I would like to thank BioWare and whoever else is in charge of Star Wars: The Old Republic for leaving such gaping holes in planning and design, this post was possible to dream this up in my beer fueled "SW:TOR is down for maintenance" noggin. I say whoever else, because I am not sure if Lucas Arts, Turbine, Sony, a small group of self-loathing hampsters or retarded monkeys were in on the release of it... Probably the latter. But I also don't care. It is a game, I am playing it and it has some weird things that bug the hell out of me.
That said; let me wander into ban stick wonderland...
Four points. Then I will explain what I mean.
1. It is 2012. (Which also means it is not 1997, 1999 or 2004.)
2. All servers have a clock and not everybody lives in Chicago.
3. Time zones matter.
4. It should only take a single registration to buy/play/give feedback on a game.
1.
The user interface (UI) in SW:TOR makes me wish it was 1997 when Everquest came out. Everquests was better. So was Asheron's Call (1999) and World of Warcraft (2004.) And even if you hated them, at least AC and WoW let you write tools to make them suck less. But SW:TOR is sort of like nobody even bothered to look at another MMORPG for UI design and features.
It so completely lacks features that every other game has migrated towards, I just can't even figure out how to phrase my bewilderment. I didn't play other Star Wars games, so maybe this is common .. Well, maybe I did, but it was on controllers... Which might explain the UI sucking so bad on PC. But christ on a stick, my dog could have put in a better user design experience than what they shipped.
I feel like I stepped through a time warp into games from a decade(s) ago. (And not even talking about the shadows, water or other sub-par graphics, UI and functional bug - just the UI.)
2.
25% of the US lives in Central Standard Time. The rest of the country is only remotely aware of Central Standard Time because it is always called out as having a different time than the entire rest of the country for everything that happens. "This Tuesday at 8PM! (7 Central!)"
I used to travel a lot and have to reset myself across the international dateline. It was somewhat odd to realize I knew more about that than what the hell CST is and what time it is there. (Is there ever a CDT? Do they have daylight savings time? Do they ignore it and that is why it is always an hour off? I don't know. Then again, I also don't care.)
Why the would you post server maintenance time in a zone that pretty much nobody but the people that live there give or know a shit about? For one hundred thirty fucking years this country had figured out everything from Eastern Time and the rest of us can do our automatic math to fix the time in our heads. Hell, sorting out GMT is more automatic than CST.
Create server time. Or post in EST like everyone else on the planet.
3.
There are West, East and a few EU flavors of servers based on time zones and/or languages. Put an asterix on them at least that states that the time zone of the server means nothing to downtime and maintenance. You are kicking the west coast gaming population in the nuts at midnight (PST! (Hah!)) for weekly maintenance because either (a) the design was poor and you have to take it all down at once or (b) you don't really care about your player base and assume it will suffer in silence and keep paying. It can't imagine downtime through 4PM in the EU is popular either.
Why are you taking them all down at once? Why do you prefer EST gamers over PST? Why do you seem to hate the EU?
Why is this even a problem in 2012? (See #1 above.)
When they went down tonight, I actually thought about firng up other subscriptions and cancelling this one. I only didn't because I thought I had more to see in this game. But getting the boot part way through my gaming night for no particular reason other than "we are lazy" won't keep some gamers around. Or happy if they do stick it out.
4.
I gave up trying to post on SW:TOR forums. Admins kept yammering on in chat or in game messages about forty fuckign steps I had to go through to make my account work on the forums. Why?
Really. Why?
When I log in with the account that I use to pay money for the game, how absolutely shitty is your website that I have to do anything else to make a post?
Otherwise having fun. Flame on!
That said; let me wander into ban stick wonderland...
Four points. Then I will explain what I mean.
1. It is 2012. (Which also means it is not 1997, 1999 or 2004.)
2. All servers have a clock and not everybody lives in Chicago.
3. Time zones matter.
4. It should only take a single registration to buy/play/give feedback on a game.
1.
The user interface (UI) in SW:TOR makes me wish it was 1997 when Everquest came out. Everquests was better. So was Asheron's Call (1999) and World of Warcraft (2004.) And even if you hated them, at least AC and WoW let you write tools to make them suck less. But SW:TOR is sort of like nobody even bothered to look at another MMORPG for UI design and features.
It so completely lacks features that every other game has migrated towards, I just can't even figure out how to phrase my bewilderment. I didn't play other Star Wars games, so maybe this is common .. Well, maybe I did, but it was on controllers... Which might explain the UI sucking so bad on PC. But christ on a stick, my dog could have put in a better user design experience than what they shipped.
I feel like I stepped through a time warp into games from a decade(s) ago. (And not even talking about the shadows, water or other sub-par graphics, UI and functional bug - just the UI.)
2.
25% of the US lives in Central Standard Time. The rest of the country is only remotely aware of Central Standard Time because it is always called out as having a different time than the entire rest of the country for everything that happens. "This Tuesday at 8PM! (7 Central!)"
I used to travel a lot and have to reset myself across the international dateline. It was somewhat odd to realize I knew more about that than what the hell CST is and what time it is there. (Is there ever a CDT? Do they have daylight savings time? Do they ignore it and that is why it is always an hour off? I don't know. Then again, I also don't care.)
Why the would you post server maintenance time in a zone that pretty much nobody but the people that live there give or know a shit about? For one hundred thirty fucking years this country had figured out everything from Eastern Time and the rest of us can do our automatic math to fix the time in our heads. Hell, sorting out GMT is more automatic than CST.
Create server time. Or post in EST like everyone else on the planet.
3.
There are West, East and a few EU flavors of servers based on time zones and/or languages. Put an asterix on them at least that states that the time zone of the server means nothing to downtime and maintenance. You are kicking the west coast gaming population in the nuts at midnight (PST! (Hah!)) for weekly maintenance because either (a) the design was poor and you have to take it all down at once or (b) you don't really care about your player base and assume it will suffer in silence and keep paying. It can't imagine downtime through 4PM in the EU is popular either.
Why are you taking them all down at once? Why do you prefer EST gamers over PST? Why do you seem to hate the EU?
Why is this even a problem in 2012? (See #1 above.)
When they went down tonight, I actually thought about firng up other subscriptions and cancelling this one. I only didn't because I thought I had more to see in this game. But getting the boot part way through my gaming night for no particular reason other than "we are lazy" won't keep some gamers around. Or happy if they do stick it out.
4.
I gave up trying to post on SW:TOR forums. Admins kept yammering on in chat or in game messages about forty fuckign steps I had to go through to make my account work on the forums. Why?
Really. Why?
When I log in with the account that I use to pay money for the game, how absolutely shitty is your website that I have to do anything else to make a post?
Otherwise having fun. Flame on!
