Today's GU is a bit delayed (16-JAN-2014)

You must have a real job.

Only at SOE have they never heard of on-call, graveyard duty, or remote access.

They probably get paid garbage salaries though, so there is that. Isn't Higby supposed to be a lead, and yet he bragged about buying a 12 year old used Porsche on twitter, that likely cost less than an economy level Civic? I bet he even chipped in for the oil change, and air filter. I bet it was a 944, or a 911 with a broken turbo, lol. Plebs.

I hope you don't shower only when 'sudden chances' come along during downtimes

I believe the point is that this has happened with -every- patch since about GU12, and has frequently rolled right up until the end of our prime-time, if not all the way through the following day's prime time too. Given that we already stomach loss of three hours of downtime such that it can be when US players (-a minority in the game-) are least affected, extensions really do hit us significantly harder.

I'm pretty sure every EU player knows a good few people who've left simply because they want a game they can play to de-stress after work, and frequently getting in to discover the servers are down for the 6th hour of a 2 hour down time is beyond disheartening.

I don't think any of us would mind if US players also got something from it, but at the same time, I don't think that's becoming anywhere near as necessary as it is to mitigate the constant feeling of being the bastard child of a ****** EU players are forced to live with. Sorry :/

Okey. For peace on the world.

We Demand Three 6 hours boost + 100% for everybody.

meanwhile in SOE headquarters

Any update on the update? Been over two hours since this post. Guess something else went wrong?

So they are adding in free roaming dinosaurs?!

VS maxes have already been implemented.

Hmm.

I smell some double XP.

Those are high-heeled crabs! YOU'LL NEVER BE A SCIENCEMASTER IF YOU CANNOT TELL THEM APART!
I recommend a crash course in Biologings, courtesy of Sciencemaster (and tenured bear) Zoran:

Does double XP mean they have to bring down the servers 1 hour to activate it?

Do people still live in Europe?

Yeah, that's why bars are only open from 9am-5pm and you can't get breakfast on your way to work...

Given the infrequency of patches, and the ineptitude with which they are applied, I do not think it's unreasonable to ask the engineers to come in and do a 3am-12pm shift even once as a show of good faith to customers. Even the IT engineers at my -school- used to do this on days where they needed to apply updates... I've never worked at a company who didn't have engineers doing the same, or at least the intellect to outsource so as not to disrupt their regular shifts, and yet every company I've worked for with an IT system was non-customer facing. Even cinemas and the Apple store pull their staff in at stupid times in order to provide the best possible service to their customers...

And that leads to why the furor about this; SOE are -not- providing a service here. What they are doing though, is taking their customer's money, and wasting their time. I intentionally worked late tonight so as not to get hit by this. Got in at ~9pm (oh look, a 13 hour day and I'm not even resentful... It's amazing what workers will do when they value their customers...) and the servers are -still- down. Meanwhile, since 5:30pm when I otherwise would have gotten in and been able to play, my boosts have been running down, my membership has been rolling on, both of which SOE has taken money for despite providing no service at this point.

There is nothing selfish about expecting a company to ensure they have their requisite staff and processes in place to ensure they have a few engineers happy to get up 3 hours early in order to allow several thousand people access to a service they are paying for. Moreso though, once again I point out that it isn't even about a need for their engineers to get up early, so much as to do their jobs properly without complications.

Losing two hours of early prime time isn't a huge tragedy (even if it is irritating that it only ever disadvantages the largest group of players), but losing an extra two beyond what you've been told and planned your day around, EVERY time? They're simply not doing their jobs properly, and with that in mind, there is no reason they shouldn't be expected to come in at a time where the expected several hour disruption is more convenient for their service users, until they can prove that that expectation is unfounded and they can do the job smoothly with minimum disruption.

Yeah, I'd say we're chillin but the US seems to have been doing much more chillin recently.

Yeah it's not too shabby; you can't get shot on the street by all the (blind) people carrying guns, and police offers don't kill you on a whim. You should try it out.

It seems to keep them happy enough that it doesn't incur us the huge HR costs of replacing them... With that said... 0 hours contracts are obviously a big win

I would, but from what I hear, Europeans don't get to play Planetside on patch days.

Planetside is still getting patched?

Had to, sorry! Yeah well it's a good job we've got enough tea and crumpets to survive through these testing times.

Totally off-topic remark from me, but it makes me think of this great song of the best unknown US album of the eighties:

Thank you for the input, Higby!

only to amerish though

(so I decompiled some files and found this loading screen...100% authentic)