I’m going to resist puns around May Day and just hit you with the exciting fact that this week’s downtime is a standard 4-hour one.

On the bright side – it’s starting earlier so the majority of Tuesday evening is actually available to play the game! Here are the time conversions:

AEST: 3pm-7pm
AWST: 1pm-5pm
NZST: 5pm-9pm

The official words:

Scheduled Maintenance

Date: Tuesday, May 1st, 2012 (See PDT timing below)

Time: 12:01AM CDT (April 30th, 10:01PM PDT/1:01AM EDT/6:01AM BST/7:01AM CEST/3:01PM AEST) until 4AM CDT (2AM PDT/5AM EDT/10AM BST/11AM CEST/7PM AEST).

All game servers and SWTOR.com will be offline during this period. This maintenance is expected to take no more than four hours.

Here’s hoping the late afternoon maintenance is a sign of things to come!

We’ve got an unexpected server downtime tonight folks – to put in a patch to fix some issues that have arisen (one being companion stats). The local time conversions:

AEST: 5pm-9pm
AWST: 3pm-7pm
NZST: 7pm-11pm

So at least for the Aussies, it doesn’t muck up the whole night’s play. The full details from BioWare:

We will be deploying a patch and performing an unscheduled maintenance this Friday, April 27th, 2012. Patch notes will be made available shortly after the servers come back up.

The servers will be down for four hours on Friday, April 27th, 2012 from 2AM CDT (12AM PDT/3AM EDT/8AM BST/9AM CEST/5PM AEST) until 6AM CDT (4AM PDT/7AM EDT/12PM BST/1PM CEST/9PM AEST). All game servers will be offline during this period. This maintenance is expected to take no more than four hours, but could be extended.

After the maintenance, please login via the launcher to download the latest patch. If your launcher was open during the maintenance, you must close and reopen it for a fresh login.

Maintenance

Date: Friday, April 27th, 2012

Time: 2AM CDT (12AM PDT/3AM EDT/8AM BST/9AM CEST/5PM AEST) until 6AM CDT (4AM PDT/7AM EDT/12PM BST/1PM CEST/9PM AEST).

All game servers will be offline during this period. This game maintenance is expected to take no more than four hours.

Although five hours isn’t long, this weeks server maintenance provides an opportunity to catch up on SWTOR news that you may have missed. Here’s what we’ve covered over the past week that is worth catching up with:

1. We have 10 Tauntaun fawn pets (which were given out to attendees at Pax East) up for grabs, closing at midnight tonight. Get your entry in.

2. Have a read through the final Patch 1.2 notes to see if you’ve missed anything.

3. Watch Darth Vader and The Emperor have a dance-off

4. Catch up with the latest episode of Diplomatic Investigations, our Inquisitor / Consular column.

5. Read through the latest Casual SWTORian

6. Check out who’s downed the newest World Boss already.

7. Jump on our forums for a chat! Drop into our podcast forum and provide a topic suggestion for this weekend’s podcast.

A bit of a double-whammy maintenance this week, with a standard 5-hour game downtime and an extended 10-hour web downtime, at the end of which will be a redesigned SWTOR web presence.

The full details below, but here’s the time conversions:

AEST: 5pm-10pm Tuesday 17th (4pm-2am for SWTOR website)

AWST: 3pm-8pm Tuesday 17th (2pm-midnight for SWTOR website)

NZST: 7pm-Midnight Tuesday 17th (6pm-4am for SWTOR website)

Hello everyone!

We will be bringing down servers for five hours on Tuesday, April 17th, 2012 from 2AM CDT (12AM PDT/3AM EDT/8AM BST/9AM CEST/5PM AEST) until 7AM CDT (5AM PDT/8AM EDT/1PM BST/2PM CEST/10PM AEST). All game servers will be offline during this period. This maintenance is expected to take no more than five hours, but could be extended.

For our new players, this weekly maintenance is done in order to make general improvements and to check performance of the game so that we can continue to provide a consistent, quality experience. Quite often (but not always) after a maintenance period there will be a patch to download. After the maintenance, please login via the launcher to download the latest patch. If your launcher was open during the maintenance, you must close and reopen it for a fresh login.

In addition to this, we will be performing maintenance on SWTOR.com for its new redesign. The website will be unavailable for ten hours from 1AM CDT (April 16th, 11PM PDT/2AM EDT/7AM BST/8AM CEST/4PM AEST) until 11AM CDT (9AM PDT/12PM EDT/5PM BST/6PM CEST/April 18th,2AM AEST). Once the site comes back up, the new redesign will be unveiled.

Scheduled Maintenance

Date: Tuesday April 17th, 2012

Time:

• Server Maintenance: 2AM CDT (12AM PDT/3AM EDT/8AM BST/9AM CEST/5PM AEST) until 7AM CDT (5AM PDT/8AM EDT/1PM BST/2PM CEST/10PM AEST).
  All game servers will be offline during this period. This game maintenance is expected to take no more than five hours.
• Web Maintenance: 1AM CDT (April 16th, 11PM PDT/2AM EDT/7AM BST/8AM CEST/4PM AEST) until 11AM CDT (9AM PDT/12PM EDT/5PM BST/6PM CEST/April 18th,2AM AEST).
  SWTOR.com will be unavailable during this period. This web maintenance is expected to take no more than ten hours.