Concern about game time zone (GMT and PST)

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Hello everyone,

I’m very excited about this game, but I have a rather pressing concern that might become an issue once Star Trek Online launches, namely the server time.

I noticed that the servers for the head start would launch at 10.00AM PST. Now, I live in Europe (GMT+1) which runs ahead 9 hours of PST.

I’m assuming that, since the game headstart launches in American time zones, that the special ingame events (such as the end of beta event) and weekly maintenance also use the PST format.

Which would mean:

If Cryptic plans the weekly maintenance on a Wednesday from (I’ll take World of ******** maintenance times as the standard) 3.00AM PST till about 11.00AM PST. This would mean that I can’t play the entire Wednesday afternoon and a part of the evening (Server maintenance would start at Noon (GMT+1) over here and run till 20.00PM (GMT+1).

The same would be for ingame events:

Let’s say there would be an awesome ingame event where Borg invade. If Cryptic uses the PST format, the logical thing would be to use the PST’s peak hours, which are usually around 19.00PM.

That would mean the event would start at 4.00AM (GMT+1) over here, which would be when I’m sleeping!

How is Cryptic planning to work with these time differences?


Thanks in advance,

Aerthalas

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Hmm, seems I posted at a bad time.

My thread got buried under lot's of other posts....

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Shameless bump yet again

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Another bumb

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Most likely they won't be adjusting their time to suit you. Why? Because it's based in the U.S. Just like other games that are based in certain countries, they work around the time zone that suits them best for the employees. I just don't understand why people from other countries (or the U.S. for that matter) cannot understand that concept. I play Eve online, based in Iceland (London servers). I'm not going to complain when they take the game down at a time inconvenient for me because I can deal with time zone issues i.e., I have a life.

I need more coffee.

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They have to play to their base. Their base is the U.S. The BEST time to patch and avoid mass complaints from cutomers is after 3 a.m. PST, and before 10 am PST

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Um, im pretty certain they will be doing events on a day basis rather than a time.

Champions online events seemed to be a 'entire day' thing so nobody missed out.

The end of beta event began at 8pm GMT which gave a good 3-4 hours for most of the EU people to play around before it was dead.

I dont really see much concern as there shouldn't be many 'events' in the initial launch period.

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They have to play to their base. Their base is the U.S. The BEST time to patch and avoid mass complaints from cutomers is after 3 a.m. PST, and before 10 am PST

It's an internet game, marketed world wide.... internet goes further then just the US. Their base is the world, the US is only a small part of that.

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How is Cryptic planning to work with these time differences?


By publishing the times once they're set, and letting customers make their plans accordingly.

They'll base those times on when their OVERALL USAGE is at its lowest, without regard to what time zone those users are in.

This is guaranteed to inconvenience people in as many time zones as their maintenance window is in hours.

What did you expect them to do, inconvenience more customers overall so as to make one timezone happy?

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It's an internet game, marketed world wide.... internet goes further then just the US. Their base is the world, the US is only a small part of that.

I agree there, however, MOST subs will probably be from the US area , lot more population.

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They'll base those times on when their OVERALL USAGE is at its lowest, without regard to what time zone those users are in.So you think we should believe that an American company will perform their events on a fair level to those outside of the US while they dont manage to mention GMT times in their communication and have used PST time in nearly all accouncements thus far ? Now 10 years ago (been playing mmorpgs since 1995) I would not make any point on that cause Europe was not on the mmorpg charts, but today in full fledges European product launches I expect service as a European customer and not having to convert PST time to my time, after all my monthly contribution to the game is exactly the same of US citizens.

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They have to play to their base. Their base is the U.S. The BEST time to patch and avoid mass complaints from cutomers is after 3 a.m. PST, and before 10 am PST

So by your logic the entire uk/euro continent isnt significant enough to be of a decent player base? LOL!!!
we outnumber the entire US player base.

Do you have any idea how many uk/euro mmo players there are? Also dont overlook aussie players and eastern players- we all seem to fall under the one catagory which is basically saying the world player base versus the american player base- cryptic would be fools to overlook that small issue. I dont mind mind the patch times been pst- but if they ignore event times and keep them pst and offer nothing for their euro/uk/aus counterparts then cryptic is basically shooting themselves in the foot with a massive loss in earnings.

The best option and wisest would be to cater for both hemispheres- keep everyone happy and cryptic/atari's pockets lined with cash- which i assume is thier goal :)

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It's an internet game, marketed world wide.... internet goes further then just the US. Their base is the world, the US is only a small part of that.

It doesn't matter where it's marketed. It's primary base is in the United States. You have to play to your base. A majority of subs are from the U.S. This has nothing to do with some nationality superiority complex. Look up Pirates of the Burning Sea. Updates and such are done on Aussie time, because it's primary player base is from Australia, and it's an Australian company.

I think you are the only one who is the narcissist here.

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So you think we should believe that an American company will perform their events on a fair level to those outside of the US while they dont manage to mention GMT times in their communication and have used PST time in nearly all accouncements thus far ? Now 10 years ago (been playing mmorpgs since 1995) I would not make any point on that cause Europe was not on the mmorpg charts, but today in full fledges European product launches I expect service as a European customer and not having to convert PST time to my time, after all my monthly contribution to the game is exactly the same of US citizens.

It's not their job to translate time zones. That has nothing to do with your subscription. They are based in PST so they post in PST. I guess you have never heard of Conan, all of their posts were in norwegian time zones, and you had to figure out what that meant in stateside time yourself.

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It's not their job to translate time zones. That has nothing to do with your subscription. They are based in PST so they post in PST. I guess you have never heard of Conan, all of their posts were in norwegian time zones, and you had to figure out what that meant in stateside time yourself.

they had american servers - unlike this game- and your logic is seriouslly flawed - very bad managerial skills there- if you think that us is aa big enough market you are seriouslly limiting yourself finacially- the uk/euro market in mmo's is far far greater then that of us market.

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So by your logic the entire uk/euro continent isnt significant enough to be of a decent player base? LOL!!!
we outnumber the entire US player base.

Do you have any idea how many uk/euro mmo players there are? Also dont overlook aussie players and eastern players- we all seem to fall under the one catagory which is basically saying the world player base versus the american player base- cryptic would be fools to overlook that small issue. I dont mind mind the patch times been pst- but if they ignore event times and keep them pst and offer nothing for their euro/uk/aus counterparts then cryptic is basically shooting themselves in the foot with a massive loss in earnings.

The best option and wisest would be to cater for both hemispheres- keep everyone happy and cryptic/atari's pockets lined with cash- which i assume is thier goal :)

There is no "LOL!!!shift111!" moment here. You just need to learn how to read and how marketing works. I did not say your base was not important, but simply that there are signifigantly less EU players that US. That, and the fact that the company is BASED in the US is what determines it. Simply put, they will hear more outrage if they cater to EU timezones. Please see my Pirates and Conan examples.

They CAN'T cater to both hemispheres. Get out a calculator and a map. You will see we are on almost opposite time spectrums. Any time that would be good to update for you would be bad for us, and any time good to update for us is bad for you. It eventually won't be everyday, but when it happens in the best interests of the company they need to look after their largest market share...which is the US. That is just the way it is.

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they had american servers - unlike this game- and your logic is seriouslly flawed - very bad managerial skills there- if you think that us is aa big enough market you are seriouslly limiting yourself finacially- the uk/euro market in mmo's is far far greater then that of us market.


Except it's not. You don't seem to understand the point here, this has nothing to do with NOT marketing to your region, it simply has to do with deciding on a time for server downtime. Regardless of the potential market size for the EU, it is smaller in almost every case than US subscriber base in mmos, and certainly in this one.

