Guild Wars 2

Patches usually seem to hit around noon for me (eastern time), which would essentially be first thing (9am) in the morning for Pacific time.

Makes sense honestly, since they will want time to address any issues with the roll out during the day, rather than having to waste their personal time in the evening. I’m positive they would prefer to be playing just as much as we would.

Where Anet is, it’s not even the start of the work day and you are complaining that the patch isn’t live yet?
Have some patience, people.
Besides, they never give a specified time – probably because they know if they are 30secs late there will be an unbelievable outcry of rage on the forums.

Eh, since it’s an intercontinental game anyway, why don’t they just patch at some reasonable time like 00:00 UTC. I mean, that’s one of the reasons why time standards exist in the first place, right? :P Also the Wiki uses UTC… makes for much less confusion when comparing time. What do I know what PST or ECT stands for in regards to my GMT+1 ? :P

This way everyone would just remember their +/-X to UTC and life would be easier :P

But then you remember, UTC does not observe DST… bleh, reminds me of this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5wpm-gesOY

I’ve come to look forward to this thread on patch day. Every patch day somebody makes this thread and every patch day it is the same answer.

Borghal.1635:

Eh, since it’s an intercontinental game anyway, why don’t they just patch at some reasonable time like 00:00 UTC. I mean, that’s one of the reasons why time standards exist in the first place, right? :P Also the Wiki uses UTC… makes for much less confusion when comparing time. What do I know what PST or ECT stands for in regards to my GMT+1 ? :P

This way everyone would just remember their +/-X to UTC and life would be easier :P

But then you remember, UTC does not observe DST… bleh, reminds me of this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5wpm-gesOY

Because for some reason they may like to sleep.

I would say that is to be expected. It’s really a bit unprofessional to not announce the patch times. As an example, Riot of LoL fame always announce at least a day ahead the hours in which they will be patching.

I realize the genre is a bit different – in LoL it is a bit more necessary because they shut down ranked games for the duration. But imo it still comes down to organizational skill, not technical reasons.

Yargesh.4965:

Because for some reason they may like to sleep.

Idk, where are the relevant offices based? UTC is roughly GMT so if America, midnight UTC would not be sleeping time.

Besides, your remark is irrelevant anyway. This being a 24-h online game, they needs must have shifts to cover the whole day. Also for the patch release team it wouldn’t be much of a bother to do it “overnight” (that’s assuming they’re Europe-based) once in every while (as I mentioned before, if one international company can do it, so can the other).

ArenaNet has a single office in Washington, USA. Pacific time zone.
http://www.arena.net/

They may have 24 hour support (not sure though), but I don’t think think they have shifts like you’re talking about. Which is why things don’t get fixed/changed after hours or on weekends, unless it’s an emergency.

Oh… thanks for correcting :-) I really didn’t think a game as big as this would get away with not having someone constantly on watch, but I suppose they must know if it’s worth it or not.