Myself and a friend came up with a fun way for the game developers to conduct server maintenance after the launch of the game. Have the typical messages sent game wide saying "This server will shut down in xx minutes" but announce it half an hour or so before the server is actually shut down. Once the announcement is made there should be game wide Tyranid swarms like no one has ever seen before that act like kicking someone off the server. Once you are killed by a Tyranid you are sent back to the main menu and have to wait for the maintenance to be complete. I think this could generate some really awesome "last stand" kind of stories. It would be fun to be a part of the last bastion of humanity/chaos/eldar/ork against the unending tide of Tyranids facing your inevitable doom grabbing as much glory as you can before you are killed. I could see server maintenance being an exciting thing to be online for and being kicked off the server with a feeling of accomplishment instead of an abrupt end to the fun. We originally envisioned this with Necron monoliths appearing around the world having them and their warriors hunt down every player in the game. Anyways, just an idea I thought might be interesting to throw out there.
I second this. This sounds awesome. Can you imagine playing, fighting against a heretic and then (just as in 40k lore) a new enemy emerges! Hundreds of Mycetic spores crashing all over, killing others on impact, swarms of Tyranids emerging, you turn your attention towards the greater threat, loyalist and heretic fighting side by side, but alas you are literally knocked over as a wave of the creatures move over you each picking a piece of your armours, until a Tyrant appears over you, after your lock eyes you damn its existence with your last breath, before it sends its scyths into your chest, splitting your chest exposing your double heart, and as it rips them from you the blood is thrown across the ground... the last thing you see is your blood as it reads "Server down for maintenance - Sorry about this"
Obviously there would have to be some kind of mechanic that just kicked everyone off when the maintenance needed to start. Either that or make it as impossible as can be done for people to survive the full length of time.
This would be awesome...I always hated logging into a game just when the server was going down. But if I had a last stand of kick a** combat for 10 minutes I really don't think I would mind getting kicked for server maintence.
Glad to see there's some like minded people out there. Not to mention that it would be a fun way to explain why the world is all of a sudden empty. Everyone died.
