Australia Friendly Down-Times?

[raven-wolf]

I've been playing since 2007 and when I started I was in the US and had no issues with the server down-times.
I moved to Australia, 2 years ago and the server down-times hit always at prime time.
For instance on Friday Night August 27 the servers where down form 19:30 til 23:30.
3 Days later Monday August 30th they are down again at prime time 18:00 til 02:00.

Is there an opportunity to take the different time zones of the player community into consideration when down times are scheduled?

.

[FundinStrongarm]

I think they just pick the down times with the least amount of players on the servers. Just a guess though.

[Darej]

so even though they already put in a immense number of hours you want Turbine to stay into the evening to do maintenance and if there is a problem they will have to stay thru the night and be there all day the next.

wow...

and who will pay for all this extra overtime?

the reality is you live ~15 hours ahead of where the servers are.

Turbine is gonna schedule maintenance for when it will have the LEAST impact on users AND allow them plenty of time to adjust if things go wrong.

face it..while we have alot of oceanic players the majority of players on the NA servers are...wait for it....in North America!!!!!

yes it sucks....but until they have a good reason to open a server in AUS its deal with North American server times or give the Chinese servers ago.

[Shadeaustar]

To the poster above: no need to be rude!

To the original poster: I daresay it won't happen-- folks have been asking for it since beta. If it's any consolation, scheduled maintenance doesn't happen as often as it used to.

But no, Turbine's going to schedule maintenance for their working hours.

[raven-wolf]

To the poster above: no need to be rude!

To the original poster: I daresay it won't happen-- folks have been asking for it since beta. If it's any consolation, scheduled maintenance doesn't happen as often as it used to.

But no, Turbine's going to schedule maintenance for their working hours.

.. well thanks, just thought I give it a try.

[Darej]

To the poster above: no need to be rude!

To the original poster: I daresay it won't happen-- folks have been asking for it since beta. If it's any consolation, scheduled maintenance doesn't happen as often as it used to.

But no, Turbine's going to schedule maintenance for their working hours.

wasnt being rude...sometimes folks need a reminder that it isnt all about them.

EVERY TIME we have maintenance there is a post from someone whose timezone is way off from Turbines.

you would think after being told the same reason year after year...it would sink in.

[raven-wolf]

wasnt being rude...sometimes folks need a reminder that it isnt all about them.

EVERY TIME we have maintenance there is a post from someone whose timezone is way off from Turbines.

you would think after being told the same reason year after year...it would sink in.

Thanks for the rude reminder .. needed that

[Cammunition]

I'm playing from Aus and was a bit bummed that I couldn't play tonight, but as has been posted, that's what works best for Turbine.

Btw, what server do you find most Aussies play on? I hear Elendilmir is a bit of an unofficial Aus server, but then again, Elendilmir is huge, so I'm sure it's the unofficial server of everything.

[azureal1977]

As always, majority rules. With 24 hours in a day, it seems to only time to do maintenance is the Australian ones.

Its always been this way. Its sucks immensely, but after awhile you get used to the feeling of being shafted and begin to accept youre dollar is always welcome elsewhere. You'll see that general attitude all over most gaming forums. If you aint in the US, tough ****. Etc etc.

8pm till 2am for me here in Perth. Oh well, I might go play Global Agenda.

[Dean340]

you think Turbine hates Australian customers? No.

LOL.

Turbine just hates paying their tech department overtime...simple.

[Khafar]

If you look at the lowest times people played on WoW servers in the PlayOn data, it ran from like 4:00-8:00 AM EST (1:00-5:00 AM PST). It's tough to have a team of developers ready (in case things go wrong) at 4:00 AM, so they start a bit later - still when servers have low populations, but not at the absolute bottom.

Unfortunately, that coincides with peak hours in the main population centers of Australia. Personally, I'd be fine with them doing maintenance from like 11-4PM on occasion, but I know they'd get tons of screaming about it - far more people are playing at 2PM EST than are playing at 6AM.

Khafar

[bopstar_lotr]

Being an aussie, I understand we play at a time that most NA player are asleep/heading off to work, and this is a great time for the servers to be maintained.

But then the servers are going down 3 times in an 8 day period, I think it’s a bit rough.

Could one of those 3 servers down times be delayed by 2 hours, 8am till 4pm? Especially when one of those times was a Friday night, our time.

I would never expect the server to be maintained during NA prime time, but a delay would be great every so often.
Roll on day light savings

[Yula_the_Mighty]

If you look at the lowest times people played on WoW servers in the PlayOn data, it ran from like 4:00-8:00 AM EST (1:00-5:00 AM PST). It's tough to have a team of developers ready (in case things go wrong) at 4:00 AM, so they start a bit later - still when servers have low populations, but not at the absolute bottom.

