All Day Maintenance and Compensation: My Thoughts

[SendohJin]

maintenance is part of what we pay for.

[Usho]

maintenance is part of what we pay for.

I don't agree with that. I'm paying to play the game, not to not play the game.

[whiskeybravo]

Hate to be that guy but

You acknowledge that disruptions of service may occur and waive any causes of action against Square Enix in any way arising from or related to any such disruptions of service.

By accepting the ToS and playing the game you've already waived any right to seek compensation for service disruptions. In general I feel where you are coming from, and I think if the service was indeed down for an extended period of time SE would seek to make it right with it's customer base, much like how they halted auto-demolish of houses during the hurricanes last year. Many companies made efforts to relieve consumers around that time, even for people who weren't affected.

Outside of emergency maintenance downtime we really only have a handful of 24-hour maintenance's per year, maybe 4 tops? Big patches simply don't come out that often.

It's the principle of the matter, and it's on principle (and potential consequences of it) that the situation is properly discussed.

If you really have a problem with it then start a petition to change the ToS. As it stands you accepted the terms in order to play the game. Now I certainly don't agree with companies that try to shoehorn in obscene stipulations into the ToS, and I'm always very careful to read them now just to make sure there is no tomfoolery being proposed. But that's kinda where it starts - with consumers actually reading the damn things and protesting them to be changed before agreement.

[Sylvina]

When is this 24 hour maintainance going to take place?

[Usho]

Outside of emergency maintenance downtime we really only have a handful of 24-hour maintenance's per year, maybe 4 tops? Big patches simply don't come out that often.

That's not the point. It's the principle of the matter. If I'm paying for a service, even if this is only a handful of times a year, I'm still paying for that day I'm not able to play. That's a day out of a 30 day monthly period that I'm paying for that I can't play.



To me, that's not good business.

[Dualblade]

There is no current scheduled 24-hour maint, the last one was the one for 4.3 (which is why OP is most likely making this thread).

Anyways the devs gives us advanced warning for all scheduled maints, expansions and major patches will almost always be longer then usual due to more content being in them as well. If this was about unscheduled long maints only I could see the OPs point but for scheduled ones no, no.

As for the "principal of the matter", as Whiskey already put in his reply.

You acknowledge that disruptions of service may occur and waive any causes of action against Square Enix in any way arising from or related to any such disruptions of service.

You already agreed to this in the ToS.

[Vidu]

I don't agree with that. I'm paying to play the game, not to not play the game.

Yes and those maintances are adding new content for you to play.
I dont see your problem - would you rather be stuck with only playing the base content?

[ChameleonMS]

SE has generally been pretty fair about it historically. Maintenance, as required, is agreed upon in our subscription contract.
Unscheduled maintenance that exceeds a reasonable amount of time has been compensated a couple times in the past with equivalent game time. Just not recently.

As for getting it right the first time. This is a pipe dream of academic teaching with regards to QA. QA in software development is a best-effort approach and is never enough.
You can never properly simulate volume load and scale issues and Nth iterations of situations.
The only way to accomplish the QA expectation desired is to have QA environment as expansive as the production environment. This is never fiscally possible, it would also be a secrecy nightmare because it would no longer be in-house.

[Okamimaru]

Yet another complaint from Usho... no surprise... I'm still baffled by these people who complain about EVERYTHING yet continue to play... i don't like a game I just quit playing...

[Gemina]

I feel a bit of hypocrisy in your post and I sense mixed feelings about the matter despite you saying "I don't personally think it's a big deal".


I'm just gonna quote what you just said because it's basically what I was getting at:

The thing is, maintenance is a service you also pay for. Without them, patches and expansions would not be possible, and the game itself would become unplayable.

No one is going to argue with you that is sucks when you can't play when you want to. Everyone paying a sub shares this frustration with you. You can take comfort knowing that on these days, everybody's progress comes to a screeching halt. However, you won't gain a whole lot of sympathy when you gripe about something you signed up for.