One of the issues with living in Australia is our ridiculous time zone! Tonight Bioware is running scheduled maintenance for Star Wars: The Old Republic and, understandably, is undertaking said maintenance at a time that suits the majority of its player base in the US and Europe. The only problem is this maintenance will result in server downtime for Aussies between 7pm and 3am, which is pretty much when I imagine most people will want to be playing the game!
A message from Bioware on the official Star Wars: The Old Republic site stated the following…
Generally speaking we are aiming to limit our scheduled maintenance period to once a week, on Tuesdays. However, this week we will perform maintenance on Wednesday due to the New Year’s holiday. We are aiming for this weekly maintenance period to take place in an off-peak time for both North American and European players. We are also aiming to inform players of the precise duration of any weekly maintenance period at least 24 hours before the maintenance begins.
For our new players, this weekly maintenance is done in order to make general improvements and to check performance of the game so that we can continue to provide a consistent, quality experience. Quite often (but not always) after a maintenance period there will a patch to download. Please be sure to update your launcher after any maintenance period.
It’s most likely a fair call considering that Star Wars: The Old Republic hasn’t even been officially released in this region yet. Hopefully when the game is launched here officially, Bioware will find a way to maintain the game’s local servers at a more convenient time.
Bloody time difference — it’s the bane of my life. First it’s drunken call from Scottish family members at four in the morning, and now this?!
Scheduled Maintenance: January 4, 2012 [Star Wars: The Old Republic]
Rod
Wednesday, January 4, 2012 at 10:05 AMOur time zones are just lovely. It’s the rest of the planet that is the problem.
James Mac
Wednesday, January 4, 2012 at 10:33 AMDamn right!
Choc
Wednesday, January 4, 2012 at 10:08 AMMark its actually 7pm-3am
Starts at 8am GMT, we are plus 11 GMT at the moment in Sydney.
Mark Serrels
Wednesday, January 4, 2012 at 10:11 AMGar! Are you sure?
Edit: just double checked, the official site had me reading the CMT one instead of the GMT!
Thermal Ions
Wednesday, January 4, 2012 at 9:20 PMBut we’re not all from those funny States that have to adjust their clocks just to get to the new year an hour earlier. :)
Cakesmith
Wednesday, January 4, 2012 at 10:16 AMAs you mentioned in your article, as the game is technically not yet released in Australia I’m happy to cop this one. Rather not play for one night than Bioware IP blocking the game.
Ultimately, it’s no different to when WoW would go on extended maintenance during winter when it would go down from 8pm.
Almighty Booka
Wednesday, January 4, 2012 at 10:20 AMIt’s raid night anyway.
Inquisitorsz
Wednesday, January 4, 2012 at 10:21 AMIt was years before Wow changed their maintenance from 8pm tuesday nights to bout 11pm and we dont even have local servers. And only recently did they change to live hotfixes.
And like you said it’s not even officially released here. Why would there be any support at all?
I dont really see the point of this story. It’s something you have to deal with and it’s not like this is a new phenomenon.
Lobo
Wednesday, January 4, 2012 at 10:25 AMThe point is that Australians might be interested in knowing when the servers go down if they don’t already possess this information. It may be of use to those who aren’t playing the game yet but are considering it.
It’s here to provide information. Which it does.
Choc
Wednesday, January 4, 2012 at 10:23 AMwe have every right to be pissed if they do this when oceanic servers are up in March. And they probably will as they are taking the entire farms offline during the maintanence (even the forums go down)
NegativeZero
Wednesday, January 4, 2012 at 10:24 AMTuesday nights were maintenance nights for WoW usually as well, servers would be down for the bulk of our peak time.
Even if we had a different maintenance window in Australia once we get local servers, for a patch release they’d probably have to take everything offline at the same time. A staggered patch release is just too hard.
Also it’s very early days for the game at the moment, I expect they’ll have a new patch out every week for a while as there are still a lot of bugs they haven’t been able to squash yet due to holidays etc.
Cakesmith
Wednesday, January 4, 2012 at 10:30 AMI’m not sure if they still do, but WoW used to do a staggered US/EU patch. Sometimes by a few days. This could be more down to language translations though and other logistics.
pixxpixx
Wednesday, January 4, 2012 at 10:27 AMPatience is key. Soon we will be rocking our own server and even if we get out of sync maintenence’s we will have pings that a lot of us have longed for for close to a decade.