The point you are missing is that the universe does not revolve around you. This is not a national pride decision, it's the needs of the many vs the needs of the few. It is more imporant to protect US primetime than UK early afternoons.

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I gotta be honest, I live in the UK, and it's not much of a hardship adding 8 hours to a given time...

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So you think we should believe that an American company will perform their events on a fair level to those outside of the US while they dont manage to mention GMT times in their communication and have used PST time in nearly all accouncements thus far ?

No, I think they will use absolute numbers, with no regard whatsoever to what percentage are from what time zone. They will pick the time when they have the lowest total number of users, period. They will announce that time in PST, yes; because anybody with this game has internet, and anybody with internet can find out what that means in their own time zone in seconds.

Just like they did for Champions Online, and just like everybody else does in the industry.

That time is likely to suck for people in Europe who don't work, as it will likely work out around the same time as they found for CO, which will be noon/early afternoon in GMT. However, it would make no sense whatsoever to make it a time when MORE total people are logged on, just to make one time zone happy at the expense of a greater number of people in another.

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I did not say your base was not important, but simply that there are signifigantly less EU players that US..You got any hard figures to found that remark or are ya just making this up as we type ??

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I thought they ran a different server for Europe?

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You got any hard figures to found that remark or are ya just making this up as we type ??

I don't need hard figures. It's simply a fact. They will use the lowest play time figures to patch. Therefore there are more people playing in US afternoons than UK afternoons.

They aren't stupid, they will pick the lowest time. If you would like to rally together and buy a copy for all of the UK and suddenly makes them push the patch time by making that time a new peak, I am sure they won't mind.

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Why not make a Euro shard and a US shard, and any other major timezone, blizzard does this quite well with all the different realms in WoW being for specific timezones.

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You got any hard figures to found that remark or are ya just making this up as we type ??

Honestly, it doesn't matter which time zone has more subscribers; it matters what time the SERVER sees the fewest users. If people in one country skew toward a different part of the day, you could very well have more population but fewer users online.

NOTHING matters except server concurrency numbers. If the game was smaller time of day in the offices would matter, but for a customer base this large, NOTHING matters except concurrency.

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Why not make a Euro shard and a US shard, and any other major timezone, blizzard does this quite well with all the different realms in WoW being for specific timezones.

No reason to split the entire community when this will end up only affecting a small amount of users MAYBE once a week for a couple hours.


This isn't going to be everyday once things get rolling.

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Dear GOD, somebody call the U.N. and have sanctions imposed upon us because we don't just drop trou and cater to the EU... Please people, get a grip. Maybe if there weren't so many laws, restrictions and taxes on everything overthere you might find more software companies making games that revolve around you and yours. However, they don't so it is what it is.

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I don't need hard figures. It's simply a fact. They will use the lowest play time figures to patch. Therefore there are more people playing in US afternoons than UK afternoonsThey pick the downtimes for US customers by default, period. And they will continue to do so, even should the EU base be bigger. They did not wait to see what kinda player base they got, even during beta, tney communicatie and act on US times cause they are a US company, period.

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Ok, for all of you people dealing with time zone issues, here's a URL for you.

http://www.timezoneconverter.com/cgi-bin/tzc.tzc

Put in the maintenance time and date in the appropriate places. Select the time format you want. In the 'From' menu, select 'America/Los Angeles' (That is PST). In the 'To' menu, select your zone. Hit the 'Convert' button, and you're set.

I know it sucks having to have down time. Regardless of when they bring the servers down, someone, somewhere, is going to be impacted. Cryptic is based in California, so they post the times in PST/PDT, because that's the time zone they're in.

It's not that hard to do the math and figure out the time in your part of the world. If it is, use the URL I gave above. If that's too hard, then I don't know what to tell you, other than deal with it.

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Honestly, it doesn't matter which time zone has more subscribers; it matters what time the SERVER sees the fewest users..I agree to that, but what Im saying the past four posts is that the downtime determination was not made on actual player base at this point, but more on default custom to do maintenance during the most convience time for US players. They perform their communication in PST time SINCE DAY ONE, even before closed beta, if you aim at servicing all regions you communicate in GMT time, period.

Now before this gets out of hand, Im not complaining nor do I find it a big issue; but I admit having some principal issue with them using American local time, instead of performing business courtesy and communicate in GMT time, a universal time.

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To be honest i don't care if it not happens to much.
But still its good to post stuff like this ,Cryptic wants to know what we think ,bad or good .

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I don't need hard figures. It's simply a fact. They will use the lowest play time figures to patch. Therefore there are more people playing in US afternoons than UK afternoons.
.
mmm... weapons of mass destructing ... those where a fact to right? :D

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well a 3am PST patch is the middle of the day europe, hardly primetime

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why mess with eu primetime why not do everyone a favour and and zap asian primetime! hint hint

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why not cycle through different maintenance times?

just "stealing" EU players a whole afternoon every week can't be the solution

somebody mentioned before US would have the largest population.. this is so not true...

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If time is such an issue mebbe euro's should just find another game?

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3am PST is 11am GMT so all 3 US timezones are asleep and most of Europe is at school or work so sounds a logical time to me, its only really a problem if downtime extends for more than a few hours like EVE tends to do but if its only once a week (once the game is stable enough) plan around it I'd say.

If they make it daytime PST then it destroys EU prime time and if they do it PST Evening time or afternoon most of the US will lose out on prime time.

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mmm... weapons of mass destructing ... those where a fact to right? :D

I don't know ask Tony Blair...


anyway that's REALLY tired. Typical that EU would just assume we support all of our presidents all the time...


Anyways it is a fact, whether you like it or not. Time and again the US has a larger player base than the UK in most mmos. Not always, but it is a trend. They picked a downtime that would inconvinience the LEAST amount of people. They DO NOT under any circumstances need to "switch" with the PST timezones every other just to please a few UK people that will not be at work. It is just far less customers affected the way it is now.

It won't always be this way, and it certainly won't be weekends once things pick up. The narcissism in here is astounding.

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I agree to that, but what Im saying the past four posts is that the downtime determination was not made on actual player base at this point, but more on default custom to do maintenance during the most convience time for US players. They perform their communication in PST time SINCE DAY ONE, even before closed beta, if you aim at servicing all regions you communicate in GMT time, period.

Now before this gets out of hand, Im not complaining nor do I find it a big issue; but I admit having some principal issue with them using American local time, instead of performing business courtesy and communicate in GMT time, a universal time.

Seems to me you're more interested in fueling the conspiracy theory than anything else.

As stated before, several times, they post the times the way they do because that's the time zone they're in. If you want to know what the time is in your corner of the world, use the URL I gave you. They're doing their job by telling you when. Do yours and do the math.

I don't see the issue. They're based on the west coast of the US, and post times in their local zone. Even if they post in GMT, there are 23 other time zones in the world where someone is likely to get their knickers in a twist.

Not everyone uses GMT. Not everyone uses PST. Just do the bloody conversion and be done with it. It's not that difficult.

At the rate this idiocy is going, they're going to wind up posting a wall of text just to show the impact in every bloody zone on the planet, and still take a ration of crap from someone, somewhere, for doing that. Would you rather they waste their time writing all that garbage, or working on the REAL issues?

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Typical Americans they want everything their way or not at all, lets bow down because they said so?

The alternative here is to have a rota on patch times if there needs to be a downtime for instance once a week then rotate it through the time zones so then everyone is getting a fair share and no one misses out?

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I don't know ask Tony Blair...


anyone that's REALLY tired. Typical that EU would just assume we support all of our presidents all the time...


