I don't know who you're trying to kid with this read-only forum garbage. There is absolutely no reason why you should need to turn off all posting on the forums every time you take the servers down for an unnecessarily-long maintenance, which is starting to happen with alarming frequency and decreasing lead-time.

 

I know fanboys are going to come in here and post their made-up reasons why its somehow necessary. Don't bother.

 

Every other MMO continues to allow forum posts while servers are under maintenance, unless the forums themselves are under maintenance. You always shut down forum posts shortly before the server announcements that the servers will be coming down in 15 minutes.

 

The only logical explanation for this is that they want to stifle speech and complaints on their forums. This is certainly within their rights. Its certainly within my rights to complain about it, talk about why it sucks and get them to change this absurd policy.

 

BioWare's excessive downtime is made worse by the fact that a good chunk of the time, they don't even tell us why the servers are being taken down or why the maintenance is extended. They don't even tell us after the fact. This shows that the community staff is either kept completely in the dark about the reasons, or they have a blatant disrespect for the players who pay to keep the lights on in their corporate megaplex.

 

BioWare Community Staff:

 

Stop spewing out processed corporate triple like "we're working on a response to these issues." We don't need a mess of corporate bureaucrats sitting in meetings deciding what to tell us. Act like human beings.

 

Stop shutting down the forums every time you foresee a problem. If you can't handle criticism, you're in the wrong damn business. All you're doing is giving us more things to be critical of. Not only the horrid maintenance "schedule" but also the way you try to keep us from talking about it.

 

Give real interactions. With as many community managers as you have swarming these forums, surely someone could give us the slightest glimpse of humanity without some talking head bureaucrat that no one has ever heard of coming out of his isolated corporate sanctum once a month to tell us how much he gives a crap.

 

I don't give a crap that the Vice Director of Corporate Toilet Paper gives a crap. So he really really feels bad about Ilum. I'd much rather know that someone with a voice inside the company is communicating on our behalf to people in the company who can actually enact change.

 

The stupid thing sucks. We'll do it live.

Edited January 28, 2012 by DunsparrowSolo

trying to cover up the rage from there terrible customer service and appalling decisions, if no one can post no one can complain

I think I see why they do it.

 

So people will actually go outside/sleep.

well tehy posted teh rules to teh fourms and if you not going to follow them, why are you shocked to see they close those post? seem perfectly legit to me.

 

you do not post a do not steal sign, see someone stealing and let hem go. you try to get the right poeple to stop them.

 

also did you not thing that the foum server part of their game/login server and when they reset it the fourms go as well ?

Edited January 28, 2012 by DarkCarnage

well tehy posted teh rules to teh fourms and if you not going to follow them, why are you shocked to see they close those post? seem perfectly legit to me.

 

you do not post a do not steal sign, see someone stealing and let hem go. you try to get the right poeple to stop them.

 

What are you talking about? They shut the forums down completely every time there is maintenance. Who are you blaming?

well tehy posted teh rules to teh fourms and if you not going to follow them, why are you shocked to see they close those post? seem perfectly legit to me.

 

you do not post a do not steal sign, see someone stealing and let hem go. you try to get the right poeple to stop them.

 

also did you not thing that the foum server part of their game/login server and when they reset it the fourms go as well ?

 

Did you read OP ? just checking

they reason teh fourms goes down every time there maintnace if due to it highly likley the fourm server and on teh same ahrdware as their log-in/game servers, so when one goes down, so does the other.

 

they likely got high end servers and instead giving the fourms their own ther running piggy backed off a game one, as a cost saving messure.

Judging by your reaction OP - you would have been one of many on here moaning about the downtime when it was happening.

 

That's why they removed posting priveleges.

 

/thread

they reason teh fourms goes down every time there maintnace if due to it highly likley the fourm server and on teh same ahrdware as their log-in/game servers, so when one goes down, so does the other.

 

they likely got high end servers and instead giving the fourms their own ther running piggy backed off a game one, as a cost saving messure.

 

The forums are servers are not on the same hardware. In fact, the servers are not on the same hardware with each other. Its completely impossible for this to be the case. You are just making up crap to defend them.

Judging by your reaction OP - you would have been one of many on here moaning about the downtime when it was happening.

 

That's why they removed posting priveleges.

 

/thread

 

Congrats on repeating my point without realizing it, or understanding it.

 

OBVIOUSLY THATS THE REASON

 

So complaining is not allowed? We can only talk about the things BW wants us to talk about? What dictatorship do you live under?

Edited January 28, 2012 by DunsparrowSolo

trying to cover up the rage from there terrible customer service and appalling decisions, if no one can post no one can complain

 

I have to say I agree 100%

 

First off all maintenance on a Friday night? With little warning as well... The only time of the week when everyone is online and able to do things like 16 man raids and HMs was terrible planning.

