All Day Maintenance and Compensation: My Thoughts

[MOZZYSTAR]

Well, yeah it may suck to have 24 hours without an MMO you pay for... but at the same time, the 24 hours costs you very little money wise. It's not like they do these 24 hour maintenances every week or every other week, either, so it's really no problem at all. Do something else for that day. Play another game, make plans for that day, grocery shop, take a walk, garden, write poetry about how you feel, do something.



These twenty-four hours (5)
Have left me feeling quite sour (7)
So, I'll play Jenga (5)


(And before you refute hour and sour, they are considered monosyllabic as per various sources.)

[Felis]

When is this 24 hour maintainance going to take place?

Next one should be in 3 1/2 month

[Maleficent]

Duh? Injecting the ToS again distracts from the argument. The OP was not making a case about the ToS, nor indicating there was some legal wrong. Clearly the thrust of the argument was therefore about principle. Bringing up the ToS is akin to derailing the thread.

Respectfully, I think mentioning the ToS puts the OP's concern in proper context: it's strange to argue principle after entering into a contract.

To flip it around: If my monthly salaried employment contract has paid sick leave; I, not being a paragon of health, unfortunately take a day off for being sick every 3 - 6 months. I'd be equally aghast if my employer then came and argued that regardless of the legal contract the principle should be they only pay for my 'uptime'.

If my contract otherwise stipulated payment only for days worked, it'd be a given not get paid for sick days.

[Paladin776]

...stuff...

Not to sound callous or anything, but when you've gone through a ~40 hour and a 45 day emergency maintenance on a game you thoroughly enjoy, 24 hours just doesn't seem like a big deal.

[whiskeybravo]

The OP feels that they deserve a "free day of play" as a paying customer because of 24 hour maintenance and while SE has sometimes reimbursed us for such things when it was an emergency, they will not over scheduled content updates. There's never been a history of such a thing. That is the principle of the matter.

This is the main point I think, outside of bringing up the ToS - we are giving a month+ notice when there is going to be a patch and associated maintenance. It's not like it just pops up out of the blue to ruin your day, we are made aware well in advance of scheduled maintenance.

Yes, because I can just move my work days around to fit the game. Regardless of what the ToS say, it still sucks when the game is down for an entire day, especially if it happens to be your day off and you're stuck with nothing to do. Additionally, the fact that they have a 24 hours maintenance for every patch is a little excessive. Our servers at work can be done in 3-4 hours and they have massive amounts of data flowing through them at any given time. What he's asking for isn't that unreasonable. And even if it was, he hasn't said anything that deviates from the ToS agreement, i.e. legal action.

That's a bit of a stretch. There have been (2) 24-hour maint so far this year, one for each major patch. Minor patches and hotfixes are usually completed overnight when most of NA is asleep.

Think of it like this. I schedule a vacation day off 1 month in advance. My day off comes around and work calls, needs me to come in because someone called in sick. Does that make me obligated to go in to work? No. I've already scheduled the day off and it was approved by management, technically it's not my problem. Same thing here. SE scheduled a day off a month in advance, but a few people in management apparently didn't get the memo and think they are being gypped out of a day's pay.

[GunksFoy]

Snip

Yes, because I can just move my work days around to fit the game. Regardless of what the ToS say, it still sucks when the game is down for an entire day, especially if it happens to be your day off and you're stuck with nothing to do. Additionally, the fact that they have a 24 hours maintenance for every patch is a little excessive. Our servers at work can be done in 3-4 hours and they have massive amounts of data flowing through them at any given time. What he's asking for isn't that unreasonable. And even if it was, he hasn't said anything that deviates from the ToS agreement, i.e. legal action.

[JumperX]

The OP is only whining because their plans probably canceled and got nothing to do. They got not games or the desire to go out cuz who knows.

I am sure that they don't say a thing when maint interrupt and bother other players with different timezone. The majority of people don't like to read the term of agreements a game imposes on its players. This is not a video game console. This is a MMO. Next time you play other MMO, go and read the term and conditions the MMO qill give youm

[Nabril]

A Day, is a day that shouldn't be wasted either.


/2 cents

Playing a video game all day isn't considered wasting that day?

[GunksFoy]

snip

Doesn't change the fact that a 24 hour maintenance should be completely unnecessary for a patch. But I disagree with these work analogies. You're job provides you with paid days leave as terms of your contract/employment, and, if they try to call you in or deny your leave, and you refuse or just skip the day without permission, they can fire you for that. We don't have any recourse (nor should we, dear god). And as many people keep saying "hurr durr, it's just 1 day every 3+ months, get over it", so why is it so much to ask that SE grant us 2-3 free days of play per year in exchange for our continued money and support. And again, as many people said, it's about 50 cents a day, so SE would lose ~$1.50-$2.00 out of my $156 a year sub.

I'm not even necessarily saying I agree with OP, but I don't think his idea is as outlandish or absurd as many of these other dissenters would have you believe.

[Talraen]

And as many people keep saying "hurr durr, it's just 1 day every 3+ months, get over it", so why is it so much to ask that SE grant us 2-3 free days of play per year in exchange for our continued money and support. And again, as many people said, it's about 50 cents a day, so SE would lose ~$1.50-$2.00 out of my $156 a year sub.

It's because maintenance is already part of your sub. And I don't mean in a monetary sense, I mean in a "we know these are going to happen" sense. To compensate for this, you have three choices: you can refund for the lost day, you can add a day to everyone's sub after each maintenance, or you can price the "refund"/lost day into the sub price. The last option is by far the simplest to implement, and in my view that makes it the best. So who's to say they haven't done this? How would you know, philosophically, whether your sub fee includes maintenance days or not? I mean, aside from them being explicitly in the terms of service.