Unfortunately, that coincides with peak hours in the main population centers of Australia. Personally, I'd be fine with them doing maintenance from like 11-4PM on occasion, but I know they'd get tons of screaming about it - far more people are playing at 2PM EST than are playing at 6AM.

Khafar

I do not really care maintenance at this time either. It is not only Oceanics that have this problem. I can play this morning. I work for a multi-national. The software source and configuration management that I need access to is located on Asian servers. Big surprise it is evening over there. They are doing maintenance starting somewhere between 5 - 6 PM their time. That is 8 AM my time.

Often I am up at a horrid hour for someone on the east coast of the USA. So that I can talk to my peers in the afternoon their time before they start going home.

There is no good one size fits all maintenance time. There is always the little group who is not in sync with the majority that gets stepped on.

[Yula_the_Mighty]

Could one of those 3 servers down times be delayed by 2 hours, 8am till 4pm? Especially when one of those times was a Friday night, our time.

It depends on what is being done. Lets say you are changing a shared resource like the accounting and authentication software. This change requires an update to all the world server software. They all have to come down together so that they can update all 12+ sets of software.

Another issue is confusion. It is a lot faster, more reliable and less prone to error if you lock step all the changes. We have updated all the world servers to step 4 complete. Start step 5. Versus 9 servers are ready for step 5. All our staff is busy doing check out for step 1 complete on 2 servers. Hold that thought for 15 minutes.

[Amrumir]

Its always been this way. Its sucks immensely, but after awhile you get used to the feeling of being shafted and begin to accept youre dollar is always welcome elsewhere. You'll see that general attitude all over most gaming forums. If you aint in the US, tough ****. Etc etc.

Or instead of being some sort of grand conspiracy, it might just be that the Turbine devs schedule their server maintenance to take place daytime hours... you know, when they're awake.

6AM-2PM Eastern is morning where Turbine offices are. If something goes wrong or requires more time, they've got the afternoon to work on it.

Why would they schedule something they would have to stay up all night to work on? That makes no sense.

[Darej]

Or instead of being some sort of grand conspiracy, it might just be that the Turbine devs schedule their server maintenance to take place daytime hours... you know, when they're awake.

6AM-2PM Eastern is morning where Turbine offices are. If something goes wrong or requires more time, they've got the afternoon to work on it.

Why would they schedule something they would have to stay up all night to work on? That makes no sense.

exactly...

Server Maintenance UPDATE: 1:15pm Eastern(-4 GMT)
Today's maintenance has been extended. We currently do not have an estimated uptime. We will keep you updated via this notice. We appreciate your patience and understanding in this matter.

this is why they doing during the day THEIR time.

[JohnBlack]

Server maintenance is something that needs to happen. As most businesses(non-game) wouldn't schedule server maintenance for a Monday morning Turbine should avoid maintenance between Fridays and Sundays. Those three days are 'THE' gaming days for the majority of people and you're asking for, should I say justified, complaints if you schedule during those times. A server going down unexpectedly or a server on the brink of going down is naturally something different.

Years back I've been the little guy doing server maintenance while everyone was sleeping so I do feel for anyone that has to do maintenance outside of normal working hours. Personally I'd like to see the servers up every Friday night but if they're not it's not a big deal for me, we play too much anyway .

[Sapience]

.. it might just be that the Turbine devs schedule their server maintenance to take place daytime hours... you know, when they're awake.

6AM-2PM Eastern is morning where Turbine offices are. If something goes wrong or requires more time, they've got the afternoon to work on it.

Why would they schedule something they would have to stay up all night to work on? That makes no sense.

This is pretty accurate. You also have to take into account that many of our systems (hardware and other specific components) rely on third party vendors and partners. Doing maintenance during their normal working hours dramatically increases their support capabilities in the event that something does not go as planned.

It is also, as others have mentioned, the time of day when our server populations tend to be at their lowest. Thus, we impact the smallest number of players.

[BakaNiNaru]

Why would they schedule something they would have to stay up all night to work on? That makes no sense.

It does make perfect sense actually. Many businesses and services schedule things overnight and off-hours such as to have less impact on the customers, increasing customer satisfaction.

Most retail environments do much of the rearranging, restocking, etc. during off hours (sometimes overnight depending on the staffing and/or size of the task involved). Especially in the case of high-traffic areas, most retailers are not going to tear up an area while lots of people are walking over things over and over.

Some road construction with lane closures they pull out big stadium-type lights and work at night when there is less impact on the traffic (when traffic can flow through a single lane with little slow-down) and during the day reopen all of the lanes of traffic. Though, in this example (with no personal knowledge of the inner workings), it is likely that the workers do make and cost more for such an undertaking.