 

Then to deny some backlash and venting from players?

 

Compete joke and really ticked off a ton of people.

 

And your sig is about the most annoying thing in this game... I've run raids and I cannot see what people are posting in chat or the boss for that matter. 1+ month already and that damn message spam is still in game.

 

Yes the game is beautiful yes I really love it. But the glitches, poor customer service and now the cowardly position of making forums read only when you know damn well your doing something to piss people off has officially made this game a complete joke. Get your stuff (want to post another word) together... You really treat your players like garbage you're not going to make back the 300 mil you put into this game if you keep treating your customers the way you do.

 

"check future patch notes" auto responses that you get for serious issues in game is a slap in the face as well... Especially when the questions are related to something that is making the game unplayable.

 

done venting...

it not imppossible, i'ma IT guy using a options in most NOS(netowrk op systems) you can make fake virtal machines off one. i once ran 100 servers off one (hard ware) as a test run to stress test it.

 

some compys share a servers and to amke their side fo thing secure they do this fairly often , so they both save money but both can have a "server" to them selves.

 

i built a servers for a sony style store and put a server in place hat ran 3 vrital servers. a POS, Invorty and accoutning servers off one hardware.

Congrats on repeating my point without realizing it, or understanding it.

 

OBVIOUSLY THATS THE REASON.

 

So complaining is not allowed? We can only talk about the things BW wants us to talk about? What dictatorship do you live under?

 

Dictatorship? Bit of a sensationalist aren't we?

 

I'm merely pointing out they don't want their forums saturated with whining threads.

 

I don't want that either.

Edited January 28, 2012 by Grucky

authentication servers

Dictatorship? Bit of a sensationalist aren't we?

 

I'm merely pointing out they don't want their forums saturated with whining threads.

 

I don't want that either.

 

So better there are no threads at all right? That's your legitimate argument, living in a free society? Have you ever heard of the chilling effect? Have you ever seen a community management strategy that has ever failed this epicly?

Dictatorship? Bit of a sensationalist aren't we?

 

I'm merely pointing out they don't want their forums saturated with whining threads.

 

I don't want that either.

 

if BW did stuff properly and communicated there wouldnt be no whine threads. Thats a better way to stop hem than close forums and threads

authentication servers

 

You can still log in to the forums, therefore the authentication servers are actually online and functioning. But, you can't post. Its a good thought, but its not correct.

Meh.

 

Every time WoW was down for maintenance their forums were filled with loud and angry demands for explanations, ETA's on uptime, and free game-time.

 

Strangely enough, none of those threads brought the servers up any faster, so I think having the forums closed during maintenance is OK.

Meh.

 

Every time WoW was down for maintenance their forums were filled with loud and angry demands for explanations, ETA's on uptime, and free game-time.

 

Strangely enough, none of those threads brought the servers up any faster, so I think having the forums closed during maintenance is OK.

 

/agree

in their defense, the guy has to unplug his laptop from the basement where he lives, and go upstairs and use his moms internet, cause its faster, to upload the patch via remote desktop to each individual server worldwide, so meh... give him time, he also has to grab munchies and a shower while up there and take out the trash....

I don't know who you're trying to kid with this read-only forum garbage. There is absolutely no reason why you should need to turn off all posting on the forums every time you take the servers down for an unnecessarily-long maintenance, which is starting to happen with alarming frequency and decreasing lead-time.

 

I know fanboys are going to come in here and post their made-up reasons why its somehow necessary. Don't bother.

 

Every other MMO continues to allow forum posts while servers are under maintenance, unless the forums themselves are under maintenance. You always shut down forum posts shortly before the server announcements that the servers will be coming down in 15 minutes.

 

The only logical explanation for this is that they want to stifle speech and complaints on their forums. This is certainly within their rights. Its certainly within my rights to complain about it, talk about why it sucks and get them to change this absurd policy.

 

BioWare's excessive downtime is made worse by the fact that a good chunk of the time, they don't even tell us why the servers are being taken down or why the maintenance is extended. They don't even tell us after the fact. This shows that the community staff is either kept completely in the dark about the reasons, or they have a blatant disrespect for the players who pay to keep the lights on in their corporate megaplex.

 

BioWare Community Staff:

 

Stop spewing out processed corporate triple like "we're working on a response to these issues." We don't need a mess of corporate bureaucrats sitting in meetings deciding what to tell us. Act like human beings.

 

Stop shutting down the forums every time you foresee a problem. If you can't handle criticism, you're in the wrong damn business. All you're doing is giving us more things to be critical of. Not only the horrid maintenance "schedule" but also the way you try to keep us from talking about it.

