Why was the decision taken to start patch windows at 6am PST? EQ is a 24x7 service and maintenance is always going to impact someone, but why is scheduled during primetime playing? A normal day looks something like: 11:00 PST (7pm GMT) - European primtime raids 16:00 PST - East cost US primetime raids 19:00 PST - Pacific primetime raids Assuming pacific guilds finish around 11pm, thats 12 hours before the european primetime starts again. It doenst make much sence to me when you have 12 hours available to plan a 6 hour patch window that runs 1 hour into prime playing time again with the inevitable extensions. I apprechiate there are a handful of Australia guilds, but they are the lowest population, if the eu population was lowest it would make sense to patch during the eu play times.
This has been discussed so many times. 6 am PST for me is my "primetime" it's 9 am where I am EST. "Primetime" for some isn't for others and vice-versa. A world-wide game is going to have these issues. Some suggestions I have heard are things like... Every month rotate the start of patch time, maybe stagger the start times every month 6 hours and rotate through the months. Sure for the devs (PST) there will be some middle of their night hours to start but they get paid, and I'm sure a couple months a year someone could come in during the midnight hours for them and start the patch etc. Another idea is to have a poll on these forums to see what the majority of people prefer for the times, but that involves customer service and trying to make most happy. But regardless there will be unhappy people whatever times the patch starts. So open up the stream launchpad and search your libraries for patch day.
When ever they patch is going to be bad for someone, I can live with 6am PST patches, I prefered it when they started at 4am but thats the way the cookie crumbles. Currently they run from 2pm - 8pm my time, to late for raiding but an extra night off once a month isn't so bad.
They need a developer on hand just in case something is wrong with the patch. They live in California so ya, they are up early for when the patch starts.
Well, as long as they continue, perhaps more often, move the start times around so that no one time zone is unduly affected any more than others that would be fine. Today's patch is clearly in preparation for anniversary tasks unless you want to see PoK filled with anniversary placeholders all year, this should be expected. Like every time anniversary rolls around. Interested to see the patch notes though. - Coag
Why is any of this a thing at all? Recently returning after around 10 years, i can't recall the servers being brought down for any patch in the 11 years i played EQ. The single only time i remember servers coming down was after the luclin release when tweety birds were going mad in firiona via as that massive change to the game actually required it. In a game that i'm paying you for play time i'm curious if any of this lost play time will be reimbursed.
Your memory is faulty. Servers have come down for expacs for as long as I can remember, having played this game since late beta. Insert 'Prevegen' joke here. - Coag
Well, every 3rd Wed for the last many years the servers are brought down for maintenance and then they are brought down again to fix that, every expansion release the servers are brought down and then a few days after that they are brought down again to fix that, if the hamster hic ups the servers are brought down.... As it's usually only a day which is worth about 50 cents you won't see a refund. Better luck getting your money back on a mis made starbucks.
The idea that people come in to work and there is staff support during Pacific time business hours before the patch is pushed is a good idea. Middle of the night Pacific time, not so much.
Pacific time runs on their own schedule in general compared to many companies I work. I mean its not uncommon for me to receive up to date emails between 11PM and 2AM local. Shockingly, most of my company works on Indian Standard time and expects me to answer in the middle of the night. Pacific time? Usually seen as being very rigid compared to the rest of the world in my experience. Great to see Verant/Sony/Darkpaw... I know I am missing one or two completing this schedule as it is. - Coag
You can please all the people some of the time and some of the people all the time but you can't please all the people all the time.
I don't know the specifics of what it takes for DPG to do maintenance or deploy updates, but I do know how that stuff goes in general. Number one, it's not guaranteed to go well, and number two, this has to be done by people, so you have to work with their limitations. Any time you deploy something, even if doing it at a convenient time, the first thing you experience is the feeling that the system is up and working, and that what you are about to do might break it. If you haven't had that gut-wrenching feeling of deploying something and suddenly everything doesn't work, then you don't understand how this works. With that in mind, is it best to tackle that kind of situation at a time when you would normally be awake? Or do you think it's better to be functioning on a couple hours of sleep and off of your normal consciousness schedule? While they *could* do this stuff outside of all of the regional raiding windows, it would be more difficult to do so. In the end this only affects the Euro raiding times, which is unfortunate, but not unexpected for a company operating in PST. And I just need to add one thing. Anybody who thinks EQ didn't have downtime in the old days clearly never took a sick day and then try to login to find out "darnit it's patch day again!"
I lived overseas when Everquest was in its prime. I assure you, there were many days it was down for patching when I wanted to play.
6 AM PST: Hit the Enter key to launch patch scripts. 6:05 AM PST: Jump into the DPG van. 6:10 AM PST: Hit the drive-thru window at McD. 6:20 AM PST: Hit the beach. Surf's up! 11:20 AM PST: Check phone notifications to see if patch script has run OK. 11:30 AM PST: Jump into the DPG van. 11:40 AM PST: Hit the drive-thru window at McD. 11:50 AM PST: Hit the Enter key to launch server up scripts. 11:59 AM PST: If something went wrong, then rinse and repeat all steps, except change McD to Popeye's.
You don't have a very good memory then because they have been regularly patching since the beginning and they did it more frequently in the past, sometimes several times a month. If the servers are down for an extended amount of time (several days) then you might see some compensation but they don't give compensation for regular patches. Many MMO's bring their servers down for patches, this is a normal process.
