the server farms.

2. In the past they've said that update notes are collected based on what they are told from the developers. A dev might say X is fixed because they think it is, or they might say it's fixed but that part of hte patch had to be pulled at the last moment but the update notes werent corrected. In the specific case of follow, I know they have been working on that on Test, but those changes have not made it live yet and likely will not until GU53 hits. But following is not necessarily a simple thing, pathing is an incredibly complex problem in any game -- you can see that in all kinds of games, especially older RTSes where pathing can be downright horrid.

3. As for changes made that don't get recorded in the patch notes... they should make a note of it (ie "We've removed the shard chests in X, Y, and Z temporarily"), I agree there. I won't make excuses beyond saying this: Patch notes are a balance, too much info and they become too long to read (the quarterly GUs are kind of pushing that level now), and hotfix notes that come out every single week take time to collect what changes were actually being made since it's not a major code push like a GU but rather applying a few selected changes.

[Glenolas]

Barx@Antonia Bayle wrote:

But to address your 3 points:

1. Notice of a downtime is better than no notice, even if they ended up bringing the servers down an hour eariler than they expected to. The forum folks like Kiara that typically post such notices aren't the developers... and the developers aren't the Ops folks that actually run the server farms.

We'll never know the truth in this case, and don't need to.  

Usually one doesn't decide to change the server down time at 5 in the morning of the day it happens, (when the bells started ringing) so best bet is they knew it the day before and there was the lack of a phone call somewhere prior to posting the generic message the day before.  

In any event,  the lack of attention to detail is pervasive, and is a management issue.   Today's minor item happens repeatedly in major ones, and just provided an opening for discussion.   

Dogged insistence on accuracy is a hallmark of good customer service.

2. In the past they've said that update notes are collected based on what they are told from the developers. A dev might say X is fixed because they think it is, or they might say it's fixed but that part of hte patch had to be pulled at the last moment but the update notes werent corrected.

Yes, I know.   Failure with an excuse is still failure.  The poor customer interface person is held hostage by the devs telling her the wrong stuff, so she does the best she can and publishes factual errors.    Best publish errors than no publishing at all, right?

Is  the mid level management asleep?    A simple 10 minute conversation all around can fix the problem.  Having to do it twice would fix it for sure.   The update notes don't have to go out until the server is being patched.    Stuff that got pulled gets removed.  Stuff that's in them should work.  

In the specific case of follow, I know they have been working on that on Test, but those changes have not made it live yet and likely will not until GU53 hits.

I have two specific beefs on this topic.  

1.  My category 2:  put live and announced as fixed but isn't:   Not once but 2x in the last 3 months.  It remains irritatingly flawed.   Why was it released untested?

2.  Currently it affects more of the player base than the entire sum of the "we're listening to your feedback from Fan Faire" topics released so far.   How many people do you think are affected by a T6 mob's (Meathook) weapon being changed to pierce?   They likely killed it with a better weapon that he drops, and will replace in it a week of leveling otherwise.   Yet a dev was assigned to do that, vs fixing a hard failure of a widely used capability as soon as possible.

But following is not necessarily a simple thing, pathing is an incredibly complex problem in any game -- you can see that in all kinds of games, especially older RTSes where pathing can be downright horrid.

Pathing and following are two seperate topics.   

Pathing might not be great in EQ2, be we've learned to live with it.  

Following in TSO instances is so bad atm that I know several  who've just abandoned the game, each with multiple accounts.   They feel they need their follower to overcome the overal game population drop, and now it doesn't work in almost every zone they do.   It became their last frustration straw.  

3. As for changes made that don't get recorded in the patch notes... they should make a note of it (ie "We've removed the shard chests in X, Y, and Z temporarily"), I agree there. I won't make excuses beyond saying this: Patch notes are a balance, too much info and they become too long to read (the quarterly GUs are kind of pushing that level now), and hotfix notes that come out every single week take time to collect what changes were actually being made since it's not a major code push like a GU but rather applying a few selected changes.

I agree we don't need verbose patch notes.   However,  ninja changes unannounced  isn't an agreeable alternative. 

[Ashenor_Teveril]

Can anyone get back in game? A few of us have posted in tech support that after the hotfix our games sticks at the loading zone screen then goes back to character select or closes the game.

[Glenolas]

Ashenor_Teveril wrote:

Can anyone get back in game? A few of us have posted in tech support that after the hotfix our games sticks at the loading zone screen then goes back to character select or closes the game.

Mine seems okay on 2 chars.

[Ashenor_Teveril]

Hmm weird i can't log any of my toons in from a windows 7 machine or a win xp one on either of my 2 accounts; Looks like there are more people having the same issue.

[Kiara]

Gah.  That was my fault.  I'm sorry.

I'm so used to it being at 7am that I totally blanked on the new time when I posted yesterday.  Won't happen again!

[Rattfa]

I demand to be reimbursed for my lost play time, even though I wasn't logged in! ROAR!

[Barx]

Rattface@Nagafen wrote:

I demand to be reimbursed for my lost play time, even though I wasn't logged in! ROAR!

Lol. It's so funny to see those threads pop up in like the tech support forums by people with 1 or 2 posts every now and then...

"The server was down for 2 hours and I couldnt play I want 3 months of free play time or ill quit and go to aion or wow or or or I pay for this game I deserve to get my money back for the few hours that I couldnt play despite the fact the EULA/TOS makes it clear that they dont reimburse for downtime but I want it anyway wahhhh"

As for the original topic... see? It was a mistake, people are human, and they do usually do downtimes at 7am, it's very rare for them to do one at a different time.

[ke'la]

Kiara wrote:

Gah.  That was my fault.  I'm sorry.

I'm so used to it being at 7am that I totally blanked on the new time when I posted yesterday.  Won't happen again!

Does that mean the new Start of Downtime is going to be 6am going forward, or is this just going to be on an as needed for longer patchs thing?

[Kiara]

The new start will be at 6am Pacific from now on.  This was just the first time since they made the change and I spazzed.

The typical downtime won't be longer, no.

[Barx]

Kiara wrote:

The new start will be at 6am Pacific from now on.  This was just the first time since they made the change and I spazzed.

The typical downtime won't be longer, no.

Mmm, nice. Now most hotfixes should be done and over by the time I'm done getting up on days I don't have morning classes