Christian here and I've never heard of it. Jesus rose from the dead on Easter Sunday or so believed in both USA and Australia. Easter Sunday occurs after good friday which is in March or April despite Australia wanting to lock it to a specific day like Christmas. Funny thing is...my family is originally German and still celebrates many German traditions and yet not that one. I'm not saying it doesn't exist, clearly it does, but it definitely isn't widely known. Please add the USA numbers to Australia and Britain. K? Thanks.

 

Theological aside: To my understanding the holiday of 'Ascension' is supposed to mark the day where Jesus finally ascended into Heaven weeks/months after rising from the dead on Easter, after he'd spent some time paying his apostles and other followers some surprise visits to prove he was alive (and let the apostle Thomas in particular poke at his crucifixion scars, because Doubting Thomases gonna doubt). I think it's more of a Catholic thing than a Protestant thing as far as being celebrated as a holiday goes. Probably Eastern Orthodox too, but due to their using a different liturgical calendar Ascension would fall on a different day for them than when the Catholics would celebrate it.

Edited May 25, 2017 by AscendingSky

I swear every day I have off for a holiday and actually want to play this game there is a maintenance. Seriously.....

Speaking as an American, I wouldn't expect EU companies to take into account US bank holidays when doing their necessary datacenter migrations. I wouldn't throw a tantrum like so many of the EU people are doing if EAWare was a European company and they had scheduled one of their maintenance days on, say, Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, or Columbus Day, or Presidents' Day--days which many Americans get off from work or school, but which mean NOTHING to people in the EU. I am a rational adult and would understand that an EU company would want to get their maintenance done on an EU workday during EU work hours.

If the USA would be one o my biggest markets, I'd think twice before doing something like this. Maybe that's just me

As far as why Blizzard can do their maintenance at night on EU servers, WoW is a MUCH bigger game with an active population many times larger than TOR's and therefore their servers occupy multiple datacenters in different physical locations. It sounds like this is not the case for TOR. Also, WoW is Blizzard's flagship game and they apportion money, employees, and resources towards it accordingly. EA hardly gives a crap about TOR by comparison.

 

Far as I know, EU Servers are located in Ireland. So yes, it's a different datacenter.

Well it's typical situation for USA. And I'm not surprised by reaction of our USA friends. As much as BioWare showed their unprofessional behavior people from USA showed their ability to understand others needs and sympathy. You see this things are related as employers of BioWare are USA citizen you expect something like this. Why would they care about other countries and players living there when there is USA? Does it even matter for BioWare that they have servers for other regions? I think no. And this situation is one of many other examples showing us that BioWare doesn't treat their player base equally. For them as for other USA citizens there is only USA and they don't care about other world. This thread is perfect demonstration of such behaviour. Just look at our USA friends response

Oh boy if this maintenance is extended ...

i think that communication with players is much better now since keith is game producer.

just wanted say that, as i also been one of the ones which did swear a lot about 5.0 too.

so also good things need to mentioned

Edited May 25, 2017 by tonitirola

Thanks for the transparency and letting us know whats going on. As for holiday its doe not affect me but i understand others concerns there.

Again, apologize for the inconvenience, but things ran smoothly this morning and we only needed about 75 minutes. Enjoy the 40th anniversary of Star Wars™ and any holidays you may be celebrating.

 

---Keith

 

Thank you so so so very much! Cheers.

Again, apologize for the inconvenience, but things ran smoothly this morning and we only needed about 75 minutes. Enjoy the 40th anniversary of Star Wars™ and any holidays you may be celebrating.

 

---Keith

 

Woot well done and thank you

Wow...THANK YOU Keith! Great communication...I'm in shock...

Again, apologize for the inconvenience, but things ran smoothly this morning and we only needed about 75 minutes. Enjoy the 40th anniversary of Star Wars™ and any holidays you may be celebrating.

 

---Keith

 

Thank you Keith 😊

Just speculation on my part....

 

...but I think with the data center moves and new server hardware that Keith indicated... this may enable them to do some things they have wanted to do (and players have long wanted) that prior server configurations inhibited.

 

Time will tell... and maybe we get some insight from the coming roadmap.

Just speculation on my part....

 

...but I think with the data center moves and new server hardware that Keith indicated... this may enable them to do some things they have wanted to do (and players have long wanted) that prior server configurations inhibited.

 

Time will tell... and maybe we get some insight from the coming roadmap.

 

That's what I've been secretly hoping too. Fingers crossed!

Just speculation on my part....

 

...but I think with the data center moves and new server hardware that Keith indicated... this may enable them to do some things they have wanted to do (and players have long wanted) that prior server configurations inhibited.

 

Time will tell... and maybe we get some insight from the coming roadmap.

 

I've been thinking the same thing.

Hey all,

 

I’ve noticed a lot of concern about maintenances and the impact it has on your game time. We probably should have just given you a schedule of activity for the month of May and explained what was going on. Going forward, toward the beginning of each month, Eric will provide a schedule of that month’s maintenance.

 

So, what’s been going on this past month? Essentially, we have been migrating from one Datacenter to another and upgrading the Game Server hardware and supporting software. You won't directly notice improvements in performance, but these changes dramatically help us maintain the game and improve its overall reliability. As you can imagine, it’s an enormous undertaking to move absolutely everything – all servers and related hardware, supporting hardware, network infrastructure, upgrading the operating systems, management systems and tools, and more.

 

For the most part, we’ve been able to do it without a ton of downtime, but there’s been a couple times this month where the migration didn’t go as planned. As a result, we had to extend the maintenance window. Not fun for you nor for us!