Anyways it is a fact, whether you like it or not. Time and again the US has a larger player base than the UK in most mmos. Not always, but it is a trend. They picked a downtime that would inconvinience the LEAST amount of people. They DO NOT under any circumstances need to "switch" with the PST timezones every other just to please a few UK people that will not be at work. It is just far less customers affected the way it is now.

It won't always be this way, and it certainly won't be weekends once things pick up. The narcissism in here is astounding.

i hope you know europe consists of more countries then UK?

EU has a larger population then US but we don't know how many of them actually play STO..

imho the fairest solution would be a rotation of 3 different maintenance times

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i hope you know europe consists of more countries then UK?

EU has a larger population then US but we don't know how many of them actually play STO..

imho the fairest solution would be a rotation of 3 different maintenance times

What's fair is whatever impacts the lowest amount of customers...which is EU afternoons. Case closed.

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Anyways it is a fact, whether you like it or not. Time and again the US has a larger player base than the UK in astounding.

A little heads-up for friends overseas:

The UK is not Europe! In fact, the European Unioin consists of 27 contries (one of them beeing the UK) and 500 million citizens!

Thank you :D

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Typical Americans they want everything their way or not at all, lets bow down because they said so?

The alternative here is to have a rota on patch times if there needs to be a downtime for instance once a week then rotate it through the time zones so then everyone is getting a fair share and no one misses out?

Who said anything about "bowing down", I am just explaining to you why the downtime is set when it is. It impacts the least amount of customers. It has nothing to do with nationality.

Typical Euro, always claiming American superiority complex through the glass of their own blatant narcissism.

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It's an internet game, marketed world wide.... internet goes further then just the US. Their base is the world, the US is only a small part of that.

Whilst I agree with your sentiments, I'm afraid you have to realise that Americans have a VERY VERY American centric view on things. It's developed by an American firm (although the publisher is French; Infogrames now trading as Atari), the servers are I'd wager in America, thus to them the player base IS American.

It really doesn't matter that D2D or Steam punted it out globally and charged the local currency (possibly taxes as well) for the transaction.

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There is no "LOL!!!shift111!" moment here. You just need to learn how to read and how marketing works. I did not say your base was not important, but simply that there are signifigantly less EU players that US. That, and the fact that the company is BASED in the US is what determines it. Simply put, they will hear more outrage if they cater to EU timezones. Please see my Pirates and Conan examples.

thats sth. i´m not sure about - playing at EU PT is alot more laggy from server side than playing at US PT...

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A little heads-up for friends overseas:

The UK is not Europe! In fact, the European Unioin consists of 27 contries (one of them beeing the UK) and 500 million citizens!

Thank you :D

Heads up for friends overseas. I said the UK because I was talking about sub numbers, not the entire EU. Try reading skills, perhaps a comp course! :D

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What's fair is whatever impacts the lowest amount of customers...which is EU afternoons. Case closed.

i wonder where you bought the magic crystal ball that told you so

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A little heads-up for friends overseas:

The UK is not Europe! In fact, the European Unioin consists of 27 contries (one of them beeing the UK) and 500 million citizens!

Thank you :D

actually I live in the UK and I would consider the UK part of europe. Which continent would you class it as being under?

for the actual topic btw, I dont see why there can't be a compromise. If they made it say 5am PST thats still only like 1pm in the UK, why not make it slap bang in the middle of the night so no one is impacted? (or very few) or am I missing out an important timezone in saying that

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Eventually just like WoW we will get a Euro server as the numbers worldwide get to saturation point. If it does not happen then it will show that the game is not that popular after all. Hence I have faith that there will be a Euro server within the year.

PS I am in Orkney we don't think we are part of Scotland let alone UK or blooming Europe :rolleyes:

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Whilst I agree with your sentiments, I'm afraid you have to realise that Americans have a VERY VERY American centric view on things. It's developed by an American firm (although the publisher is French; Infogrames now trading as Atari), the servers are I'd wager in America, thus to them the player base IS American.

It really doesn't matter that D2D or Steam punted it out globally and charged the local currency (possibly taxes as well) for the transaction.

oh good grief. I don't know how anyone could read all the comments in this thread and not see that there are just as many nationalistic euro's as there are Americans

This has nothing to do with nationalism. IT'S BUSINESS.

Not all American's think we have the greatest country and should rule the world.

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I love it when americans say 'we are more important because there are more players from the US'

Which, is utter crap.

Take WOW for example - there are roughly the same number of european players as US players (There are infact MORE european servers than there are US servers...)

Then you factor in that the US and europe are not the entire world and you find out that the US is FAR from the be all and end all of the subscriber base. In WOW they are roughtly 1/4 of the population.

SO THREE QUARTERS OF THEM ARENT AMERICAN.


Sure, this is a different game - but the stats will be similar - the american market is not the most important, nor is it the biggest market for this game.

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Heads up for friends overseas. I said the UK because I was talking about sub numbers, not the entire EU. Try reading skills, perhaps a comp course! :D

Um, so you think the game is only sold in US and UK, or whats you point? GMT Timezone isnt bound to UK only.

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i wonder where you bought the magic crystal ball that told you so

I don't need a crystal ball. As stated numerous times Cryptic is not stupid. They are going to pick the time that has the least amount of players to update, to have the least amount of complaining. That's why they picked it. Again, case closed.

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Eventually just like WoW we will get a Euro server as the numbers worldwide get to saturation point. If it does not happen then it will show that the game is not that popular after all. Hence I have faith that there will be a Euro server within the year.

PS I am in Orkney we don't think we are part of Scotland let alone UK or blooming Europe :rolleyes:

That's not the way this game works. There won't be plans to make separate servers. That's why there is shard technology. It's not worth splitting things up for MAYBE one day a week patching for an hour or two.

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actually I live in the UK and I would consider the UK part of europe. Which continent would you class it as being under?

for the actual topic btw, I dont see why there can't be a compromise. If they made it say 5am PST thats still only like 1pm in the UK, why not make it slap bang in the middle of the night so no one is impacted? (or very few) or am I missing out an important timezone in saying that

read my whole post, i said the UK is part of the EU.

i just dont like it when some americans act like the UK = Europe and rest isnt worth considering.

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I love it when americans say 'we are more important because there are more players from the US'

Which, is utter crap.

Take WOW for example - there are roughly the same number of european players as US players (There are infact MORE european servers than there are US servers...)

Then you factor in that the US and europe are not the entire world and you find out that the US is FAR from the be all and end all of the subscriber base. In WOW they are roughtly 1/4 of the population.

SO THREE QUARTERS OF THEM ARENT AMERICAN.


Sure, this is a different game - but the stats will be similar - the american market is not the most important, nor is it the biggest market for this game.

I'm starting to emulate a broken record here. It has nothing to do with nationalism, it's business. Please try reading the previous posts before posting your repetitive and debunked argument.

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I'm starting to emulate a broken record here. It has nothing to do with nationalism, it's business. Please try reading the previous posts before posting your repetitive and debunked argument.

Erm...

Yes - its about business....


So - if 3/4s of your players ARENT american it would make sense to base everything around american time.


try again please.

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read my whole post, is said the UK is part of the EU.

is just dont like it when some americans act like the UK = Europe and rest isnt worth considering.

That's not at all what anyone has said. It is very apparent that it is the EU base that is filled with blind narcissistic nationalism here. I'm done here. I can't make it any more plain than I already have. There won't be multiple servers. This won't be everyday. Those chose the time that impacts the fewest customers.

