Hyperstrike

No. I'm saying that they saw the loads from the opening of i21 and did something in vaguely this order.

• Went "Holy crap!"
• Said "We've got to get a bigger boat."
• Had some meetings to discuss the issue.
• Had some more meetings to arrive at technical specs for new servers
• Had some more meetings to arrive at the budget.
• Ordered the new servers
• Had more meetings to plan out an upgrade schedule and process.
• Waited for the new servers
• Took delivery of the new servers.
• Unpacked and tested the parts.
• Slotted the upgrade schedule in at the earliest possible time.
• Announced it.

Probably because they hadn't taken delivery of the parts and tested them yet. You don't want to say "We're doing it on THIS DATE" when you haven't actually taken delivery and/or tested anything.

My game company got burnt by one of our manufacturers at GenCon this year because we were promised product that they KNEW they weren't going to be able to deliver. As such, we lost over $20,000 in direct sales at GenCon.

Ah. Attacking me rather than attacking the points of my argument. Good for you!

The problem is, the devs aren't suggesting players are owed anything. They players are. In essence "GIMME GIMME GIMME!" I've always found it best not to reward greed of this sort.

I believe you're trying to insert words into my mouth. I've never said "the devs never do wrong". Nor have I implied it. Even my arguments here in opposition of the "GIMME" crowd imply the devs have screwed up. But they've screwed up by UNDERestimating the load the servers would see. And that's not always something that can be planned for. Do YOU go out in public in full pads and plate expecting someone to accidentally bump into you and knock you over?

Investment? How about "You are paying for access to a computer game service. This includes the possibility of downtime, sometimes EXTENSIVE downtime for maintenance and hardware upgrade purposes."

What, if anything, about that is unclear?

When did NCSoft or Paragon promise you 24x7x52 access?

Basically "If we whine enough they'll throw us a sop to shut us up."

Again. I've found that giving in to this sort of greed is never a good thing.

We agree on this. We simply disagree on what the limits should be.

SOME people are unhappy right now. Not everyone.
And of those that are unhappy, some are philosophical about the situation.
However, a group of them are hell-bent on the "I am wronged therefore I must be compensated" line of...*reasoning*.

And I do.

You're dealing in physical goods. This is an electronic service.

And if your bosses want to give away their product, that's cool. It's up to them. Willing to bet they're dealing with relatively low-value items (i.e. they're not a Ferrari dealership).

Yeah, they had a massive hardware migration a couple weeks back.

Turns out they should have bypassed the SuperServer +1 and gone straight to the SuperServer+5.

They're rectifying it now by swapping up to even MORE powerful hardware. And, as of right now, the servers are back up.

Sit on an overloaded server, waiting for your powers to recharge and then tell me there's "no benefit".

These measures are PREVENTATIVE MAINTENANCE. To make sure you don't have to deal with a crappy in-game experience.

Actually, the server upgrades mean you shouldn't see more server-based lag issues.

Since, save for Exalted, you're playing on all the same servers as the freebies, the claim that this work isn't beneficial to you is disingenuous at best.

Translation: GIMME GIMME GIMME!

Perspective: Bull****

Having worked, directly and indirectly, with customers over the years, I can tell you that's a flat out lie at best. It's simply a platitude offered when making an attempt to retain business. At some point, the merchant STILL has to put a foot down and make a decision between retaining a possibly impossible customer and letting that person go and focusing on other customers who are easier to satisfy.

As well it should.

Forum policy violation noted.

No. You have *a gripe*. That is all. And sure, you can post them. Doesn't mean others are precluded from rebutting the single-buttocked points made.

No. I'm at work with a bit of downtime and was hoping to bounce my new tank on Exalted a few more levels.

My mom lives in Florida. But thanks for your concern on her behalf.

And unless you're putting in 60-80 hours a week, don't tell me about "limited downtime". Not griping about my job. I get paid RIDICULOUSLY well for it. But I put in a LOT of hours.

Because everyone looks at their e-mail on a daily basis.
Because the email will get through spam filters in every single instance.
Because the e-mail they use in any given time will get through systems requiring MANUAL responses to be added to lists of safe senders.
Because everyone has their real e-mail, or even their primary e-mail put in on their NCSoft account.

That knowing chuckle you hear in the background? That's me.

Because they're NOT repairs. They're server upgrades. They're physically moving to new equipment. Not simply adding on to existing stuff.

They've already said this isn't going to happen. PERIOD.
They're going to continue doing this at the statistical lowest population times to inconvenience the fewest people possible.

Actually I'd say "yeah" they DIDN'T know.

This is a HARDWARE move. It was just spelled out in the UStream as to what was going on here.

They JUST upgraded a couple weeks ago. I HONESTLY don't think they'd have planned two successive hardware upgrades this close together. It makes no sense. Either from a financial perspective OR a work-process standpoint.

