Type of Maintenance - Notice on website

[Ice_Storm]

I think the Pirates Online official website should post a notice in the "Grog Blog" the day they schedule a time of update/Maintenance/bug fix for the game.

For example, the message on the post would read something like this:

- September 23, 2011 - Scheduled Maintenance -

Pirates Of the Carribbean Online will be going offline for a Game Content Update

During this time, you will be unable to login to the game. We appreciate your patience. Due to unforeseen circumstances, server downtime is subject to change:

Start: 4 PM PDT
Finish: 6 PM PDT

Release notes will be posted after the update has been completed.

Or like example 2:

- September 23, 2011 - Scheduled Maintenance -

Pirates Of the Carribbean Online will be going offline for Server Maintenance.


During this time, you will be unable to log in to the game. Due to unforeseen circumstances, server downtime is subject to change:

Start: 6 PM PDT
Finish: 7 PM PDT

We appreciate your patience.

Notice the bold and underlined terms. They could just replace that word with:

1) Server Maintenance
2) Bug Fix Patch
3) Game Content Update
4) Etc. goes here

At least everyone would know when an update would be coming and/or reason to why the servers suddenly go down.

[Rannulf]

Smashing Idea mate! Too bad it will probable never be implemented to our game.

[Batleth]

Originally Posted by Rannulf

Smashing Idea mate! Too bad it will probable never be implemented to our game.

Indeed. They don't seem to be up on keeping their customers notified of situations like many of the other MMOs do, these days.

[FightingExecutioner]

This is a fantastic idea! Disney SHOULD notify their customers when maintenance is getting ready to happen.

[Ice_Storm]

The other two ideas for the Bold and Underlined term(s) that I thought about:

A) Hardware upgrades
B) Emergency patch/update

[Dark_Pixie]

I think this is a very good idea. I think there's a good chance that this will be added in the future.

[titanic95594]

Well, most of the time they don't know when they will have to do maintenance. Do you know when to repair a problem when there is not a problem with it? Same with that. They just don't know when. And the shutdown for adding new content to the game still should be a surprise, who would like to spoil and put players on the edge of their seats when it comes?

[Ice_Storm]

Originally Posted by titanic95594

Well, most of the time they don't know when they will have to do maintenance. Do you know when to repair a problem when there is not a problem with it? Same with that. They just don't know when. And the shutdown for adding new content to the game still should be a surprise, who would like to spoil and put players on the edge of their seats when it comes?

A) All they would be saying is game content is coming in today's update. Besides, it wouldn't be that much of a surprise because it comes out on test, and they don't need to do this notice for the test site.

B) To let some players know why the game servers are suddenly offline during the weekend or they randomly got kicked off. So they would post a notice saying the game is under Emergency Maintainance, bug fix patch included or none.

I think everyone should be informed because it's such an easy notice to type up. The release notes would be posted after the game received the update, to save time.

[titanic95594]

Usually they do these Maintenances at night... When everyone is suppose to be sleeping..... So I don't see why we need these notifications. All games do it. And it more smooth and it does not interupt the peak time of gameplay.

[Chris Ironhawk]

Originally Posted by titanic95594

Usually they do these Maintenances at night... When everyone is suppose to be sleeping..... So I don't see why we need these notifications. All games do it. And it more smooth and it does not interupt the peak time of gameplay.

The United States isn't the only country with access to Pirates. PNC has someone in Europe, and SS has someone from Iceland. These areas are many hours ahead of us. When we are sleeping, there are people from other countries playing.

[ruisen2000]

Originally Posted by titanic95594

Well, most of the time they don't know when they will have to do maintenance. Do you know when to repair a problem when there is not a problem with it? Same with that. They just don't know when. And the shutdown for adding new content to the game still should be a surprise, who would like to spoil and put players on the edge of their seats when it comes?

I think it is possible. On another game, the game tells you when they are going to do a maintainence, or update. If they're fixing something, the game just takes it out and give us a heads up about whats happening.

POTCO has been releasing the sneak peak things, and the game news on the side of your POTCO log in screen tells you what just got released, so not much of a surprise really..... lol

[Ice_Storm]

Originally Posted by titanic95594

Usually they do these Maintenances at night... When everyone is suppose to be sleeping..... So I don't see why we need these notifications. All games do it. And it more smooth and it does not interupt the peak time of gameplay.

They don't always do their updates at night.

Sometimes they release small content during the afternoon.

They don't have to create a "Planned ahead of time" notice on the website right away if they need to bring the servers down for Emergency Maintenance. They could have someone who works on the website post it minutes after or something.

At least we would know, and the developers aren't leaving us in the dark.

[titanic95594]

Originally Posted by Chris Ironhawk

The United States isn't the only country with access to Pirates. PNC has someone in Europe, and SS has someone from Iceland. These areas are many hours ahead of us. When we are sleeping, there are people from other countries playing.

MAJORITY of the game's players are in the United States. So the other hemisphere must deal with it untill the game makes a server for them that fits their time. I don' think they would do these notifications for that tiny percentage of players. So right now they base the down times in the United States for that majority amount of players.

[Ice_Storm]

Originally Posted by titanic95594

MAJORITY of the game's players are in the United States. So the other hemisphere must deal with it untill the game makes a server for them that fits their time. I don' think they would do these notifications for that tiny percentage of players. So right now they base the down times in the United States for that majority amount of players.

Almost every MMO makes their update time PDT.

As long as they put an east server, that's okay, but as of now, there is no such thing.

@The text in yellow:

These noficiations would be so short, anyone could type them up less than 2 minutes.

Look at the examples above. That's all they would have to say. If it is a game content update, they would just post the release notes after the patch has completed.

I sent feedback in twice about this already. Hopefully they implement it.

[Dark_Pixie]

Though I'm with you on the idea, I'd like to point out that when Disney has scheduled an update they give up to an hour of warning in-game. It gives players plenty of time to finish what they're doing, in my opinion. Although it would be better for Disney to give a day or so's warning, maintenance only happens for a short time when it does happen. Though compared to all the time we get without maintenance, it's only a tiny amount of game time we lose.