IT'S
JUST
BUSINESS

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This is why i wish there were more than 1 server. one for the usa and all the other countries that share a similar time zone and one for the rest. it would mean that both servers would have a quiet time for having maintenance and events could be set at times best suited for the servers.

but this is the problem with american games, they can be very ignorant when it comes to accomodating anyone outside of the usa....but thats the way it is and we'll just have to put up with it.

that being said, we don't know how they will hold events yet. but one thing they could do is hold the same event at different times of the day and have some kind of npc that you need to register your enrty to, and have it limited to one per account (to stop abuse).

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That's not at all what anyone has said. It is very apparent that it is the EU base that is filled with blind narcissistic nationalism here. I'm done here. I can't make it any more plain than I already have. There won't be multiple servers. This won't be everyday. Those chose the time that impacts the fewest customers.

IT'S
JUST
BUSINESS

There wont be multipul servers - most of us know that.

And they didnt CHOOSE this time - the server just crashed.


BUT if you want to chose a time zone that is best for BUSINESS you choose the time zone that is best for the most customers.

So - choosing the american time zone is NOT BEST FOR BUSINESS because it only contains 1/4 of your paying customers.

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Its pretty simple. If you dont like the time they maintain the servers then you can always go make your own online game and do it when ever the f you want. They are setting it to the location of the servers, not to what ever euro trash cries the loudest.

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That's not at all what anyone has said. It is very apparent that it is the EU base that is filled with blind narcissistic nationalism here. I'm done here. I can't make it any more plain than I already have. There won't be multiple servers. This won't be everyday. Those chose the time that impacts the fewest customers.

IT'S
JUST
BUSINESS

you just dont get it. you basically said the us is bigger than uk so its ok to build everything around us timezones.

it tried to explain that there are a lot of other countires and players that play around the same timezone as the uk.

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I'm not really bothered about dicussing what the UK is or isnt part of, my main point was that there should be a suitable time for maintenance that suits americans and europeans (and brits!) since there is a maximum of 8 hours difference in time. Is there any reason maintenance could not be performed 4-5A.M PST? I dont think the chinese would be too happy about this idea, but then again I dont think many play STO

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you just dont get it. you basically said the us is bigger than uk so its ok to build everything around us timezones.

it tried to explain that there are a lot of other countires and players that play around the same timezone as the uk.

No I simply said they chose, and will choose the time that impacts the least amount of players. It has nothing to do with nationality. You euros are just taking it very personally.

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lol

This thread is amusing, like 'MY DAD CAN BEAT UP YOUR DAD!'

Let's face it, most MMORPG devs nowadays actually got a clue and get the hint that MMORPGs are global. Cryptic is one of the remaining relics left that still think in a US centric way. It's not a really good idea to have maintenance right in the middle of a time zone prime time period. But alas, the world has timezones I can understand they can't please everyone since its always someone being ****ed off.

Perhaps an EU / Australasian server set might be a good idea after all?

We 'Eurotrash' (OMG that's original) don't have it bad tho...Australians and NZ people always had the shortest end of the stick on this one.

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I don't know ask Tony Blair...


anyway that's REALLY tired. Typical that EU would just assume we support all of our presidents all the time...


Anyways it is a fact, whether you like it or not. Time and again the US has a larger player base than the UK in most mmos. Not always, but it is a trend. They picked a downtime that would inconvinience the LEAST amount of people. They DO NOT under any circumstances need to "switch" with the PST timezones every other just to please a few UK people that will not be at work. It is just far less customers affected the way it is now.

It won't always be this way, and it certainly won't be weekends once things pick up. The narcissism in here is astounding.

Gosh.. no sense of humor.....

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Are you quite so daft as to not realize that there isn't a single time-span that doesn't inconvenience at least one part of the world? Someone will, without question, have to be inconvenienced for downtimes. Cryptic, being on the West coast of the U.S. will provide times in PST. You want a comparison? I never saw CCP provide EST times for anything they did with EVE, it was always GMT.

It's not even just business. It's common sense. Unless you have a way for them to stop time, it will always inconvenience someone!

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No I simply said they chose, and will choose the time that impacts the least amount of players. It has nothing to do with nationality. You euros are just taking it very personally.

Are you being intentionally dense?

The mmo market has shown time and again across more games than I can find the info for that the american market accounts of ONE QUARTER of subscriptions.

so - they are being nationalisitic about it. And you are just being a troll now.

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Hello everyone,

I’m very excited about this game, but I have a rather pressing concern that might become an issue once Star Trek Online launches, namely the server time.

I noticed that the servers for the head start would launch at 10.00AM PST. Now, I live in Europe (GMT+1) which runs ahead 9 hours of PST.

I’m assuming that, since the game headstart launches in American time zones, that the special ingame events (such as the end of beta event) and weekly maintenance also use the PST format.

Which would mean:

If Cryptic plans the weekly maintenance on a Wednesday from (I’ll take World of ******** maintenance times as the standard) 3.00AM PST till about 11.00AM PST. This would mean that I can’t play the entire Wednesday afternoon and a part of the evening (Server maintenance would start at Noon (GMT+1) over here and run till 20.00PM (GMT+1).

The same would be for ingame events:

Let’s say there would be an awesome ingame event where Borg invade. If Cryptic uses the PST format, the logical thing would be to use the PST’s peak hours, which are usually around 19.00PM.

That would mean the event would start at 4.00AM (GMT+1) over here, which would be when I’m sleeping!

How is Cryptic planning to work with these time differences?


Thanks in advance,

Aerthalas
Live with it

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Its pretty simple. If you dont like the time they maintain the servers then you can always go make your own online game and do it when ever the f you want. They are setting it to the location of the servers, not to what ever euro trash cries the loudest.

I would make a comment about fat abrasive Americans, but I won't since you were so polite.

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lol i just found this post and it looks like Nightsbane (the dumb american ) VS the world and im sorry Nightsbane but us in the rest of the world are right

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Its pretty simple. If you dont like the time they maintain the servers then you can always go make your own online game and do it when ever the f you want. They are setting it to the location of the servers, not to what ever euro trash cries the loudest.

thank you for summing up all europeans are euro trash, very mature of you. You might find they will change the time for maintenance if enough people are not happy about the situation and I think the 'euro trash' were simply pointing out europe has quite a large gaming population (europe is twice as large as the american population according to google) :)

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There wont be multipul servers - most of us know that.

And they didnt CHOOSE this time - the server just crashed.


BUT if you want to chose a time zone that is best for BUSINESS you choose the time zone that is best for the most customers.

So - choosing the american time zone is NOT BEST FOR BUSINESS because it only contains 1/4 of your paying customers.

You simply have no idea what you are talking about.

We are discussing the maintenance this morning, not the crash now. The mighty afternoon gaming empire of the EU does not exist in real life as it does in your mind, or the times that impact the least amount of players would be different.

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No I simply said they chose, and will choose the time that impacts the least amount of players. It has nothing to do with nationality. You euros are just taking it very personally.

and who are you to say the us playerbase is bigger than the euro playerbase?
do you work for cryptic? do you have any insights or are you just picking your facts out of your nose?

why cant we find a timezone that suits both continents?

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You simply have no idea what you are talking about.

We are discussing the maintenance this morning, not the crash now. The mighty afternoon gaming empire of the EU does not exist in real life as it does in your mind, or the times that impact the least amount of players would be different.

???

From the op:

If Cryptic plans the weekly maintenance on a Wednesday from (I’ll take World of ******** maintenance times as the standard) 3.00AM PST till about 11.00AM PST. This would mean that I can’t play the entire Wednesday afternoon and a part of the evening (Server maintenance would start at Noon (GMT+1) over here and run till 20.00PM (GMT+1).


