Seriously. Just an idea I had - you have our contact phone numbers. A text could be sent when servers come up. Not just today but whenever servers are down for extended periods. Just throwing out an idea to think about.
Yup, this. People that don't want it can opt out. AT the very least they could email us! I have alerts on my emails as well, they are just as good as a text these days.
Services provide this for about 2 cents (US) per SMS message. So if there are 50,000 people who want a text message, it would cost around US$1,000. That's for one text. Also, you may have to buy a toll free number. And that is texting only USA phones.
Another way to look at that is this: I pay them about $30 a month for 2 subs. A 2 penny text on patch day would take about 0.07% of that. On bad months like this just a bit more.
They have a twitter account (several actually) and you can get updates if they decided to tweet about servers being back up. That would be the more logical option. It reduces the security risk of having your phone # tied to your account. It's completely optional on the user end. It can go out to every player with a single tweet. No need for txt messages and the like. I used to set up a twitter account for the sole purpose of getting a notification when PAX tickets went on sale.
Actually due to regulations in several countries, it would have to be an opt in dealio not an opt out. I'd totally report them if they started texting me, text messaging is obnoxious. Subscribe to their twitter feed or someshit
Which brings us right back around to the key issue, NO INFORMATION GIVEN OUT, not even a "WE are still trying to identify the program, we will give you an update in X hours."
Lose the tin hat already. If you dont think they know what you had for dinner, and probably how big of a dump you took earlier today already, where have you been? Its life in the 21st century, get used to it.
I agree with you that for the first few hours information was lacking. However, now: https://forums.daybreakgames.com/eq/index.php?threads/current-downtime-issues.265037/#post-3895244
Chill out man! Apparently you didn't see the earlier forum post and don't get the joke, so I will ignore your snarky comment and hope that those who do get it will get a laugh or at least a smile from it.
I thought having my phone number tied to my account was added security. Isnt that what 2-step verification is for?
Bingo. The proposed solution does nothing to resolve this problem. It just adds costs when there is twitter, the server status page, these forums, and discord already giving out no information.
