You are asking for more trouble when many of your player base cannot even launch your patcher, no? Note I can play the game but many of the players would not be technical enough to change their DNS settings at a guess... As of today google DNS is still reporting many subdomains such as eqlplogin1.everquest.com incorrectly and can switch between the deleted ip and the right ip.
If people can't launch the patcher, then they can't get in to the game anyway. What's the harm in proceeding with the patch? When the DNS issue is fully resolved, people will get patched up and log in. The only difference this time is that they may not be able to do it immediately after the servers are unlocked. What's the big deal?
The patcher works by connecting to multiple content servers, if some of them are not working very well, you will not be able to patch, and you can always use eqgame patchme if you can still connect via that method.
Or you get in the situation where zone server ips are pointing to the deleted domain address, and people cant zone to the new zones.
So let me get this straight, you would rather them patch a game when it would cause everyone in the patch window to not to be able to log in instead of just the people who where not having DNS issues still?
Read what I said, you release a new zone, and your friends / guild mates cannot log in, if they can they cant enter the new zone due to a dodgy dns entry, so cant join you anyhow. Its a bad show to release content when everyone cannot enjoy it.
I Wonder if the average whiner could handle half of the complains they throw out everytime they do a mistake. I also Wonder how many mistakes would they make if they were in charge of several thousand employees, covering a dozens of games, PC and console alike... SoE did a mistake. they apologized, fixes were posted within the hour ( and it's quite an easy fix for the computer world), there's a double XP comming up. There's nothing SoE can do right now to speed thing up as the problem now reside within ISP not updating their DNS fast enough. There's no reason whatsoever to delay Argin-hiz patch. There's already servers complaining about bottleneck on the partisan chain along with KS'ing and training group for the new AC augs... it's also the only new zone you'll have until the next expansion. My guild have a 67-year old grandmother who can't figure how the heck you use a push-to-talk key on TS yet, we managed to guide her trough the DNS fix. If she can do it, everyone can do it.
I am still confused on why it is better to have downtime when everyone can log on versus when some people can't log on anyway. To me it makes more sense to limit downtime for people who where experiencing issues because of the domain lapse.
It seems to be a culture difference, I work in IT and deliver content to the workforce, and customers, If I delivered something that would not be accessible to all for any reason, I would lose my job. If your guild hasn't had problems logging in, I can see where you think you wont have a problem, but when others have had problems, you would see it from a different point of view. For example if I edited the progress site that Beimeith runs now (I Wont). to be only accessible by a demographic say Spanish people, how would people feel on this? If it was a proper site, that is a commerce site I would and I worked for him I would be sacked pretty much straight away.
Some people have to jump into new content the minute the servers come up after the patch. Run thru it as fast as humanly possible. Then immediately complain about how little content there was, how easy it was, etc. If these people 'leave you behind' I'm not sure I'd call them friends if they refuse to do what they now consider old content with you..
I am one of those technical lacking indivduals. On opening night of a new raid no less. I was freaking out! Thankfully someone in my guild on ventrillo talk me through what I needed to do step by step to be able to log in to EQ.