IF cryptic plans maitience.

Sorry - which thread were you supposed to be posting in?


Look here - it gives the break down of MMO subscription numbers - look at the WOW break down - and america and europe are nearly identical - so its all in my mind? http://www.mmodata.net/

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lol such a funny topic but then again most of the topics get turned into a debate about whos the best US or EU well im from the UK not the EU... yes i know the UK is part of the EU but im proud to be BRITISH!

Yes its annoying about the times but honestly people does it really matter that much it goes down for a couple of hours.. STAY UP LATER OR GET UP EARLIER if you really that fussed about it... i mean common stop with the CRAP!

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I don't need hard figures. It's simply a fact. They will use the lowest play time figures to patch. Therefore there are more people playing in US afternoons than UK afternoons.

They aren't stupid, they will pick the lowest time. If you would like to rally together and buy a copy for all of the UK and suddenly makes them push the patch time by making that time a new peak, I am sure they won't mind.

I stopped reading here for just a poke...UK is not the only country with MMo players and EU the rest like you imply in so many of your previous posts...maybe get a map and check for EU countries and perhaps you will see that the player base (and speaking just potentially) is by far superior to the US...if any question remains just add some numbers and check some other MMOs ;).

Start for example by...Spain, Germany, France, Italy, Portugal, Ireland, Sweden(this guys play and plague every sinlge MMO :P), and so on for just some examples.

Sorry for the bad English, as you may assume it is not my primary language.

Edit: just a number , those countries i mentioned represent a number of above 100 million people sumed up, if just 5% play you are speaking of a potencial 5 million players in just those.

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and who are you to say the us playerbase is bigger than the euro playerbase?
do you work for cryptic? do you have any insights or are you just picking your facts out of your nose?

why cant we find a timezone that suits both continents?

BECAUSE THIS MYTHICAL TIMESLOT you suggest DOES NOT EXIST. Downtime will ALWAYS inconvinience SOMEONE. It's just the way it works.

We all understand that there are more people in the whole of Europe that the United States. Good google work for you. But, that means absolutely NOTHING about how many people are playing Star Trek Online.

Cryptic chose the timeslot they did because they wanted the least amount of people to lose game time. Do you think they LIKE being at work from 3-5 in the morning to babysit the server work?

I don't think any amount of reason will pass through to you guys. If you want to see a company that literally flips off their customer base look at turbine. Their patches and work happens usually in the PST afternoon and evening, during it's player primetime. They don't care who is or isn't playing, they just don't want to work at 4 in the morning. THAT is chosing yourself over your customer, Cryptic is NOT.

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I stopped reading here for just a poke...UK is not the only country with MMo players and EU the rest like you imply in so many of your previous posts...maybe get a map and check for EU countries and perhaps you will see that the player base (and speaking just potentially) is by far superior to the US...if any question remains just add some numbers and check some other MMOs ;).

Start for example by...Spain, Germany, France, Italy, Portugal, Ireland, Sweden(this guys play and plague every sinlge MMO :P), and so on for just some examples.

Sorry for the bad English, as you may assume it is not my primary language.

It's not your English that is bad, it's your reading skills. I already confirmed that my posts about the UK pertained only to the UK. I was not substituting one for the other.

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Imaybe get a map and check for EU countries and perhaps you will see that the player base (and speaking just potentially) is by far superior to the US...if any question remains just add some numbers and check some other MMOs ;)..

European Union population - 501 million.

USA population - 309 million

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BECAUSE THIS MYTHICAL TIMESLOT you suggest DOES NOT EXIST. Downtime will ALWAYS inconvinience SOMEONE. It's just the way it works.

and this is why a rotation of 2-3 different times can be the only solution to not **** off an entire time zone.

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lol i just found this post and it looks like Nightsbane (the dumb american ) VS the world and im sorry Nightsbane but us in the rest of the world are right

I'm not "fighting for America" here. I am simply trying to explain why the down time this morning was placed when it was. I really don't care for any nationalistic pride whatsoever. American, British, German, French, whatever, nationalism always leads to bad things.

I don't think my nation is better or deserves vip treatment. What I do expect is for Cryptic to do their downtimes when it affects the least amount of customers, and that is what they are doing.

Some of you guys are simply rabbid to peg me a some self absorbed ignorant American. I'm not the one who is displaying stereotypical behavior here. I'm not insulting anyone, I'm just trying to explain business, and you want a border dispute.

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Cryptic chose the timeslot they did because they wanted the least amount of people to lose game time. Do you think they LIKE being at work from 3-5 in the morning to babysit the server work?
.

Did you look at my link.

You know - the one that shows that WOW has about 1/4 american subscribers and 3/4s for the rest of the world...


Didnt think so.

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and this is why a rotation of 2-3 times can be the only solution to not **** off an entire time zone.

There is no point in rotating downtime into play times that affect more players just to please the fewest amount of customers. That is business fail right there.

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It's not your English that is bad, it's your reading skills. I already confirmed that my posts about the UK pertained only to the UK. I was not substituting one for the other.

then i apolagise, will try to improve my "reading" skills ;D.
as i said in the beginning of the topic i stopped reading at the exact post i quoted.

to be thruthfull i would have loved European servers as from my experience in about 8 years of MMOs whenever there where USA/EU servers mixed for some weird (or not so weird) reason it all became very hostile after a while :/ .

Again im sorry for any mispells and such.

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Did you look at my link.

You know - the one that shows that WOW has about 1/4 american subscribers and 3/4s for the rest of the world...


Didnt think so.

actually no, I didn't. because I looked at the forum title and it said Star Trek Online, not World of ********. That game chooses down time for each server based on when it will affect the least amount of users. Huh, what a concept.

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I'm not "fighting for America" here. I am simply trying to explain why the down time this morning was placed when it was. I really don't care for any nationalistic pride whatsoever. American, British, German, French, whatever, nationalism always leads to bad things.

I don't think my nation is better or deserves vip treatment. What I do expect is for Cryptic to do their downtimes when it affects the least amount of customers, and that is what they are doing.

Some of you guys are simply rabbid to peg me a some self absorbed ignorant American. I'm not the one who is displaying stereotypical behavior here. I'm not insulting anyone, I'm just trying to explain business, and you want a border dispute.

the least amount of customers isnt when they did it they want to **** off the least amount then they need do it around a better time zone coz theres less americans to **** off then the rest of the world

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then i apolagise, will try to improve my "reading" skills ;D.
as i said in the beginning of the topic i stopped reading at the exact post i quoted.

to be thruthfull i would have loved European servers as from my experience in about 8 years of MMOs whenever there where USA/EU servers mixed for some weird (or not so weird) reason it all became very hostile after a while :/ .

Again im sorry for any mispells and such.

It's no problem. If more people would ask civil question and not turn everything into a hostile "my nation is better than yours" debate the world (and this forum) would be a better place.

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BECAUSE THIS MYTHICAL TIMESLOT you suggest DOES NOT EXIST. Downtime will ALWAYS inconvinience SOMEONE. It's just the way it works.

We all understand that there are more people in the whole of Europe that the United States. Good google work for you. But, that means absolutely NOTHING about how many people are playing Star Trek Online.

Cryptic chose the timeslot they did because they wanted the least amount of people to lose game time. Do you think they LIKE being at work from 3-5 in the morning to babysit the server work?

I don't think any amount of reason will pass through to you guys. If you want to see a company that literally flips off their customer base look at turbine. Their patches and work happens usually in the PST afternoon and evening, during it's player primetime. They don't care who is or isn't playing, they just don't want to work at 4 in the morning. THAT is chosing yourself over your customer, Cryptic is NOT.

