My point still stands. Maintenance during peak hours is a no-go for MMOs and can be easily avoided.

[quote]My point still stands. Maintenance during peak hours is a no-go for MMOs and can be easily avoided.[/quote] Pull up a time zone map, and see what time it is on the US West Coast. Therein lies an explanation. The same thing applies to games hosted solely in Tokyo... The servers are worked on during time frames that are best for the company's staffing needs.

I'm getting the point WHY the maintenance is at this hour. I don't need your explanation for that. I was simply pointing out, that maintenace during peak hours is a no-go for MMOs. I guess I should have elaborated on my initial posting and wrote it as "Why is there no separate maintenance for each region?" like in my own post (which I can't find anymore due to servers being offline [how ironic]).

[quote]I'm getting the point WHY the maintenance is at this hour. I don't need your explanation for that. I was simply pointing out, that maintenace during peak hours is a no-go for MMOs. I guess I should have elaborated on my initial posting and wrote it as "Why is there no separate maintenance for each region?" like in my own post (which I can't find anymore due to servers being offline [how ironic]).[/quote] The answer is the same. As I said in a previous post. There are no regional data centers. There aren't even regional servers for that matter. There is no regional separation of any kind in this game. Servers go offline in Seattle for maintenance and the whole universe goes down at once. Because there is only one set of servers for all of the player base. There is no EU region to take down seperately... it is all one shared "world", of a sort.

And again, I understand your explanation. But maintenance during peak hours is still a no-go in MMOs. It can be avoided. They didnt avoid it. They made a mistake.

[quote]And again, I understand your explanation. But maintenance during peak hours is still a no-go in MMOs. It can be avoided. They didnt avoid it. They made a mistake.[/quote] No... you are not understanding the explanation, or something else is going on... It is not peak time on the west coast.. not for the US, much less the entirety of the player base. It is peak time in a specific region only. Pick any :00 time around the clock face and it will always be 5 pm, 8pm, 8am, AND 5am SOMEWHERE in the world... all at that exact point in time. There is no way for them to isolate an update for specific region. The maintenance is taking place during their normal business hours in THEIR TIME ZONE.

I'm understanding the basic concept of time zones. And that they are doing the maintenance during their working hours. The point still stands, maintenance during peak hours IN ANY REGION should and can be avoided. And they didn't. For example, they could have changed their server structure and used separate servers for every region, right? This would have avoided the mess with maintenance-timing.

[quote]I'm understanding the basic concept of time zones. And that they are doing the maintenance during their working hours. The point still stands, maintenance during peak hours IN ANY REGION should and can be avoided. And they didn't. For example, they could have changed their server structure and used separate servers for every region, right? This would have avoided the mess with maintenance-timing.[/quote] That is the key point you are not grasping. The design philosophy has never been built around regional separation. They did not and do not want that experience for the playerbase. Their philosophy has and continues to be a truly "global experience". Always someone online somewhere in the world for you to play with... regardless of peak/off-peak times in your specific region. They went into designing the game with that specific mindset for specific reasons... There is purposely no regional separation by design. So when the world goes down at 9am on the west coast it also goes down at 1am in Tokyo, 4pm in Iceland, etc. It all goes down at the same Zulu time for everybody... regardless of the individually different time zones.

Now that's something I didn't know before (design-philosophy), thanks for pointing that out. However, I'm then wondering, why I have to change my client to NA when I want to play with NA people despite their "global design philosophy" (again, not the technical reasoning but the logic behind it).

[quote]Now that's something I didn't know before (design-philosophy), thanks for pointing that out. However, I'm then wondering, why I have to change my client to NA when I want to play with NA people despite their "global design philosophy" (again, not the technical reasoning but the logic behind it).[/quote] That is more bound to the platform environment and applicable licensing and other legal matters. There is the XBL/PSN/Blizzard requirements depending on the platform as well as variances in laws regarding virtual property, contractual obligations, etc. For example, in the US we pretty much own nothing but the physical medium the software is delivered/installed/played on, and a license code. That is it. We have no other rights concerning the virtual property or anything beyond the physical medium and that code. We actually do not own a copy of the game... nor our characters or their gear. Activision/Bungie still retain their full ownership of the software and it is all on loan from them... from a legal standpoint. Different countries/regions may treat things differently.