Been a VIP for 17 years, honeslty a limp excuse of an apology and a potion thrown my way doesnt really cut it for me. Accountability goes a long long way further for me, as a gaming community we are too content to accept mediocrity when it comes to support. Doesnt matter whether its Turbine or SSG, without fail when there has been an update, stuff breaks. Seem to be able to be johnny on the spot when there is a potential/or real violation, but when its a real game issue, meh, get to it when we get to it.
Whilst i understand and appreciate that things happen and stuff breaks, having worked in IT for over 30 years in a range of different roles and organisations, a couple of things that have always been paramount everywhere is customer service and communication. To be brutally honest, to have a message like "sorry for the downtime, but hey, worlds are up, seen you in game", is tantamount to a kick in the nuts. That isnt even an apology, or anything, its a stiff ****, everythings back, lets go make some money.
When it comes to communication, even an regular update, maybe every 4 hours or so, even if its just to say "hey, we arent sure of the issue, but we are looking at a number of different things to get things back online as soon as we can", is better than just silence.
And to all those who bang on about people giving up their time instead of being with families etc, if your job is to maintain networking equipment, server equipment (game servers or any servers for that matter), then there would usually be staff on call at all times. Leastways, i know there is where i work, we run a 24/7/365/366 rotating oncall roster for EVERYTHING, servers, software, networking, desktops/laptops/pagers, mobile phones. If stuff breaks, you get called, doesnt matter whether its public holidays etc. If there arent staff on call, to support hardware etc, then i am sorry to say, things are in a worse state than i care to imagine.
I expect to get hosed down or flamed for suggesting such things, but that is the reality of business, if you want to stay in business, your stuff has to keep working, irrespective of whether its a holiday or not. If you cant maintain it over holidays, because of not having support staff, then you should shut everything down for that period of time. This is a generalist view, not pinging stones at SSG.
As far as everyone calling for compensation, really? A couple of days of not being able to participate in a virtual world. If that gets your hair in a twist, you have bigger issues at play than that.
I agree with some, it does seem a tad coincidental that over the weekend, stuff stays broken, but the minute Monday workday clicks over, stuff is miraculously back online? That does seem a little too convenient, but meh whatever.