Jeeze. Small contender? By MMO standards, they're NOT a small player on the market. Only compared to the bloated mutation that is WoW, are they "small". WoW is an OUTLIER. CoH is more normal for the industry, and an unparalleled success story.

Then stop subscribing.

But you're not going to let that stop you.

You mean like the fact that this hardware upgrade is supposed to solve the new load-spike issues they're seeing with i21? An issue that's ONLY a week old. An issue that didn't come up in i21 when they were planning the initial hardware upgrade. Even though i21 Beta was open for weeks and weeks prior to going live. Even though they built hardware meant to handle the loads that the original D.O.P.E. event on Freedom, a month or so ago, generated (with over 4000 people on the server simultaneously).

If your patience truly was that thin, you'd be unsubbed already. You're just "Internet Angry". This is sort of the flat bottle of caffeine free diet coke of anger. If you were REALLY upset, you wouldn't be in here on the boards talking about your feelings on the subject.

Good thing the downtime isn't continual.

Why exactly should they? There's no need for them to compensate people for planned downtimes.

What is this we're experiencing today?

A PLANNED DOWNTIME? I THINK SO!

Most of the new players haven't started yet. That comes next week. What they're doing is getting this in ahead of time to try and STOP that sort of thing from happening. As for aggravation. Don't you think they're a LITTLE peeved too? They just installed a bunch of new hardware that was supposed to handle much higher loads without issue. But the traffic patterns they've seen, plus the monstrous new patch with all its new systems has generated loads in excess of anything they've encountered before. Pretty much mandating MORE hardware upgrades before an expected influx of new players brings the system to its knees.

Dude. Try looking around at other games during new version releases. You'll also see multiple long downtimes, some last minute bug firefights, etc. And you'll see them in greater numbers and magnitude than ANYTHING you've seen here.

A little perspective goes a long way.

Translation: GIMME GIMME GIMME!

Third?

Shift?

I'll have to check with my majordomo. That might be something our wage slaves do.

Okay. Let's deal with facts.

The fact is, that Paragon is trying to bolster the infrastructure of the game so that it can handle higher loads.

The fact is, you're paying for access to the service during all times NOT designated as maintenance windows or accidental downtime during crashes.

The fact is, despite noises to the contrary, you're NOT entitled to any compensation for downtime of ANY sort.

The fact is, this large maintenance window is going to happen sooner or later. It's more sensible that it happen now (as soon as possible), rather than taking it down later during the F2P push and alienating MORE users (and gaining a reputation amongst new players for inordinate amounts of downtime).

The fact is, if you're unsatisfied with the service YOU CAN STOP PAYING FOR IT. Whining and griping about something that has to happen achieves nothing.

Yep. Had only about 3 teams. So we had a wipe early on during the first push into the bowl. Didn't stop us though. We got back on the ship, screwed it down and proceeded to kick a PHENOMENAL amount of Rikti backside for a group that small.

Congrats to everyone who participated in that. It was AWESOME!

Look at your User Agreement again bub.

You're paying for access to the service at all times BUT designated service intervals (which this is) and unforeseen events (like crashes).

As for not caring what the issues are sparking the need for this? Very adult.

1: Massive software upgrade.
2: Multiple massive hardware upgrades.
3: Paragon PLAINLY doesn't have access to the funny-talking guy in the blue box.

When are they SUPPOSED to do them? During the witching hour?

Or are they supposed to just leave the problem, instead of being proactive, and wait until it's so bad that this looks like a good idea instead?

Jeeze. Reach down and get a grip.

Also, something similar happened to me during the Beta. Try zoning, then going into the costume editor. See if the model still is the generic male or if it reverts to a copy of Costume 0.

Fixed that for you.

Yup.

I said YUP! YUP MEANS YUP!

They were watching every episode of every Stargate series back to back.



Seriously. They did a beefy upgrade that they thought could handle the new loads.

Then they found out that the combination of i21 and a bunch of people bum-rushing a server drove server loads higher than they'd ever been before. Pretty much MANDATING that bigger, beefier upgrades be put into place ASAP. Because if it's this bad NOW, imagine what it'd be like once we get an influx of F2P'ers.

I'd say it's PRECISELY because they're going to try and maintain a Freebie player-base that they're MAKING the upgrades.

They did a monster upgrade to their systems less than a month ago. The influx on several servers during head-start brought the NEW machines to their knees. Paragon actually is doing the right thing by opting to throw megabucks at it NOW and beef up their server infrastructure.

If they don't CHOOSE to do it NOW, they're going to be FORCED to do it LATER. AFTER they pick up the F2P crowd. And something like a day-long outage once you've gone F2P can REALLY destroy any traction they get in mindshare because of this.

I've disagreed with some of the development choices Paragon has made of late. But this is NOT one of them.

Does it suck that people are going to be locked out of the game for the better part of a day?

HELL YEAH!

Would I rather the servers come crashing down AFTER F2P commences, knocks everyone of the servers for the better part of a day, then be subjected to an additional day-long outage for upgrades ANYHOW?

**** NO!