Are you trying to say a company which has invested as much money in to this as cryptic have cant have a guy do work early in the morning because its inconvenient? I dont think so and I dont see why your taking us suggesting that as a possiblity as an offense directed towards you or the US. If enough people complained about it you can bet they would get someone up a bit earlier in the morning, and if they dont change it guarentee they will upset a good chunk of their subscribers.

I also know that there being more than twice the population in europe as there is in america doesnt mean more are playing STO, but then again can you say otherwise? I would have to guess it either averages out about the same for both sides or slightly more for europe, suprisingly most of them are actually developed countries you know.

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the least amount of customers isnt when they did it they want to **** off the least amount then they need do it around a better time zone coz theres less americans to **** off then the rest of the world

I am sorry you do not understand the business perspective of what I have said. All of the populace in the world has nothing to do with when they are playing.

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actually no, I didn't. because I looked at the forum title and it said Star Trek Online, not World of ********. That game chooses down time for each server based on when it will affect the least amount of users. Huh, what a concept.

And - let me see - STO currently has ZERO subscribers and thus we have no stats for it.

But to think that any one game would be MASSIVELY different from any other in terms of player base is rather bizzare (unless it was specifically based around one aspect of that country - EG an MMO based on the history of China for example)

You chose to ignore it because it put a huge crack in your arguement.

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It's no problem. If more people would ask civil question and not turn everything into a hostile "my nation is better than yours" debate the world (and this forum) would be a better place.

In that you have my full support ;).

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then i apolagise, will try to improve my "reading" skills ;D.
as i said in the beginning of the topic i stopped reading at the exact post i quoted.

to be thruthfull i would have loved European servers as from my experience in about 8 years of MMOs whenever there where USA/EU servers mixed for some weird (or not so weird) reason it all became very hostile after a while :/ .

Again im sorry for any mispells and such.

yeah that has happen in alot of MMO's thats why on most us in the rest of the world are on a diff server to the americans coz then we dont have to put up with there ****

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So I assume you know for a fact that at this moment in time more Americans are playing this game?

Rotating the time zones for downtime seems more practical for everyone. just wondering but when the servers go down at 2am in the morning PST who is around to sort them?

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Are you trying to say a company which has invested as much money in to this as cryptic have cant have a guy do work early in the morning because its inconvenient? I dont think so and I dont see why your taking us suggesting that as a possiblity as an offense directed towards you or the US. If enough people complained about it you can bet they would get someone up a bit earlier in the morning, and if they dont change it guarentee they will upset a good chunk of their subscribers.

I also know that there being more than twice the population in europe as there is in america doesnt mean more are playing STO, but then again can you say otherwise? I would have to guess it either averages out about the same for both sides or slightly more for europe, suprisingly most of them are actually developed countries you know.

I am also sorry that you too can not understand what I have tried to say. The point was that they would not chose to work at 3 am if they had a choice. They do it to please their customer base, because the least amount of players will be affected at that time.

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I'm not "fighting for America" here. I am simply trying to explain why the down time this morning was placed when it was..

And you have mythical powers or can read the minds of the people who made this decision?
You are telling everything like it is the one and only truth, and that ticks people off. It might be that Cryptic has choosen the time with the least players online, or the techs might just like to work 3 to 5 am (i know i do, great overtime pay in that timeslot), but it's all just guessing.

Best reason i can think of is they just don't want to **** off us people, because us law allows for much more lawsuits and us people are much more tended to sue...

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And - let me see - STO currently has ZERO subscribers and thus we have no stats for it.

But to think that any one game would be MASSIVELY different from any other in terms of player base is rather bizzare (unless it was specifically based around one aspect of that country - EG an MMO based on the history of China for example)

You chose to ignore it because it put a huge crack in your arguement.

Did you not think they have been colleting data for a couple weeks now to show when the most and fewest amount of players are playing? Hmmm...

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So you think we should believe that an American company will perform their events on a fair level to those outside of the US while they dont manage to mention GMT times in their communication and have used PST time in nearly all accouncements thus far ? Now 10 years ago (been playing mmorpgs since 1995) I would not make any point on that cause Europe was not on the mmorpg charts, but today in full fledges European product launches I expect service as a European customer and not having to convert PST time to my time, after all my monthly contribution to the game is exactly the same of US citizens.
couldn't agree more. This feels like the start of UO concerning the treatment of non-US players. This was probably ok for CO since this whole superhero thing isn't that popular outside the US, but Star Trek is well known around the world so the bigger markets really deserve some more love. (like regular maintenance not on primetime ON WEEKEND or like you said converting times in GMT or something, or official chat channels for different languages, not to mention closer servers allowing ping <200 ...)

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I can see both points here. The STO servers and hence it's "Space Server Gerbils" are bases in the US in the PST timezone, so they would logicaly perform maintainance posted in PST. However, as a Network Admin myself if I had to do something to a server (OO-ER!) which would take it down, or effect the users connected to it, I would do it outside "office hours". So it makes sense for them to do regular maintainance during the night. Does not impact peak users, and with enough notice even the night owls will not have their feathers ruffled.

Converting current maintainance times to GMT means that the game will be offline 'till about midday GMT. Might be a pain in the arse for the brits, but when "most" of their client base is projected to be based in the US and it's associated timezones (personally, due to the worldwide appeal of Trek I think this decision will bite them on the arse relatively shortly, but thats another discussion) it means that the yanks are not disadvantaged.

Until they work out that they could do with a "rest of the world" server based in the EU somewhere we can do nothing but put up with it. I do expect them to be fair with events though. Otherwise it would be branded as being biased towards the americans, which will not be good for publicity, regardless of where most of their clients end up living.

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Did you not think they have been colleting data for a couple weeks now to show when the most and fewest amount of players are playing? Hmmm...

Oh right - you mean during open beta and closed beta...

That time where the American market got saturated with codes and offers and the rest of the world was ignored.

Strange that they had more people there then isnt it?

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In any event I am done here, this time for good. There is no point in continuing to argue with some of you. You have convinced yourself that America and Cryptic is out to get the EU. I hope someday that paranoia goes away. This is simply business sense, and Cryptic trying to accommodate as many customers as possible.

You can please some customers all the time, and all customers some of the time, but you cannot please all customers all of the time.

Have fun in STO guys, and try to ease up on your stereotypical views of us Americans. We are not all like what you see on TV, as I am sure you are all not like what we see on TV.

Good Luck :cool:

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Did you not think they have been colleting data for a couple weeks now to show when the most and fewest amount of players are playing? Hmmm...

hmm lets think now Beta ................... getting data hmmmm im guessing when Bata was happening that every one who didnt need to sleep didnt so if they got data then well it might be wrong

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Are you being intentionally dense?

The mmo market has shown time and again across more games than I can find the info for that the american market accounts of ONE QUARTER of subscriptions.

so - they are being nationalisitic about it. And you are just being a troll now.

http://www.mmogchart.com/Chart11.html :rolleyes:

Of the English speaking world, according to this, your famed WoW example puts North America subscriptions above Europe. So for the English speaking world, it makes sense things would circle around North America. And keep in mind... this doesn't mean "US". It means the U.S., Canada, and Mexico.

The Asia market is probably handled separately, with notifications, maintenances, etc., being tailored specific to that region.

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I am also sorry that you too can not understand what I have tried to say. The point was that they would not chose to work at 3 am if they had a choice. They do it to please their customer base, because the least amount of players will be affected at that time.

well to be honest i wouldnt care if they do work at 3am if that is actually what they are planning to do since I mostly play in the evenings. What I would have a problem with is if they were still working on it at say 9am PST so maybe you weren't getting what I meant. If they affect europeans ability to play on the evening then they have a big problem on their hands.

