Thread: Another day lost to server maintenance???

I am sitting here searching for another MMO I fancy playing to replace Lotro when it is down yet again and cursing the fact that Turbine only ever closes down the servers for maintenance between 11am and 4pm here in England, how about closing it between 6am and 11am European time for a change? Why is it always the European players who have to lose out? And please don't give us the rubbish about devs having to work through the night, its common practice amongst reputable IT companies to minimise disruption to their paying customers. Having worked in IT for years myself I have worked nights doing such maintenance regularly, so why can't they?

Because they don't. There's no reason beyond that. They're an American company running on Eastern Time, and even starting at the time they normally do, 6am eastern, is early hours for them. For the same reason you can't call them in the middle of Thanksgiving weekend (a four day federal holiday in November) and expect billing issues to be resolved.

When you service a population that has 24-hour activity, there's no realistic way to "minimize" down time. If they were a Hong Kong company, then they'd start at 6am HKT, and the people in Europe would complain. Or if they were a German company they'd start at 6am CET, then the America would complain. Welcome to globalization.

Well Turbine is based in America so.......and the majority of players are from America....If there was an MMORPG based in England you can be sure it would be down at 6-11 European time. It's just the way to run a business; cater to the majority of your customers, and the most customers for Turbine are from America. So no, sorry, that will most likely never happen. It's bad business. And if you hate having lotro down once in a while during afternoon hours where you are, then go ahead and try to find an mmorpg based in Europe. Good luck.

Oh, and by the way, the servers came back up an hour before the estimated time. Quit bi**ing

P.S. WoW is based in the west coast, in California, so when they shut down the servers, they shut them down according to PST time, so people in the east coast are SoL, yet they keep playing. And WoW shuts down every single week, and you don't see WoW players bit**ing about it and saying they're gonna leave based on slight inconvenience. And lotro shuts down nowhere near as often! I mean, really, do you just sit there staring at the screen until lotro is back up? Go out and socialize for God's sake. You sure seem like mmorpgs are your life, if you are actually considering leaving the game for this stupid reason.

Originally Posted by SmellyCheese

Because they don't. There's no reason beyond that. They're an American company running on Eastern Time, and even starting at the time they normally do, 6am eastern, is early hours for them. For the same reason you can't call them in the middle of Thanksgiving weekend (a four day federal holiday in November) and expect billing issues to be resolved.

When you service a population that has 24-hour activity, there's no realistic way to "minimize" down time. If they were a Hong Kong company, then they'd start at 6am HKT, and the people in Europe would complain. Or if they were a German company they'd start at 6am CET, then the America would complain. Welcome to globalization.

Completely agree.

Well I'm sorry to hear that you are housebound, I have a friend who has MS so I know what that is like. But I'm sorry to say that you just won't find any good mmorpgs that cater to European times during maintenance. All the mmo's I know of all have a set time (usually catered to American players) and they don't change them around to different times, except for emergency fixes. So unless you can find an mmo based in England or Europe, I'm afraid you'll just have to put up with it. You could switch to WoW....but like I said, their downtime is based on American PST, so it would still be down during your peak hours. Same with the Star Wars mmo. So like I said, leaving won't do you any good. You will have the same frustrations as you do here. Actually, you would have WAY more frustration if you switched to WoW or Star Wars because they have maintenance every single week on Monday. And I'm pretty sure it's the same with Star Wars as it's new and they need a lot of bugs to work out I'm sure, and a much larger player base than lotro. So actually, your best bet is to stay here. This mmo has the least amount of maintenance downtime I've ever seen in an mmo, and I've played a lot of them for a long time. I mean even the maintenance today said 6-10 EST, but lotro was back up by 8:30 EST. I now understand why it frustrates you so, but there really is nothing you can do about it, I'm sorry to say. And like I said, your best bet is to stick with lotro. So again, sorry for assuming you were just one of those people who are addicted to mmo's and have no life; I know how frustrating it is not being able to move from knowing my friend. So good luck, and maybe you could buy Star Wars or WoW? That way you could play one of those two when lotro does go down. And again, sorry about your situation =(

And look, I am not trying to be rude, but I am an excellent reader and an English major. The reason I misunderstood your intent was because you did not use proper punctuation marks and wording.

"am sitting here searching for another MMO I fancy playing to replace Lotro when it is down yet again"

It was not my fault I misunderstood; it was because you did not word your sentence correctly. As you can see, the other replier also believed your intention was leaving entirely. You should have written: "I am sitting here searching for another MMO I can play WHILE lotro is down"

Saying "replace" obviously indicates to the reader that your intention is to leave lotro entirely. And saying "yet again" makes it seem you are PO'd at lotro completely (which you are); but coupling this with the word "replace" leads the reader to believe you are planning to leave lotro entirely if the issue you are frustrated about continues. So please, do not insult my intelligence or reading skills. I would not have brought this up if not for the fact that this misunderstanding was completely because of your lack of sentence structure. So instead of urging me to "learn to read" I believe you should go ahead and learn to write properly. Thank you.

Oh, and by the way, my first post for this forum has recieved an "Extremely Positive" reputation, and when I first wrote that reply I started out with around 30 points. I now have 130. So quite a few people agreed with me, once again proving that everyone who read your post assumed you meant you were going to quit lotro because of the server issue, and they assumed this because of your poor sentence structure. So thanks for the rep boost!

Originally Posted by Echos_21

Oh, and by the way, my first post for this forum has recieved an "Extremely Positive" reputation, and when I first wrote that reply I started out with around 30 points. I now have 130. So 100 people or so agreed with me, once again proving that everyone who read your post assumed you meant you were going to quit lotro because of the server issue, and they assumed this because of your poor sentence structure. So thanks for the rep boost!

Actually, you can see in your UserCP how many people left you positive rep and one person with a very high rep rating can bump you up quite a bit with just one +1 to the post. So it was probably a couple of people, not 100.

Originally Posted by Ayrolen

Actually, you can see in your UserCP how many people left you positive rep and one person with a very high rep rating can bump you up quite a bit with just one +1 to the post. So it was probably a couple of people, not 100.

Ah thanks didn't know that =)

Originally Posted by Echos_21

Oh, and by the way, my first post for this forum has recieved an "Extremely Positive" reputation, and when I first wrote that reply I started out with around 30 points. I now have 130. So quite a few people agreed with me, once again proving that everyone who read your post assumed you meant you were going to quit lotro because of the server issue, and they assumed this because of your poor sentence structure. So thanks for the rep boost!

i like many will give you + rep based upon nothing more than your cute photo

Originally Posted by wakeandbacon

i like many will give you + rep based upon nothing more than your cute photo

lol aw well thanks, I guess yeah that's a pic of me and my puppy =]

It's just one day. Sides, considering how many bugs and lag are in ths game currently - just imagine how it would be if they didn't do regular maintenance.

I rather sit it out for a day every now and then and have a higher-quality game then get to play every single day but have poorer quality.