 

Give real interactions. With as many community managers as you have swarming these forums, surely someone could give us the slightest glimpse of humanity without some talking head bureaucrat that no one has ever heard of coming out of his isolated corporate sanctum once a month to tell us how much he gives a crap.

 

I don't give a crap that the Vice Director of Corporate Toilet Paper gives a crap. So he really really feels bad about Ilum. I'd much rather know that someone with a voice inside the company is communicating on our behalf to people in the company who can actually enact change.

 

The stupid thing sucks. We'll do it live.

 

yea I dislike the read-only servers my self BUT I believe the reason for them being put into place is to try to keep them up. at launch they tried to keep both up but when the servers went down and people flooded the forums, they went down as well.

No amount of hardware they could throw at the forums servers could keep them up, with out spending an spending an unnecessary about of money at them (rather they put that money in keeping the game servers up than the forum servers)

Any how, they tried using ques to access the forums and the website and that went over as well as EU maintenance times. The next "fix" seems to be to move the servers to read only status. This has kept them up so that people can actually read the forums to understand what is going on with the servers and the game. Also it allows them to log into there accounts to register a new game, or cancel a sub.

 

So while it sucks they do it, I understand why they do it.

Get a grip man.

 

Servers were up by 7AM CST. They were up before Spongebob even came on!

 

And yeah... An MMO will frequently need to be taken down for improvements. You like improvements right?

Meh.

 

Every time WoW was down for maintenance their forums were filled with loud and angry demands for explanations, ETA's on uptime, and free game-time.

 

Strangely enough, none of those threads brought the servers up any faster, so I think having the forums closed during maintenance is OK.

 

Seems to me that it would be in BW's best interest to leave the forums open during downtimes, especially during unscheduled downtimes like this morning's..

 

Shutting out the players does nothing but drive them to forums on other websites, such as IGN's forums, or Gamespot's forums or mmorpg's forums..

 

It's on these other forums, which BW has no control over, where the players begin to complain about and discuss why servers are taken down with barely any warning, or how there's no reason given by BW for the downtime.. I'm sure when it happens, someone who owns those forums begins to take notice of the situations..

 

I know that if I was providing a service to customers and had to routinely close down that service on a certain schedule or even at emergency times for hours on end, I'd rather have them chatting about it in an environment I can control rather than an environment run by potential media outlets that routinely write articles about my products and services..

 

just my humble thoughts..

Edited January 28, 2012 by Fuzzytoad

I have to say I agree 100%

 

First off all maintenance on a Friday night? With little warning as well... The only time of the week when everyone is online and able to do things like 16 man raids and HMs was terrible planning.

 

Then to deny some backlash and venting from players?

 

Compete joke and really ticked off a ton of people.

 

And your sig is about the most annoying thing in this game... I've run raids and I cannot see what people are posting in chat or the boss for that matter. 1+ month already and that damn message spam is still in game.

 

Yes the game is beautiful yes I really love it. But the glitches, poor customer service and now the cowardly position of making forums read only when you know damn well your doing something to piss people off has officially made this game a complete joke. Get your stuff (want to post another word) together... You really treat your players like garbage you're not going to make back the 300 mil you put into this game if you keep treating your customers the way you do.

 

"check future patch notes" auto responses that you get for serious issues in game is a slap in the face as well... Especially when the questions are related to something that is making the game unplayable.

 

done venting...

 

I fully agree on everything you wrote, it's the same way i feel.

I love the game as it is, even with the bugs, the rest is what i would expect by a cheap and fraudulent company.

Seems to me that it would be in BW's best interest to leave the forums open during downtimes, especially during unscheduled downtimes like this morning's..

 

Shutting out the players does nothing but drive them to forums on other websites, such as IGN's forums, or Gamespot's forums or mmorpg's forums..

 

It's on these other forums, which BW has no control over, where the players begin to complain about and discuss why servers are taken down with barely any warning, or how there's no reason given by BW for the downtime.. I'm sure when it happens, someone who owns those forums begins to take notice of the situations..

 

I know that if I was providing a service to customers and had to routinely close down that service on a certain schedule or even at emergency times for hours on end, I'd rather have them chatting about it in an environment I can control rather than an environment run by potential media outlets that routinely write articles about my products and services..

 

just my humble thoughts..

 

There's some truth to that.

 

My problem with maintenance time threads is primarily that they're really boring and predictable.

 

::Gripe about downtime::

 

::Stop whining!::

 

::Fanboy!::

 

::Link of EULA::

 

::E-lawyer disputing EULA::

 

::Threat to quit::

 

::You'll be back/can I have your stuff::

 

And so on... Every thread is the exact same.