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You have convinced yourself that America and Cryptic is out to get the EU. I hope someday that paranoia goes away. This is simply business sense, and Cryptic trying to accommodate as many customers as possible.

Oh - you mean they ARENT out to 'get' the EU...

Well - they could make a better job of it by:

1) not excluding EU citizens from their naming competition

2) Not releasing unique content via american shops (taco bell) that means that europeans cannot get those items

3) Not releasing the game 6 days later in the EU than in the IUS

4) Not releasing all the 'good' preorder items to the US

5) Not releasing all the pre-orders to the US about 3 weeks before the EU.

Frankly - they have a shocking record when it comes to being 'fair' to anyone outside of the US (and apparantly that includes Canada - they got screwed on some things too!)

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http://www.mmogchart.com/Chart11.html :rolleyes:

Of the English speaking world, according to this, your famed WoW example puts North America subscriptions above Europe. So for the English speaking world, it makes sense things would circle around North America. And keep in mind... this doesn't mean "US". It means the U.S., Canada, and Mexico.

The Asia market is probably handled separately, with notifications, maintenances, etc., being tailored specific to that region.

ERm - are you agreeing with me or disaggreeing with me?

Because I have said about 4 times that the north american section is slightly higher than the european section - but basically about the same (2.5 million vs 2.3 or so - so about the same)

Secondly - I hate WOW, ive never played it - its just the only mmo that actually produces big statistics.

thirdly - how the **** do you include europe as ENGLISH SPEAKING????? 2 countries out of 30 or so countries in europe speaks english (well 5 of you include wales, scotland and n. ireland separately)

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Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz zzzzzzzzzzzz

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ERm - are you agreeing with me or disaggreeing with me?

Because I have said about 4 times that the north american section is slightly higher than the european section - but basically about the same (2.5 million vs 2.3 or so - so about the same)

Secondly - I hate WOW, ive never played it - its just the only mmo that actually produces big statistics.

thirdly - how the **** do you include europe as ENGLISH SPEAKING????? 2 countries out of 30 or so countries in europe speaks english (well 5 of you include wales, scotland and n. ireland separately)

Maidel bud you make me giggle but i agree with you

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Maidel bud you make me giggle but i agree with you

HAHA

Well I try sometimes. :D


(but in this instance I wasnt. :p)

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just a note on what the main topic is about.
I see in the options on the client login under options/ Proxy
3 servers
None, US, and EU.

So i would gather there are at least 2 server running this game.
So why not do the events per server.
EU server event and US server event. ?

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just a note on what the main topic is about.
I see in the options on the client login under options/ Proxy
3 servers
None, US, and EU.

So i would gather there are at least 2 server running this game.
So why not do the events per server.
EU server event and US server event. ?

No- they are proxy servers - I would think of them as 'boosters'

There are in realitiy HUNDREDS of servers running this game - but they are all in 1 place.

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No- they are proxy servers - I would think of them as 'boosters'

There are in realitiy HUNDREDS of servers running this game - but they are all in 1 place.

whats a booster? new type of proxy I havent heard of?

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This is turning into a silly US vs Eu all over again (i say again because its not the first time in an MMO).

Basically we are just clients of a company , our opinion matters but not that much, money and income from playerbase will speak louder.

My proposal: let it rest and we will see how it goes, no point in starting to bash eachother across the atlantic in a forum as "not so good in the head" people will start sooner or later to post more agressive opinions and then this will be locked (and with due right).

lets just wait for servers to be back up and have fun playing ;D

peace and love ;D

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Oh - you mean they ARENT out to 'get' the EU...

Well - they could make a better job of it by:

1) not excluding EU citizens from their naming competition

2) Not releasing unique content via american shops (taco bell) that means that europeans cannot get those items

3) Not releasing the game 6 days later in the EU than in the IUS

4) Not releasing all the 'good' preorder items to the US

5) Not releasing all the pre-orders to the US about 3 weeks before the EU.

Frankly - they have a shocking record when it comes to being 'fair' to anyone outside of the US (and apparantly that includes Canada - they got screwed on some things too!)

You might want to check EU regulations on some of these. The EU does have a few rules regarding the economic impact of contests, sweepstakes, and whatnot. There are also import/export issues on both sides of the Atlantic, regarding pre-ordered products. The time delay is also pretty normal, on either end. EU devs and publishers delay North American releases constantly...just as North American devs and pubs delay EU releases. There are reasons, both logistical and legal. Not that I don't agree that many of my fellow countrymen are fat, lazy, stupid, and anti-EU...it's just that we should stop throwing rocks at each other and see that there's a level of common sense used in choosing times.

Scheduled downtimes tend to happen when you can plan on having a chunck of people in the office. This is because, if anything goes wrong, you have the necessary staff to handle it. Being a game company, let's face it, these people are likely overworked, especially right now. They don't want to have to continually figure out who draws short straw so that the players in Siberia don't suffer from this week's downtime. Some of them would actually like to go home, sometime during the week. They should not be with their families or at least having personal downtime just so you can have your vague chance that you'll be able to play when you want to? And what if there's an unexpected downtime when you want to play? Are you going to say they did it just to **** off the Europeans? What if one time zone gets hit too many times in a short period of time? Are they biased because the computer chose a random date? And what of the logistic factor of chosing random times for it, the scheduling aspects? Common sense...please...

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ERm - are you agreeing with me or disaggreeing with me?

Because I have said about 4 times that the north american section is slightly higher than the european section - but basically about the same (2.5 million vs 2.3 or so - so about the same)

And yet you ***** and moan about Blizzard acting in North American times when dealing with Europe?

thirdly - how the **** do you include europe as ENGLISH SPEAKING????? 2 countries out of 30 or so countries in europe speaks english (well 5 of you include wales, scotland and n. ireland separately)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_language_in_Europe

You'll find a lot more Europeans capable of speaking English than you will find of the opposite.
I've had to deal with people in various European counties as part of my job, too, and they all understood and could speak a fair amount of English.

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This is turning into a silly US vs Eu all over again (i say again because its not the first time in an MMO).

Basically we are just clients of a company , our opinion matters but not that much, money and income from playerbase will speak louder.

My proposal: let it rest and we will see how it goes, no point in starting to bash eachother across the atlantic in a forum as "not so good in the head" people will start sooner or later to post more agressive opinions and then this will be locked (and with due right).

lets just wait for servers to be back up and have fun playing ;D

peace and love ;D

how very utopian, makes me feel all warm and fuzzy yes lets not fight about it and just agree our common enemy is the company

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Oh - you mean they ARENT out to 'get' the EU...

Well - they could make a better job of it by:

1) not excluding EU citizens from their naming competition

2) Not releasing unique content via american shops (taco bell) that means that europeans cannot get those items

3) Not releasing the game 6 days later in the EU than in the IUS

4) Not releasing all the 'good' preorder items to the US

5) Not releasing all the pre-orders to the US about 3 weeks before the EU.

Frankly - they have a shocking record when it comes to being 'fair' to anyone outside of the US (and apparantly that includes Canada - they got screwed on some things too!)

Yeah, but we get the headstart for longer before having to actually purchase the game. You may want to keep that one under your hat... whoops.

To be fair, Taco Bell is mainly west coast, so half of the US didn't get it either. I ended up getting mine through a nice chap on the closed beta forum.

I'll have to admit starting to somewhat salivate over the 'deluxe mega Federation bumper box' (sorry I loose track of all the different box names - it's the one with the comm badge) and a little disappointed that it wasn't available in the UK.

