Server Downtime for Patch February 20, 2014 6 AM PT (3 PM CET)

Having experienced the downtime in EverQuest Next: Landmark over the past couple weeks, I would like to suggest/request that you guys here in PlanetSide 2 follow their lead. Acting corporate and impersonal is easy, but if you actively keep us posted on what's up with the update and let us know BEFORE a stated time that it is going to take longer (and more importantly, know when to throw in the towel on ETA's and say it will be done when we are done with updates on the process as it goes), I feel like the whiny children that are complaining about how horrible a company SOE is would be less of a nuisance. Those of us with a little bit of maturity would overpower them greatly with logic, patience, and understanding.

Knowing it was patch day, I decided to play some World Of Warcraft instead of Planetside. After a day of realizing why I stopped playing I look to my watch and see that Maintenance should have ended. So I charge head on and start downloading the new patch, rock some hearthstone whilst it downloads. Start up the game roaring to go (though a little disappointed with the lack of the new sniper features). Servers are unavailable. Come to the forums, downtime is extended by 2 hours. I then had nothing to do ponder why I get unhappy when this happens week after week. I came to the conclusion, perhaps I have been pampered to much by games like WoW, with its appropriately timed downtime (that often finished long before the ETA). The constant delays would not be a problem if they did region based patching. Now I know in another thread, Luperza said that patching at times convenient to countries other than the US is a major inconvenience to the team. To that I had only one response, a response that was drilled into me by years or work in the customer service and retail industries. 'The customer comes before the staff'. Given the frequency of mishaps since December I am left asking my self.... Is this game (in its current state) worth the £35 Alpha Squad, £200+ worth of station cash and the monthly £9 subscription I have maintained since December 2012. Under current circumstances the answer is no. If they could just sort things out, hire better staff (not aimed at Luperza and the other CS reps, they are fine) ect... maybe it is. Next time there is an extended downtime, or the server you play on crashes, ask yourself the same question... Is it worth it? And please don't comment with the 'You don't have to pay it's free' line. Some people like to support a game they love. And if you do play for free, then good for you, the lack of support for the game is most likely why these problems exists in the first place.

Stop paying them. What' s the problem?

I'm going to tell a short story for SOE:

Let's suppose that I bought a package from Amazon.com, to be delivered by UPS.

UPS gave an ETA of Tuesday for my package from Amazon.com to be delivered. I wait around my house on Tuesday for it to show up... and it never shows up. I could have been doing other things, but I wanted to receive this package on time, so I waited for it.

I call UPS Customer Support asking why it is not here, they say that it's "only an estimate", push back the estimate by another day, and hang up the phone.

The next day, I wait around at my house all day, excited to try out the contents of my new package.
Same thing happens.
This time, I call UPS Customer Support and they hang up immediately (similar to deleting a post).

Finally, on Thursday, my package shows up while I'm gone, left on the porch all day while I'm at work.

I know you guys at SOE have things shipped to you. How would you enjoy this experience? Would it irritate you if customer support hung up on you as you attempted to discover when your package would arrive?

Think i need a new F5 key.

Common guys if u not would love the Game itself u wouldnt be on the Forum now.
Same as me! Im also angry about that downtime, bui we will survive it

Seems like your problem is with Biolabs. Not the lattice. You are just too obtuse to realize it...

UPS provide ETAs in days, not within a hour(s) window. And I order a lot of stuff from Amazon Prime, which is meant to be 2 day shipping. A lot of my packages take longer than 2 days, i.e. their estimates are off by DAYS. In fact, I just received a call apologizing that they missed their delivery window, and it will be 6 hours late (have to be at the door to sign).

Please find a better story comparison, because I can find a lot of examples where Amazon / UPS miss windows by multiples of hours, even days, vs. SOE delivering a patch a couple of hours late.

Well I've been sitting here for almost two hours now, awaiting the servers to be unlocked.

It sure is a good thing I don't have a life, isn't it?

That's why i will never buy membership

When the repair ribbons were broken for a few weeks, and I chose to stop playing PS2, I discovered World of Tanks. What a great fun game, and yes, flanking maneuvers are not only acceptable, they are extremely important.

to those ppl that say "dont complain its free...... ", when will u come to the realization that the only reason the majority of u ppl get to play this game for free is because of ppl who give SOE their money so that they can continue to provide/host the game for all of u . if anything that gives us more of a rright to express our displeasure about things such as downtimes that are unscheduled or past their estimates < ESPECIALLY WHEN IT IS CONSISTENT.

Update on ETA?

I'd like to know what's causing the issue of the servers being still locked.
Like "During the copy of the new data, [randomeventX] caused us to reinitialize/reboot/restart the patch. Some line of code WYZ conflicted with SDF causing an unstable environment..." etc

Anything explaining us. I think that might calm down some more... impulsive personalities

Ok. It's not that I didn't realize that you have no argument and are resorting to trolling, but more that I really thing you are ignoring all rational thought and do think the infiltrator in at a disadvantage. I will ask you this. If you have a R.N. and one of your patients needs a heart transplant, would you let the nurse perform the procedure? The answer is no, you would pick the right tool for the job, in other words, yourself. The reason being is that the nurse isn't the right person for the job. If you want to go infiltrator just because you want to be super cool omgihascloaks and do not know what to do with it, or know the right situations to make it useful then you will fail. It's time to suck it up, or suck down those pills and understand that the class isn't meant to be a head up brawler, otherwise it wouldn't have a cloak. Once you improve with anything then you can start using it outside of it's original design parameters, like head up brawling in CQC, but only once you've learned the basics and have become competent with it, which is true for all things.

Need proof? Mustarde, if I spelled his name correctly, has made a video of him taking his BASR infiltrator and destroying a ton of dudes with in 20m. I can not do what he does because I am not that good with the BASR, like at all. But that isn't something that he learned to do over night. Adapt to your class, only then can you adapt your class to yourself.

While you are answering this question, I have one similar. You are not purging premium paid membership chars are you? And thanks for the 10 minute intermission. Video was great. Loved the Panda Sneeze

Got to say as a paying member I am getting really tired of this. Stop screwing over the EU people to suit your working hours. As others have pointed out who work in the customer service environment, customers come first. We are an EU server and at 7pm on a week night the servers are down. Your updates should have taken place this morning when practically no one was on.

If you really must mess us about and make us lose playing time please don't make it a weekly occurrence, I don't know why we need updates every single week.

Infiltrators are not invisible. Your point is moot.

The best part about the servers being down is reading all the complaints here in the forum...
Does SOE need to start sending out a box of tissue to all the players prior its updates?

I honestly feel like the downtime wouldn't be such an issue if it didn't seem like it happened every other day.