[Griffy]

It does make perfect sense actually. Many businesses and services schedule things overnight and off-hours such as to have less impact on the customers, increasing customer satisfaction.

Most retail environments do much of the rearranging, restocking, etc. during off hours (sometimes overnight depending on the staffing and/or size of the task involved). Especially in the case of high-traffic areas, most retailers are not going to tear up an area while lots of people are walking over things over and over.

Some road construction with lane closures they pull out big stadium-type lights and work at night when there is less impact on the traffic (when traffic can flow through a single lane with little slow-down) and during the day reopen all of the lanes of traffic. Though, in this example (with no personal knowledge of the inner workings), it is likely that the workers do make and cost more for such an undertaking.

Yeah, I've been in a couple large stores when they're doing the restocking at 11pm, (just to ask for boxes before they get crushed at 12-1am.) It does make since, sense those stores are beyond busy during the day.

But oh my gosh... No! to nighttime destruction hours!
On my way to NY. I drove through some state that had late night construction, and was going the posted construction speed, and probably much slower, grasping the steering wheel just about paralyzed... just mentally going... "barrel... don't hit it.. wall, wall, wall, move over a little, oh crud, barrel... don't hit it... wall, wall, wall, wall....please be a barrel and not a worker... don't hit it..." The glaring semi truck's lights behind me for multiple miles didn't help.
That totally spazzed me out. Fortunately for me, we were taking turns driving, so I didn't have to drive the whole thing (not positive, Pennsylvania Turnpike?), but gads... I'm thankful that where I am, they start their Destruction hours during the early morning, when I'm sleeping. (except when they do construction on our road, and I'm sleeping, rofl. Good set of earplugs fixes that.)

I'd rather Turbine did server maintenance in the morning (preferrably much earlier, but they probably aren't morning people any more than I am), and not late at EST night, when I have the most time available to play. (as unfortunate as it is for my aussie buddies. /huggles!) Sleepy techs spill their coffees. Techs hyped up on Mt. Dew are well... hyped up. Non-morning people just take a little longer to get to a mentally functioning point. (No wonder maintenance gets extended sometimes. heehee) But they get it done, when a good chunk of us are still in our PJs.

[Khafar]

It does make perfect sense actually. Many businesses and services schedule things overnight and off-hours such as to have less impact on the customers, increasing customer satisfaction.

OK, but for this particular business, "off hours" is "morning". There are still large numbers of players on at 2AM EST, and their chances of getting many developers to be up for operations at 4AM are close to nil (although if they were able to do it at midnight, I'll bet they'd have plenty of devs still awake ).

I'm a developer, and if my job started demanding that I be "on duty" at 4AM on any sort of regular basis, I'd find a different job. Seriously. It's bad enough that I have to do a phone call with India once a month or so at 7AM... hard for me to get more than a handful of brain cells firing at that time of day since I usually go to bed after 2AM. 4AM? Forget it. And I'm quite certain I'm a very long way from alone in that point of view. By starting at 6-7AM, they're likely to have some key developers in the office if things are going wrong. Maybe not at 7AM, but in time to help solve the problem before they're supposed to be done around noon.

Khafar

[CandiceAurora]

As an Australian, I can understand your concern, but to be honest I've never really had any issues with them doing it in Australian Prime. The reality is (as has already been said), we support the lowest common denominator - we have the smallest population, and thus the least amount of folks will be affected by the downtime. Other than that, the ability to do maintenance in the morning gives them the rest of the day to fix the things that could and sometimes will go wrong in what seems to be a routine thing.

In regards to the idea of there being so much maintenance at the moment falling into Australian hours, people need to be understanding to the fact that there is a rather major switch coming for the Turbine team. The servers need to be ready for a huge influx of people downloading the game, downloading the patch, creating accounts, etc. I'd much rather they did multiple downtimes now, than have the game go offline for twenty-four hours, because the servers have exploded, the hamsters have died, and now Turbine has a court case for animal cruelty (hey, those hamsters deserved better).

Generally they only do maintenance once a month or so, and I'm sure we can live without LoTRO for one night out of every month. Go torture your neighbors, or your children - heck go get drunk like the real Aussies do.

[Amrumir]

It does make perfect sense actually.

No it doesn't.

It's amazing to me that you're arguing this point immediately after Sapience explained exactly why they take servers offline during U.S. daytime hours.

[Thesrion]

I'm playing from Aus and was a bit bummed that I couldn't play tonight, but as has been posted, that's what works best for Turbine.

Btw, what server do you find most Aussies play on? I hear Elendilmir is a bit of an unofficial Aus server, but then again, Elendilmir is huge, so I'm sure it's the unofficial server of everything.

Look for the Kin Nemisis on Silverload, we are generally a NZ/AUS kin looking to start doing the 12 man raids soon