I was participating in an expedition when I received the Nov 20, 5:04 pm Server Maintenance announcement at the bottom of my screen.
It was 5:00pm.
Four minutes. We had FOUR MINUTES to finish the expedition before the server went down. We rushed and barely started the boss fight before the server went down and we all got kicked off.
Once the server is back online, I’ll update this thread with the outcome.
Here’s what I expect
Worst case scenario, we spawn at the entrance, no items collected, orb consumed. (as if the server was rolled back 15m to the point where we started the dungeon)
Middle case scenario, we spawn inside the expedition, progress maintained, possibly missing team members because life happens and who knows when servers will actually be back up.
Best case scenario, we spawn at the entrance with the items / experience collected and the orb refunded OR we spawn inside and can pick up where we left off with all team members assembled to continue.
Regardless of the outcome, this is a really terrible user experience. The team should give people at least 30 minutes to an hour of notice before maintenance. Had we known, we wouldn’t have started the expedition in the first place.
UPDATE:
Orb was consumed.
We were kicked out of the dungeon.
Items collected prior to kick were kept.
One teammate logged in dead and was served with the respawn choice screen as if he had died out in the wilderness. He was alive prior to being kicked off.
I doubt they want to lose players. I think these issues may be the result of New World being the first MMO created by the AGS team. There are a lot of things I enjoy about new world and I plan to continue playing, but issues like this need attention.
Imagine going through the effort to create an orb for a high-level expedition, assembling a crew ad hoc or planned with company mates, and then this…
Most MMO’s will give a one hour in-game notice when server maintenance is coming with a persistent flag on screen. It’s obvious New World has that capability, so they should think of the player base.
Bottom line, situations like this make me question whether AGS is operating according to Amazon Leadership Principles, which is supposed to be core to every Amazon team afaik.
Particularly, these two:
Customer Obsession
Leaders start with the customer and work backwards. They work vigorously to earn and keep customer trust. Although leaders pay attention to competitors, they obsess over customers.
Insist on the Highest Standards
Leaders have relentlessly high standards—many people may think these standards are unreasonably high. Leaders are continually raising the bar and drive their teams to deliver high-quality products, services, and processes. Leaders ensure that defects do not get sent down the line and that problems are fixed so they stay fixed.
The sentence before the one you quoted clarifies the why…
Regardless of the outcome, this is a really terrible user experience.
Ergo, giving people prior notice provides a better user experience because players have the ability to make decisions versus being forced into a bad outcome (which in our case was a wasted orb, an incomplete expedition for four people, and a loss in durability to the dude that died).
Better user experience = happier users
happier users = more advocacy
more advocacy = player base growth
player base growth = revenue growth
revenue growth = more budget for headcount, content, etc…