Possible game clock change (DST vs UTC)

[Laanders]

Dear players,

Since the inception of The Reincarnation nearly 15 years ago, the main infrastructure has been hosted in Germany, with the game running on central European time, meaning CET (UTC+1) between October and March, and CEST (UTC+2) between March and October when Daylint Savings Time (DST) kicks in.

It's been a recurring discussion whether or not it's a good choice to have the game clock follow DST. For players in countries where northern hemisphere DST applies (mainly Europe and North America) it's convenient to always the same (or similar) time conversion from local time to game time. For players in countries without DST (including most of Asia and South America) or even southern hemisphere DST (including parts of Australia and South America) it's distinctly less helpful, and we regularly get questions related to the DST shift.

If we're going to stop using DST, the most logical way is to simply move all game servers to run on Coordinated Universal Time, UTC. UTC is equal to Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) in the winter but does not have DST so there would be no shifts. Thus the only changes in each player's conversion from local to game time would depend on changes in their own time zone. Of course all game clocks would also have a one-off change and players would need to learn the new conversion.

We decided to put this to a community vote, to get an overall feel for where the players stand. It's pretty straightforward with the alternatives being either to keep the current system, or to change to UTC. For completeness I'm including a "don't care" option.

The vote will run for one week and be advertised in game on all servers.

Thanks for chipping in.