maintenance, why so much

Ah yes. More QQ and impatience from people who have clearly never subscribed to an MMO, especially an MMO that graphically is far superior to any other ever implemented. The game itself is hardware intensive and also sees (although you might not think it) a large amount of traffic and as such is inevitably doomed to experience gigantic road blocks. Get used to it. The game has been live less than 6 months and already there are people willing to give up all hope and unsubscribe. I say farewell and good riddance. I would hate to run end game content with those types of people because if they're so willing to get bent out of shape over server downtime in a new game experiencing growing pains, They'd be worthless, impatient pains in the *** when it comes to the difficult content that REQUIRES patience.

Yes, the downtime is quite inconvenient but after playing this game and seeing the attention to detail the devs at Bioware have committed to not only in questing but the environments as well, it's no surprise that they have constantly experienced periods where they are required to shut down servers in order to address bugs or exploits in order to improve the overall gaming experience.

Downtime is to be expected. If you can't handle that hard truth, get off the servers and go back to Call of Duty or whatever flavor of the month, half-assed game you play that caters to your impatience and lack of faith. We don't need you here anyway.

To be honest, I'm a little pissed off. I'm a nocturnal gamer, and so far I haven't been able to play for a total of 12 hours within the past 3 days (including today, I didn't get the chance to log in last night).

And this is JUST after I found out about the Legacy Promotion. So I have approx. 3 days to level my character from 24 to 50. I even have a stack of 15 energy drinks in my fridge just for the occasion. And I'm not doing this just because I want to get game time, I want to do this so I can prove to myself I can commit to something and get it done even if I start to lose interest while doing so. I've never gotten to max level in ANY MMO, and I wanted to make SWTOR the first. Not only that, but I wanted to power-level through it and live through the story of my slave-turned-Sith-Master in an unforgettable span of 72 non-stop hours.

Yeah, I probably won't get to level 50, and yeah, I'll probably pass out at some point and lose some game time, but I wanted to have a shot at it if I tried hard enough. Now, it almost seems as if you're trying to keep me and anyone else striving for the goal YOU'VE set for us.

Do I feel entitled? I guess I do a bit, but maybe that's because I'm paying monthly for a subscription, and I don't have that much extra cash to throw around. And the first opportunity I've ever gotten to earn something that actually holds monetary and sentimental value to me, now seems like it's stacking the odds against me.

I do enjoy this game, I really do. I just don't understand why there are these completely unexpected 5, 6, or even 7 hour maintenance blocks when before you could update without having to shut down ANY server. I feel a little jipped, and I know I'll get over it, but for tonight, Bioware, you're sleeping out on the couch.

OK I know another patch is needed yet again! But im just glad I didnt get a subscription for a year instead I bought some prepay and now I'm so glad I did. Big fan of Sw but this game is lame too many repetative quests and what is it with the Social points thats so lame scrap it. Im off back to WoW

having recently went through a training class entailing proper software development life cycle, i have to say I agree with the OP. bioware is not following proper practices

granted, we got a free day for unplanned maintenance. wheres my free day for today then. i live in the rim of fire and already can't play 1/7 days due to my hectic work schedule. there were 2 other patches this week. so thats 4/7 days i can play.

any changes being made should be done through a test environment. and when the change or patch is ready for deployment, it shouldn't take 4 hours to perform. on top of that... unless it is game or community breaking, do it once a month at a very minimum.

something tells me the way they are updating the game would make most people familiar with change management cringe.

I've been playing persistant-type games since 1991 and this is the worst maintenance impact i've ever seen. totally agree with OP. 100%.

If your tired of the downtime then I think it's time to organize a 'strike' to let BW know that they can't keep doing this. Instead of just ranting about it. I say we unsubscribe for a week. BW won't actually lose anything if you decide resubscribe. But, just seeing the number of people all hitting the button in a relatively short amount of time is something that might actually catch thier attention.

As for myself. I'm unsubscribing after this post is put up.

Cute job pidgeonholing the negativity in an easily ignored thread. Well trolled, BW.

I realize none of y'all have ever made an online game and you're grossly underprepared, but shouldn't you be LEARNING by now? Yes, you didn't expect this many players. Yes, you don't have the staff necessary to support it... But really?

You've got revenue. You can afford a team. You can afford QA. When we're on the fix to the patch to the update to the hotfix to the patch to the fix to the patch that was originally 1.2 but mostly tabled... What reaction do you expect?

I'm actually impressed by your optimism. I mean, it takes guts to basically say, "There will be a 4-48 hour maintenance that's perfectly natural" when it's basically "13th time is a charm... maybe. We have no idea what's wrong and we're throwing random things at it in hopes they help".

For a 1.2 patch that had no major features, limited non-cosmetic content (a "plague", a world boss, and some dozen new enemies), you've managed to bug every major system of the game. That's actually a dramatic achievement.

Please, spend the money we throw at you toward actually improving the game, not supporting Bioware's numerous recent failures. Many of us have already DONE the broken, ineptly managed in Austin bastardization of a Star Wars MMO. This one's got enough promise. Why try so hard to screw it up. Save these sorts of debacles for major changes. Don't waste intellectual capital on such a minor update.

This, so very this.

If there is a blatant exploit that needs fixing ASAP, then you can bring down the servers outside normal maintenance hours, but only for urgent exploit fixes (like money duping etc). You do not bring the servers down outside of weekly maintenance to fix sound/graphics bugs etc.

And, 4 hours every time? Really?

how come every time ( and i mean everytime) we have a patch, 2 days later we have another 4-8 hours down time to correct something ?

I agree here, shunning aside the fact that there has been 4 maintenance downtime in a week, maybe there should be a consideration to asia pacific servers for a seperate maintenance time?

I'm pretty irritated - just got the kids to bed, wife is out w/ friends and i can play ... and w t f ? server shutdown in 10mins message. holy $h**! I normally don't QQ about things, but this same time shut down is just pissing me off. Its always 9pm where I am when they shut things down *gawd*

I've been lucky to avoid most of BW's problems game-wise, but GW2 is around the corner and if things keep screwing up like this, tons of subs are gonna poof! my sub is up at the end of the month and all these constant inconveniences are starting to add up ... kinda reminds me of nexon.

Bottom line is:
DONT RELEASE NEW CONTENT W/O TESTING AND DEBUGGING IT! AND BEFORE YOU RELEASE NEW CONTENT, FIX THE DAMN GAME IN ITS CURRENT STATE! TO ALL THE PEOPLE WHO SAY THAT THEY'RE HAPPY THAT BW IS IMPLEMENTING FIXES, YOU'RE JUST THE SHEEP THEY WANT! BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA! IF THEY HAD JUST DONE IT RIGHT THE FIRST TIME, WE WOULD NOT EVEN HAVE TO PATCH THINGS.