If it wouldn't be too much trouble.

Can we split servers into timezone so that server maintenance isn't smack dab in the middle of some of our prime time? Its always been a legitimate complaint from the EU/Asian Players on US based games.

Thanks

You know they do the maintenance usually when they are actually working right?

Not sure I understand your point?

One of those threads again >.>''
If maintenance wouldn't be during your prime-time, it would be during other people's prime-time.
Just accept the fact and try to cope with it, k?

Wht Mhyrn is trying to say...

Japan is at the beginning/middle of their work day during maintenance. It just happens to coincide with NA primetime. Just the way it's going to be when the game's HQ is halfway around the world.

Thats why I suggested time zone based maintenance windows. I felt I explained that fairly effectively. But let me try to explain this again. Splitting server clusters into groupings that take into account major populations bodies to thereby not affect major population centers would be a nice touch. In that way a player could choose their paint thresh hold for a maintenance window. Did that explain it better for you Dante?

Rowan I understand that. But its always been a legitimate complaint for Asian players on US companies to provide for the time zone shift when possible. Rift is an example of an MMO that provides both a US based and a Euro time zone based shift. And lets face it SE has been around a lot longer then Trion. So I don't believe this is too much to ask.

So you expect the devs to split up into multiple teams to do maintenance on multiple regions around the clock or go to work, get maintenance done on JP servers, chill out at work doing nothing than a couple hours later work on NA servers? I'm from NA and it does go into my playtime but I would rather not overwork other people that I don't even know of if necessary.

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Originally Posted by Merxion

Thats why I suggested time zone based maintenance windows. I felt I explained that fairly effectively. But let me try to explain this again. Splitting server clusters into groupings that take into account major populations bodies to thereby not affect major population centers would be a nice touch. In that way a player could choose their paint thresh hold for a maintenance window. Did that explain it better for you Dante?

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While I see your point, I think it would still be more effective if they did maintenance during SE's business hours. That way communication is better achieved since the main crews will be working. Blizzard still does it that way. Oceana primetime is almost always affected by their maintenance on Tuesday. Yet it's almost always still the NA people complaining about it.

Regardless, even if they did cluster it like you suggest, someone somewhere will still complain about maintenance during their primetime. Not everyone gets to play from 5pm-12pm. Got your 3rd shifts and some late 2nd shifts who would be affected if they did it in the middle of be night or very early morning.

Granted the playerbase would be smaller, which is one of your points, but the fact remains...someone will still complain. No matter what time of day. Then another thread will pop up complaining about why the non-primetime players get shafted because they are the minority. So IMO, it's in SE's best interest to do the maintenance on their work time. That's how I'd do it. It's not like maintenance is an unexpected thing that happens. It's even in the ToS somewhere that maintenance is just part of it. And since we all have to agree to it to play, we have no right to complain when it happens.

Honestly, that's a bad idea. It would slow down progress. I rather wait for them to fix/add anything they need to before playing. Waiting half a day wouldn't hurt.

Thanks Rowan thats a much better direction of a discussion and what my intention was. Certainly Blizzard still does it this way because changing after running that way for so long would probably create far more issues.

At some point in the near future they are going to have to allow some amount of transfers free or otherwise. The idea of multiple shifts of maintenance windows allows people to not have to complain because they choose where to go not just have it stuck on them because thats the way we always did it.

The advantages of doing it in shifts would be less load on the log in servers as they bring the servers back on line because they would be off peak hours for each of the time zone. This would create a more positive play experience for everyone.

Their work time is whatever they make it to be. Rifts teams come in but early to do maintenance at odd ball hours of the day and thats just their work schedule that day. Keep in mind we aren't talking about designers and software engineers doing this. This is for the most part publishing Operations tech people. Their entire lives is about rolling out patches and hard ware lively hood. They work when the servers require them to work.

As far as we have no right to complain. That's not true we just cant litigate about the maintenance and demand compensation. I'm not asking for compensation. I'm asking that they consider while this is new and rolling forward that they take some time and create a more positive world wide approach to the play schedule of the people fund them.

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Originally Posted by Lemon8or

So you expect the devs to split up into multiple teams...

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No i'm not talking about Dev's I'm talking about publishing operations people. These are teams of people not one person who updates all these machines. Three smaller teams would allow them to rolling patch the servers and respond to other issues that arise due the the patch and not be wore out because its not 2am in the morning coming back in for the third time to fix something. The same crew that is "monitoring real time" are there already anyways. Some might be part of the deployment team some might not be. Besides they aren't manually rolling out these patches they are using automation to roll them out. The exception here is when they are setting up new servers obviously that would be a major maintenance to cover things like that.