Maintenance times unfair to West coasters.

Last I checked banks, amazon, and the like aren't persistent/interacting with other people, which adds an entirely additional level of complexity. (and even then they still sometimes go down for service)

One thing I noticed after moving from Chicago to California. Everything's an hour later. Prime time T.V. started at 7pm in Chicago. Here in the west coast, it starts at 8pm. In Chicago, everybody was rolling in to work around 9am. Here, while I still get to work at 9am, most everybody else gets in at 10am. (core hours are 10am to 5pm)

I happen to live close enough to work that I only need to get up shortly after 8 to get to work by 9. I don't know *anybody* here in California that goes to bed by Midnight. I happen to go to sleep sometime between 1 and 2. That's still almost 7 hours of sleep, which for me is plenty. And you know what? 12am downtime cuts almost 2 hours off my playtime. And I work a "9-5 job" just fine.

So get off your high horse.

Edit: And I'm pretty sure the people starting the update/maintenance are on what I tend to call "the night shift". And the people that bring it up 8 (or whatever) hours later are on what I tend to call "the day shift".

I wish some people who get over their delusion that the traditional 9-5 schedule is still somehow true for 90% of the working world. This isn't the 1970's where banks used to close at 4pm, customer service reps worked only until 6pm or retail stores closed at 8pm. Round the clock service or at the minimum, flex-schedule has been on the rise each and every decade. Look it up. If you walked into a job interview demanding that you only work the traditional 9-5 schedule, the HR manager would probably thank you for your time as he hires one of the many others who are willing to work a flex schedule.

If only people would bother with some actual research instead of spouting off pointless commentaries unsubstantiated by facts, just a quick look through the Bureau of Labor Statistics website would show:

Information system managers
Retail workers
Nurses
Home Care aides
Construction workers
Customer Service Representatives
Restaurant workers
Police Officers
Firefighters

This is just a *small* sampling of professions where its people often work "odd hours". In fact, pay special attention to the "work environment" section of each page and they will all show working nonstandard hours as being a fact of life. How many millions upon millions of people are employed by these professions I wonder. Want more hard numbers?

Up to 1/3 of all Americans do not work standard 9-5 hours.

Hell, just the IT workers in my area alone, the highest concentration of such in the country to the tune of 400-500k, often work schedules of 10-7, 11-8 or even go in *after* lunch. If you know someone who works at Google/Apple/HP/Cisco/IBM/Nvidia/Adobe/SanDisk/Novell/Intel/Amazon/eBay/etc, ask them if they are in the office by 8 or 9am. A hearty laugh and head shake is what you will get in return in most cases. In fact, the hours of 9-10am in the morning is often the most congested period for the Silicon Valley area freeways. If they are at work by 8 or 9, why the hell are there still so many cars on the road? Even a lot of finance folks in my area (me included) don't work the 9-5 schedule. If they worked in corporate or is in the client advisory role, good luck trying to find them at 8 or 9am. Really? All of these folks should be in bed by midnight? Do we live in a fantasy world of some sort?

Some of you may claim "oh but 10-7 or 11-8 is close enough to 9-5". Uh, no it isn't, not when SWTOR's maintenance schedule is taken into the context. It is the difference between going to bed at 11pm-midnight versus going to bed at 1 or even 2am. If one can not comprehend this point then please, by all means, exit this discussion because it is apparently way over your head.

Solution? Separate the maintenance window based on continent and push the U.S. window back to 1-2am PST. Midnight is still the tail end of the peak time for a lot of working people out west. That fact remains true despite certain east coast-centric folks detachment from reality.

Edit: Heh, got a *warning* because I guess there is someone out there (or several) who can't come to terms with their own lack of knowledge on this matter. Yep, the world is seriously just that black and white... really! Sorry but I am not going to apologize for my confrontational tone on this matter. It's not my fault that some people refuse to better themselves with knowledge before jumping into the discussion with little factual support. After a dozen or so such threads on this topic, I tire of seeing those who sticks to traditional stereotypes that is no longer of any relevance in the modern, today's world.

It wasnt nasty. Its fact. Most people are in bed by midnight to work the next morning. If you are up at 2 am you either:

1. Have no job (little kid/student, live at home with parents)

2. Have a part-time 3-day a week job and no responsibility (kid/student, live at home with parents, mooch off your spouse, etc).

3. Work at a job that requires odd hours and important like a policeman, docto, nurse, etc...

Now before you say you fall into catagory 3, consider the fact that you already admitted that you are playing an MMO and have time and energy to play between 12 and 2 am...

4. Are smart enough to avoid having an hour+ commute to work?

5. Are smart enough to have a job with a flex schedule, so can shift hours later to help ease road congestion?

My heart goes out to you - NOT!

I love the fact that PSTers tend to forget both Alaska and Hawaii who are even worse off than anybody in PST!

But hey, of course starting maintenance at a good time for those guys would of course help you! So servers down at 2am HAST... which means servers are down starting at 6am CST, 7am EST, noon GMT, 1pm CET, etc.

Yeah, somehow I don't think BW will care enough about a bunch of night owls like you to not only take their maintenance into primetime in Europe but also ruin the fun for all those students in CST and EST who would probably not be able to play SWTOR before early afternoon

Anyways, if you can't work your schedule around SWTOR, hey, I'm sure you'll find another game with a better suited maintenance schedule... *shrug*

what part of "break up the maintenance times" based on area?

So yeah, maybe west coast server downtimes should be pushed back 6 hours to make it better for the Hawaii players, and not just 2 hours. (unless they would opt to play on australian/asian servers?) and still leave European/Eastern servers alone. Heck, push European maintenance EARLIER. It's already creeping into their afternoons quite a bit.

If you are upset over 6 hours of maintenance time, you would just be furious at Blizzard. Sometimes you don't get to play for an entire 24 hours because of fixes. And then crap is usually so broken by the time they are done that they have to take it down for 6 more hours to fix the exploits that they let loose with the last patch.


Bioware does a great job with maintenance. I do agree that setting up different maintenance times would be beneficial and nicer to the playerbase, but considering the alternative, people shouldn't whine too hard.

Finally someone said it! I know 2 measly hours might not be a lot to you Eastern people who have already completely your dailies/weeklies and are fast asleep by that time, but that time sure is valuable to us west coasters.

A lot of people I know who game (and no, they are not losers, they all have high-paying jobs) play well past midnight. Nothing absurd, but till like 1-2am.

I don't even want to think how people in Hawaii timezone are getting dinged on Mondays.

Not a big deal, really. One night a week, I have to do something else? Oh darn....

Used the time this week to start a new Mass Effect file/save game to prepare for ME3

this is just funny..

West Coaster misses out on 2 hours playtime.
I know you dont care, but Euro and Australians miss out on all of the 7 hours