Last patch just a few days ago ran about 6 hours, now another patch that will probably last just as long at least. All during a week that I had some free time to log in...when will I actually get to play?
I mean that's still 156 hours to 'play' during your week. Not ideal, but 12 hours out of an entire week is a pretty small amount of time. Or they could leave broken things in the game and have people continuously get pissed off about them. I mean they need to have some time to fix things that are not working properly. Sooner rather than later works a lot better for the entire playerbase tbh.
This is getting absurd absolutely absurd to how many times you guys bring these damn servers down. I am spending over $100 a month on my accounts to get downtime every time I am off. what is the purpose of spending that kind of money on a game when I I am unable to play it half the time because of the devs screwing around with the content.
I totally understand they need to fix things, but try to get it together and knock out as much as possible at once, or at least give players more than 24 hours notice for "scheduled downtime". Posting last night at 8pm (probably pst at that) is crap for notifying players.
We haven't even had our monthly 6-8 (12-14) hour patch day yet. That's tomorrow or next Wednesday? Merry Christmas!
Ahh all the baseless vitriol. Maybe become game designers, then get hired by a company that maintains legacy code in their game before you complain about needed downtime. Downtime in EQ is necessary, it is the only way to patch this particular game and it has been this way since it was created. What surprises me are all the everquest "veterans" that complain like this is something new, or that it is somehow DB's fault when they took over. Everquest is a legacy game that takes way more time and effort to update than modern games. That'snot about to change and nor is it a new development. People complaining about scheduled patches, and this is a regularly scheduled patch, are being ridiculous. hotfixes are needed and happen, not every bug can be caught on test server, especially when most of the people that log into the test server couldn't care less about actual testing and feed back, they only care about seeing the new expansion and having a jump on the content which is the exact opposite of what the test server is for. Before some genius suggests that they can drop the new expansion further from the regular patch days, stop and think why they do that. So that if there are fixes that aren't necessarily so important that they need to be hotfixed that or the next day, they can be patched in in a timely manner other wise the forums would just be alight with the same people raging that they have to wait for fixes.. Its a damned if they do and damned if they don't situation for DB.
The yearly expansion was only one week ago, games always go down more often when a new expansion is released.
i guess its more so timing; most other game companies would schedule their downtime in the middle of the night or something so that by the time the day started for most people, the game is back up. i know Blizzard for example, typically does maintenance stuff around 5am PST. the downtime isn't particularly a problem, it's more so the timing and frequency. 3 extended downtime in the past 2 wees, and all of them during pretty popular raiding days, is really frustrating for the customer base.
Timing? The world doesn't revolve around your time zone. They patch to your prefered times and other time zones loses play time. You use blizzard as an example. you can not compare blizzard to eq as they can and do have an automated patch process. The server rarely even needs to be taken down to patch. This allows them to patch a lot faster and implement hotfixes a lot faster. Comparing EQ which does not have an easy method of patching, nor will it ever due to the costs associated with changing the game to accommodate this, to Blizzards WoW which has a much more modern database and graphics engine that can and is easily patched. In a nutshell EQ manually patches the servers which is very time consuming, where games like WoW probably have the patch already installed on the server days if not weeks before they deploy it due to its handy automation. To deploy it the essentially hit a button turning the new code on The real issue is how they have to patch, and how time consuming it is. this probably wont ever change to be automated, it would cost to much.
12 hours? That's a great expansion release IMO. Well done, DBG! You obviously either weren't around or don't recall the Shadows of Luclin release. That week, EQ was down more than it was up.
Hate to break it to you cupcake but they DO schedule downtime when it is least likely to put out the most active players. You just aren't on the same schedule as "most" active players. So yeah, they can do it now and a few can whine, or they can do it another time and more can, all that changes is the names assigned to the tears for the patch. If you don't find it acceptable, move on. Or as suggested above, get the job and do it better.
I understand the need for patches. I only wish they would spread them more evenly worldwide. This is the second evening for me this week. The only time i have available. Most players live in america i guess but europe and the rest of the world also still have a lot of active players.
its the time they would work so no over time or change of schedule, but i too would like to say please get it working right this time and let us play for a few days and if its going tome down please make it so even group players can do current content without having to bribe raid tanks to help them
I guess you weren't around when Luclin went live and we had patches every day for at least a week. Back then the servers were also patched every week! I for 1 would rather they fixed broken content before they go on vacation so those who have breaks over the Christmas and New Year period can play! This comes from a UK player who once again is missing raids tonight (server down 5pm - 10pm), while it is frustrating as we still have TBL raids we haven't beaten, for the good of the game things need to be fixed before Daybreak go on vacation.
Okay so maybe some of you defenders of DB can have a reason why they can't update server status etc. It shows servers are up, but still all locked. I have suggested previously that maybe they can have a sms notification that players could subscribe to, that would send notifications to keep the player base better informed but I suppose that would be too expensive and the data mining they can gain from it wouldn't be worth it right? I can hear it now..."legacy games do not support sms notification unless you still have a nokia."
I'm at work. Why would I want to be taunted by Daybreak with a text that my beloved game is ready for me? Seems cruel.
The question of better, and more timely, notifications about server status is a very old one. It has gotten better at times and is an area that could still use lots of improvement. The SMS thing doesn't interest me at all, though I can see where some folks would like it.