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how very utopian, makes me feel all warm and fuzzy yes lets not fight about it and just agree our common enemy is the company

haha, maybe get up an anti globalization rally while we are at it ;D (sarcasm)

nãaa, just dont like to see people getting all up because they think their country is being prefered or detered(?!), think its just silly.
Being a Manager myself all i can say is money talks and period ;).

(and nothing against money being the main issue, after all thats what companies are for, making profit)

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You might want to check EU regulations on some of these. The EU does have a few rules regarding the economic impact of contests, sweepstakes, and whatnot. There are also import/export issues on both sides of the Atlantic, regarding pre-ordered products. The time delay is also pretty normal, on either end. EU devs and publishers delay North American releases constantly...just as North American devs and pubs delay EU releases. There are reasons, both logistical and legal. Not that I don't agree that many of my fellow countrymen are fat, lazy, stupid, and anti-EU...it's just that we should stop throwing rocks at each other and see that there's a level of common sense used in choosing times.

Scheduled downtimes tend to happen when you can plan on having a chunck of people in the office. This is because, if anything goes wrong, you have the necessary staff to handle it. Being a game company, let's face it, these people are likely overworked, especially right now. They don't want to have to continually figure out who draws short straw so that the players in Siberia don't suffer from this week's downtime. Some of them would actually like to go home, sometime during the week. They should not be with their families or at least having personal downtime just so you can have your vague chance that you'll be able to play when you want to? And what if there's an unexpected downtime when you want to play? Are you going to say they did it just to **** off the Europeans? What if one time zone gets hit too many times in a short period of time? Are they biased because the computer chose a random date? And what of the logistic factor of chosing random times for it, the scheduling aspects? Common sense...please...

WOT....

1) I know all about those legalities - I also know that cryptic didnt even bother - there are none of those rules in the UK beyond making the rules fit UK law - and they couldnt be bothered to do that even.

2) I have not once in this thread or any other accused other posters of being anything - I even avoided the obvious response to the idiot who called us all 'euro trash'. Please dont tar me with that bigoted brush.

3) Unexpected down times I can accept (From time to time obviously)

4) I most certainly dont think they did it intentionally to **** off europeans. What I am saying is that they actually dont CARE about the european market - they have shown this time and time again with either their ignorance or apathy that they just cant be bothered to look outisde of the USA.

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And yet you ***** and moan about Blizzard acting in North American times when dealing with Europe?



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_language_in_Europe

You'll find a lot more Europeans capable of speaking English than you will find of the opposite.
I've had to deal with people in various European counties as part of my job, too, and they all understood and could speak a fair amount of English.

I havent moaned about blizzard at all - dear god man read my posts.

The only referance I have made to WOW is their user numbers by region. Keep up please!!!


And, despite a large amount of europe being very proficent english speakers (thank god because I cant speak any of their languages!) if you told the french or the germans that they are 'English speaking countries' I susspect you would have WW3 starting before you could finish the sentance.

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I havent moaned about blizzard at all - dear god man read my posts.

The only referance I have made to WOW is their user numbers by region. Keep up please!!!

Let me quote you to you, then:
Are you being intentionally dense?

The mmo market has shown time and again across more games than I can find the info for that the american market accounts of ONE QUARTER of subscriptions.

so - they are being nationalisitic about it. And you are just being a troll now.

You're accusing Cryptic of being nationalistic because you believed Europe has a larger subscription percentage than the United States, and you cited World of ******** as an example to support your argument. I provided evidence to debunk you and, by extension, provided evidence that Cryptic isn't being nationalistic; they're acting based on the numbers.

And, despite a large amount of europe being very proficent english speakers (thank god because I cant speak any of their languages!) if you told the french or the germans that they are 'English speaking countries' I susspect you would have WW3 starting before you could finish the sentance.

Which would be ironic since they would have had to understand me. I might be wiped out by a nuke, but I'd be grinning all the while.

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Well putting aside the national bashing it still comes down to whatever time they do maintenance someone in the world will be at prime time, it would make more sense for the servers to come down during PST daytime when there will more likely be more Cryptic staff available to work on the servers and patching, the result of that would be most of the EU losing the game for the evening which I am sure you don't want. The current issue that the OP is complaining about is the game being down for a couple of hours around Noon in the EU which only affects those not at work or at school and unless you are a shift worker you still get to play prime time. True some parts of the world will be affected with the current schedule during their prinetime but is the mass debate here from those that play weekdays during the day or the larger population in the EU that can't and wont even notice it ? and I am a Brit currently living in the US so I am not having a dig as I'll be experiencing EU downtime when I return :p

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It doesn't matter where it's marketed. It's primary base is in the United States. You have to play to your base. A majority of subs are from the U.S. This has nothing to do with some nationality superiority complex. Look up Pirates of the Burning Sea. Updates and such are done on Aussie time, because it's primary player base is from Australia, and it's an Australian company.

I think you are the only one who is the narcissist here.

are you sure about these ? most of the EU pre order sellers gone out of stock and most of us ordered through steam....

And world vs US hmmm are you kidding me ? Forget about Europe but also asia, australia etc. (I know most of the US guys belive that we are linivg in caves tent etc at asia and eastern europe but guess what. We are not!)

And for the burning see, last time I check there was 5-10 people per server still playing....

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It's an internet game, marketed world wide.... internet goes further then just the US. Their base is the world, the US is only a small part of that.

really SMALL part :D

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Let me quote you to you, then:


You're accusing Cryptic of being nationalistic because you believed Europe has a larger subscription percentage than the United States, and you cited World of ******** as an example to support your argument. I provided evidence to debunk you and, by extension, provided evidence that Cryptic isn't being nationalistic; they're acting based on the numbers..

WHAT???

You accused me of whining about blizzard.

Which I havent.

Please explain what you are saying ive said now, because ive lost track.

You havent produced evidence of anything - quite the contrary. So - please try again.

All Ive said is that MMOs have about 1/4 of their user base in the USA/north america, 1/4 of their user base in europe and 1/2 their user base elsewhere.

Therefore, pandering to the American market is NOT a good way to go because you alienate 3/4 of your user base.

The only way you can prove me wrong is to show me figures from STO which says 3/4 of the subscriber base is American - which isnt going to happen.

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I agree to that, but what Im saying the past four posts is that the downtime determination was not made on actual player base at this point, but more on default custom to do maintenance during the most convience time for US players.

You're just wrong about this, totally wrong. They've had hundreds of thousands of people around the world in beta. They know what their player base looks like already, and they don't care WHERE the people are from, they only care how MANY of them there are at given times. I know you like to think that your own personal favorite time to play is everybody's favorite time, but it's simply not true. Star Trek fandom skews older than most games, and the average MMO player is much older than the average gamer anyway. Most of the people playing this game have jobs. Most people with jobs don't log on during the early afternoon.

They perform their communication in PST time SINCE DAY ONE, even before closed beta, if you aim at servicing all regions you communicate in GMT time, period.

You think this because you're in Belgium. EU companies communicate in GMT, because half their customer base is either in GMT or GMT+1. American companies tend to communicate in their own time zone, and offer GMT information secondarily if at all, because the majority of their customer base has never needed to know what "GMT" is in their lives. You should have seen the chaos in the IRC channels when we tried doing times in GMT only; it was a constant flood of questions "what is that in my town's time?"

But none of this has ANYTHING WHATSOEVER to do with the downtimes decisions, which are 100% solely based on concurrency numbers. Period. There's no conspiracy here; it's simply a matter of reading the logs and seeing when the fewest people play.