Server Maintenance / Server Down Time Frames

Not precisely how it goes, but being someone who is fluent in alien, if you get someone who wrote something down in a particular dialect of alien, and forgot to also include comments as to why they did that, then yes it becomes the phone book analogy.

Then you remove that particular dialect of alien, seeing no point to it, putting in standard alien, hitting test play, and then it becomes blindingly obvious why they used the dialect. So then you put back in the dialect, and it no longer works because you converted everything to standard. Then you have to go back and teach the computer how to accept that dialect again.

This of course does not help you solve your current problem, it only resets everything to how it was prior to you trying to write additional alien to the machine. You still have to write the additional alien, but it will not accept your standard version of alien because you taught it to accept the dialect over standard when it comes to the matters the dialect references.

This presents a new problem because you need to modify that particular set of references that run only on the dialect and not standard, and all attempts to get it to accept standard end up in failure.

So the issue they are more than likely dealing with right now is fast coding a "fast translator" from standard alien to sub dialect alien so that what was written in standard can be understood by the dialect portion and accepted readily without the machine acting like an old Touch and Tell from the 80's ---

:edit: Not see and say, touch and tell..... although at this point pulling the string might be kind of comical too.

"Look again"; "try again", "try again"; "look again"..... "bzzzzzzzt".

Of course being that I deal in alien; sub alien; and extra dimensional recognition patterns on a daily basis, I could probably help, but they presently have no "over-the-shoulder" positions available.

--- Man I needed my errands and work to last longer.... LOL.

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You may not know or don't remember that formerly nothing was said during the times of patches. DBG Strives to keep us informed!

It's time to get in touch with the RL you speak of and know that "ESTIMATED DOWN TIME" means they feel it to be the case but can't know till they get into the code; Hence the word ESTIMATED.

They do care about, being honest, the game, the players, all of it. Having an Estimate run longer is hardly lying or being other than honest. I write not to be mean or be disrespectful of your view but to give you some food for thought.

Hamsters typically live 3 years max (depending on the kid who owns it.)
The EQ Hamster has been living an epic life...

I should have gone to Happy Hour..

Not sure why us TLP folks have to suffer too.

It builds character! (quoting my sixth grade teacher)

You may not know or don't remember that formerly nothing was said during the times of patches. DBG Strives to keep us informed!

It's time to get in touch with the RL you speak of and know that "ESTIMATED DOWN TIME" means they feel it to be the case but can't know till they get into the code; Hence the word ESTIMATED.

They do care about, being honest, the game, the players, all of it. Having an Estimate run longer is hardly lying or being other than honest. I write not to be mean or be disrespectful of your view but to give you some food for thought.[/quote]

Really?? No news for a long time
I worked in tech customer service. Any outage/problem and there were updates every 5 minutes or so - on all social media channels, websites, by email at least every hour for longer problems etc. And then a comprehensive explanation of the problem, what was done to fix and and what is being done to stop it happening again posted within 24 hours. Why do we expect any less? Many have taken hard-earned vacation time to use the new expansion having just laid out hundreds of dollars/pounds/euros for the service.

Really?? No news for a long time
I worked in tech customer service. Any outage/problem and there were updates every 5 minutes or so - on all social media channels, websites, by email at least every hour for longer problems etc. And then a comprehensive explanation of the problem, what was done to fix and and what is being done to stop it happening again posted within 24 hours. Why do we expect any less? Many have taken hard-earned vacation time to use the new expansion having just laid out hundreds of dollars/pounds/euros for the service.[/quote]

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I feel your anguish and am sorry for your loss of some hours of vacation time. If you are not seeing the Constant stream of news updates you should look in STAFF TRACKER in the top section of the forums.

Can tell a lot of people in this thread haven't actually been playing EQ for as long as they claim. The downtimes in the last 15 years have been nothing compared to what some of them were in the first 5 years, especially after the launch of an expansion.