Define prime time!

[Alcyon_Densetsu]

An American on a Chinese server in Canada.

An American on a Chinese server hosting a Japanese game in Canada.

Aside from that, I agree with Dreamer. "Prime time" has a very strict definition used by most media companies; it isn't a loose synonym for "peak hours", though of course it caters to that notion.

[Leet]

Noez. You're in america on a canadian server. :P

Canada is a part of the Americas... Nobody said United States of America servers, just American servers.

[DeadlySwordz]

JP company = maintenance during their working hrs. Think of it this way, Blizzard (an American company) do their maintenance during their working hrs. When I played WoW a few yrs back, they had maintenance once a week on Tuesdays I think. Maybe they still do. Their maintenance hrs were 11am - 1pm EST if I remember correctly (during their working hrs). Guess what, it was prime time somewhere in the world and people couldnt play either. I live on the east coast (US), maintenance for this game happens at prime time hrs all the time. But I am not bitching and moaning. Kids these days = waaaaaaaaaaaaah can't play for 2hrs once a week for maintenance, waaaaaaah. grow up

[RhaegarPaendrag]

You can't use "waaaaaah" then tell people to grow up.


That said, It would be different for SE if it was a "All server" maintenance, but Japan servers are still up and NA down during their prime time playing house is crazy....


But then again, this is the same company that has customer service in place that takes 3+ weeks to reply to tickets, 3+ hours to answer phone calls on non-toll free numbers, and closes tickets without even fixing or answering them.

[Pixiestyx]

Japan time is 11am right now so this started at 8am for them. While Japanese servers started at 6am. And I am sure they got into work before 6am to get things started.
So yes this is during U.S. primetime (5pm anytime zone is when primetime would start as a lot of people are starting to get off work) but at least its being done.

[Dreamer]

From Wikipedia:

The hours traditionally taken as constituting prime time in North America are 8:00 to 11:00 p.m. Eastern and Pacific and 7:00 to 10:00 p.m. Central and Mountain Time Monday–Saturday. On Sundays, prime time begins an hour earlier, at 7:00 p.m. Eastern and Pacific and 6:00 p.m. Central and Mountain, ending at the same time as on the other six days of the week.

By this definition maintenance ended an hour before prime time after prime time started (eastern time).

[Tubbins]

From Wikipedia:



By this definition maintenance ended an hour before prime time.

I think you need to redo that math. Maintenance went from 7:00pm to 9:00 pm eastern which is an hour into the prime time as stated by your quote from wikipedia.

[Dreamer]

I think you need to redo that math. Maintenance went from 7:00pm to 9:00 pm eastern which is an hour into the prime time as stated by your quote from wikipedia.

Yep, you're right. For some reason my brain was thinking that maintenance was 5p-7p (even though I'm in eastern time myself).

[AttacKat]

The latest maintenance...

Hmm, only ONE data sample qualifies your research being conclusive?!?!

How about going back a few more?

Sep. 3, 5:00 p.m. to Sep. 4, 2013 3:00 a.m. (PDT) (8pm-6am EDT)
Sep. 11, 5:00 p.m. to Sep. 12, 2013 3:00 a.m. (PDT) (8pm-6am EDT)
Sep. 19, 4:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. (PDT) (7pm-9pm EDT)

Considering 3 out of 4 the "scheduled" ones were during the hours where it does fall in between the hours where people are home during late afternoon, early and late evening, yeah, so far most of the "scheduled" maintenance is during prime time when the NA population is most likely to log on.

BTW, where do you live? Maybe we can ask SE to schedule it during the hours you are most available to play instead of NA's.

EDIT:

JP company = maintenance during their working hrs.

While this excuse was acceptable during beta, this is no longer an acceptable excuse for a product that is live 24x7 serving the globe. Major data centers are operational and manned 24x7, hence the service provider also needs to be sensitive to the locale of their service area.

jc

[Ahlen]

Prime time is defined by two things:

Largest population density, hardware location.

For NA/EU, that more than likely means prime time is related to EST.