Cakesmith
Wednesday, January 4, 2012 at 10:29 AMPings are pretty good at the moment. I got ~200ms. Still able to PvP without any issues at all. But yes, playing at under 100ms will be glorious!
Glenn
Wednesday, January 4, 2012 at 10:28 AMCould be worse Mark, the EU servers are going down at the same time and they’ll apparently be down from like 8am to 4pm.
Oh well, tomorrow night I’ll just play something else :)
brettk
Wednesday, January 4, 2012 at 10:33 AMso for those australians who did get the game from overseas…any recommendations on what shops to purchase from? or not worth the hassle?
Cakesmith
Wednesday, January 4, 2012 at 10:36 AMIf you want a physical copy – Amazon.
If you’re happy with just a CD key – http://www.allcdkey.com/star-wars-the-old-republic.html
brettk
Wednesday, January 4, 2012 at 10:51 AMawesome, thanks!
brent3000
Wednesday, January 4, 2012 at 10:57 AMAlso see http://whirlpool.net.au/wiki/swtor (Lists the ‘aussie’ servers etc)
And if you need aussie help http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-replies.cfm?t=1836856
Choc
Wednesday, January 4, 2012 at 12:09 PMif you choose an ‘aussie’ server expect queues
Cannon
Wednesday, January 4, 2012 at 10:36 AMAnd there are no other games you can play to keep yourself amused. Hell i still havnt finished Batman AC or Skyrim yet …
brent3000
Wednesday, January 4, 2012 at 10:39 AM8 Hours a week for Maintenance :/ Gosh
The worst part is i would preffer the servers down on a Thursday night our time or Tuesday but not the mid Wednesday :’(
brent3000
Wednesday, January 4, 2012 at 10:40 AMAlso Mark 4am drunken calls… Its a perfect wake up call for SW :)
Aaron Clement
Wednesday, January 4, 2012 at 10:46 AMAs an Australian who’s been playing WoW since launch and dealing with the fact that Tuesday nights = no play nights, I can only say “welcome to the club”.
muzzington
Wednesday, January 4, 2012 at 10:58 AMLFGuild.
shodannet
Wednesday, January 4, 2012 at 10:59 AMAion weekly (WTF) maintenance happens on a wed around 8pm if I recall…
Doraiya
Wednesday, January 4, 2012 at 11:18 AMHave you ever thought about taking a night off from playing your mmo?
RB
Wednesday, January 4, 2012 at 11:18 AMMMOs all do this anyway. Just think yourselves lucky that they’re aiming to only do it once a week. CCP do Eve maintenance ever freaking day during AU prime time… Albeit it’s only 30min to 1h, but still :/
Mojo Jojo
Wednesday, January 4, 2012 at 11:21 AMIt’s the same with Warcraft, every Tuesday night at about 6 to 7 pm I need to find something else to do with my life. ie. p0rn.
InformedGamer
Wednesday, January 4, 2012 at 1:16 PM1 Hour maintenance…. 8 Hours maintenance… That’s kind of a big difference
Grim
Wednesday, January 4, 2012 at 11:40 AMNews flash: more than one time zone in Australia!
It’s 4pm until midnight for the other side of our country (you know, not Sydney/Melbourne)
BlackBird
Wednesday, January 4, 2012 at 12:18 PMThere are a lot of Aussies playng on Jekk Jekk Tarr, One Blood Gaming has a reasonably sized guild (100+) for anyone looking to group up with aussies. http://www.onebloodgaming.com.au
jimbo
Wednesday, January 4, 2012 at 12:19 PMGot this set up late last night looking forward to giving it a belt tonight.. and then i read this article.. Thanks Mark for breaking it to me early lol.
thyco1
Wednesday, January 4, 2012 at 12:19 PMWhy must every mmo that does weakly maintence (asopposed 2hours every night) always do it on a tuesday? the smart thing would be to make sure your game is up and running when your competitor is down for maintinence.
I mean there some of us who have multiple mmo accounts and its pretty shitty when you find out that you cant play any of them on a tuesday.
BlackBird
Wednesday, January 4, 2012 at 12:21 PMbah wont let me reply to my own comment
Sorry its – http://www.onebloodgaming.com
Mooseking
Wednesday, January 4, 2012 at 12:51 PMI refuse to stop playing ToR even for a minute. I’ll just have to find a way to send my own real life crew to pick me up rare recipes via treasure hunting and learn to incorporate that into my character.