 

Typically, we have a maintenance every two weeks and usually on a Tuesday. There’s a lot of coordination required between teams, as it’s not just turning servers off/on, but making sure all services spin up properly, databases are in good shape, all server hardware is checked, supporting software is updated, and more. No excuses, just means to keep the game healthy we need to validate everything and much of the work requires players to be offline.

 

What’s happening on Thursday should be the last of the migration components, but some of these impact our game services. So, this requires us to ensure no in-game activity is happening, and shutdown the Live Game. Our sincerest apologies to everyone as we did not realize it was a holiday (our bad for not looking at the calendar). We still need to have the maintenance, but I’ve asked the team to start an hour earlier and if at all possible shorten the window. We will get SWTOR back online as fast as possible.

 

The next scheduled downtime is June 13th and that maintenance is for Game Update 5.2.2. It’s possible we may need to restart everything on June 6th to flesh out any potential issues, but we’ll let you know.

 

Thanks for understanding and again, we’ll continue to improve our communications with you.

 

---Keith

 

 

You say one time to many the word "we should" and "if".

 

Something as simple as a roadmap has taken almost 2 months to develop, unless it is going to shine and give free lightsabers to ppl i don't understand why the long deliver... This just shows poor management of your work time as well as lack of manpower.

Again, apologize for the inconvenience, but things ran smoothly this morning and we only needed about 75 minutes. Enjoy the 40th anniversary of Star Wars™ and any holidays you may be celebrating.

 

---Keith

 

I hope you bought breakfast for the team!

#MaintenanceTacos

Damn people. The game doesn't revolve around you. Just because you got inconvenienced one day out of your life doesn't justify some of the passive aggression Keith is getting.

 

We finally getting more dev communication and people are trying to run it off. Show some appreciation for once.

 

And remember, buff merc!

Edited May 25, 2017 by DenariusJay

Wow...THANK YOU Keith! Great communication...I'm in shock...

 

Has anyone heard if we are getting a special reward like the other star wars games?

You say one time to many the word "we should" and "if".

 

Something as simple as a roadmap has taken almost 2 months to develop, unless it is going to shine and give free lightsabers to ppl i don't understand why the long deliver... This just shows poor management of your work time as well as lack of manpower.

 

It's not as easy as it sounds... Keith needs to run the roadmap through multiple layers at both Bioware and EA. There are a lot of people that have to say "yay" or "nay" to it. I am convinced the Roadmap is already written out and ready to be posted by the bulk of the issue lies with the people who have to agree to the roadmap. Don't blame Keith or Bioware for that, don't tell them that they're incompetent or lack manpower as that is not where the problem lies. The permission needs to come from EA and it's not easy to get all the shareholders or people at the top onboard your project but requires debate and compromises to be made.

It's not as easy as it sounds... Keith needs to run the roadmap through multiple layers at both Bioware and EA. There are a lot of people that have to say "yay" or "nay" to it. I am convinced the Roadmap is already written out and ready to be posted by the bulk of the issue lies with the people who have to agree to the roadmap. Don't blame Keith or Bioware for that, don't tell them that they're incompetent or lack manpower as that is not where the problem lies. The permission needs to come from EA and it's not easy to get all the shareholders or people at the top onboard your project but requires debate and compromises to be made.

 

I am sure there are multiple levels of approval at corporate levels, probably including parent EA and the Lucasfilm Story Group, but I highly doubt the board of directors, let alone individual shareholders, are involved in the actual approval of a roadmap for every game EA has in their portfolio. Shareholders of pharmaceutical companies have no say in what drugs get greenlit for further development or not.

Hey all,

 

I’ve noticed a lot of concern about maintenances and the impact it has on your game time. We probably should have just given you a schedule of activity for the month of May and explained what was going on. Going forward, toward the beginning of each month, Eric will provide a schedule of that month’s maintenance.

 

So, what’s been going on this past month? Essentially, we have been migrating from one Datacenter to another and upgrading the Game Server hardware and supporting software. You won't directly notice improvements in performance, but these changes dramatically help us maintain the game and improve its overall reliability. As you can imagine, it’s an enormous undertaking to move absolutely everything – all servers and related hardware, supporting hardware, network infrastructure, upgrading the operating systems, management systems and tools, and more.

 

For the most part, we’ve been able to do it without a ton of downtime, but there’s been a couple times this month where the migration didn’t go as planned. As a result, we had to extend the maintenance window. Not fun for you nor for us!

 

Typically, we have a maintenance every two weeks and usually on a Tuesday. There’s a lot of coordination required between teams, as it’s not just turning servers off/on, but making sure all services spin up properly, databases are in good shape, all server hardware is checked, supporting software is updated, and more. No excuses, just means to keep the game healthy we need to validate everything and much of the work requires players to be offline.

 

What’s happening on Thursday should be the last of the migration components, but some of these impact our game services. So, this requires us to ensure no in-game activity is happening, and shutdown the Live Game. Our sincerest apologies to everyone as we did not realize it was a holiday (our bad for not looking at the calendar). We still need to have the maintenance, but I’ve asked the team to start an hour earlier and if at all possible shorten the window. We will get SWTOR back online as fast as possible.

 

The next scheduled downtime is June 13th and that maintenance is for Game Update 5.2.2. It’s possible we may need to restart everything on June 6th to flesh out any potential issues, but we’ll let you know.

 

Thanks for understanding and again, we’ll continue to improve our communications with you.

 

---Keith

 

Still having that stupid issue where I/ Others cannot use Launcher. Therefore for me I will have to Un-sub because that Datacenters did Not migrate the data right, but messed things up. I have never ever had these problems before, and i have been here before Beta. I's rediculous.