Minimise the downtime please.

[Runespider]

So FFXI and FFXIV will be down for an unknown length of time, could be a week, could be a month, could be a lot longer.

I do understand the situation in Japan and I also understand that the situation didn't really effect Square directly that much as a company and the server downtime is more because of the power stations asking big companies to conserve power(correct me if i'm wrong). Understandable, but shouldn't a company the size of Square have some kind of plan being worked out to bring the servers back up asap? (maybe moving them to a different location to get around this or something?).

Would Blizzard let the game be down for an unknown amount of time if this happend, would any of the big TV stations? This maybe just a game but SE is a games company and that's pretty much all they are. Their entire work force exists to make and run games so it's a big deal for them. Something like this is a godsend to your competitors in the MMO field, ie Rift and WoW.

The reason I say this is because I assume long downtime will do damage to the games userbase, downtime on addictive games like MMOs that require a monthly payment and want to keep as many players on board as possible is a bad thing. What if a large number of your subscribers go off and try other MMOs and get hooked on those or if they lose the yearning to carry on with the games, I've had breaks from many games in the past and wholely lost intrest when I had the opportunity to go back.

FFXI is currently in an upsurge and I would hate for that to slide away. If this is a week then that's one thing but if there is a chance it could be extended and go on for a long time I hope there are plans to get around it and get the game back up asap.

Since FFXIV has been run for free for 6-7 months which is being done at a vast loss of money I can assume money can also be spent on something like this, which is far more important to both games and the bottom line of SE as a company long term.

This post is not being mean, it's not trolling it's being realistic.

[Rambus]

No idea how much the downtime will keep people from coming back.

I have a feeling that if one day downtime would stop someone from playing, a week will, and if a day didn't stop them from playing a week wont.

[Greatguardian]

Don't worry, Square Enix has plenty of management-level employees to worry about their revenue. I know we want to make sure they don't lose all their money, because that would mean we would be out of a game. But I'm sure their accountants want to make sure they don't lose all their money either, because that would mean they would be out of a job. Your concern is touching, though.

[Porcius]

I have to agree with Runespider on this. Although unfortunate this tragedy is, the rest of the world will go on. This tragedy will be overcome in time. Square-Enix has already taken a hit by shutting down it's servers and giving free play time which is most of their income as a company aside from add-ons. In a situation such as this, they should start preparing servers in their offices in California to have servers ready not only in rare cases such as this, but so that they may also minimize down time when it comes to doing server maintenance and updates which they can install on one server while the other is running. Please comment.

[Skyrant_Kangaroomouse]

Are you serious? Their reactor is going to melt and poison the whole of japan and the currents and winds will carry it over to the US or East Asia.

The USA is not even able to keep a stable power grid and has outages of whole states and bigger quite regularly. Big power consumtion industries incl. TV stations have been asked to go offline on a regular basis.

If a reactor is going to melt in your backyard we can talk about you beeing realistic asking your favourite game company to keep up the service so you get your daily kick.

PS: Don't give me that ***, I care about the game, this will affect the company revenues crap. If the servers are down they also don't generate any cost and i am sure a week or mroe will not affect the games in any way. You will be back like everyone else that is hooked.

[Kailea_Nagisa]

This game is not SEs only revenue you know -.- even if FFXI has to be down a month, if it will help the problem over there, then so be it. "Would Blizzard allow this" what a stupid question, its a DISASTER!......... normal does and don'ts are not applicable.

[Izzybella]

1) minimize
2) empathy please

[Runespider]

This game is not SEs only revenue you know -.- even if FFXI has to be down a month, if it will help the problem over there, then so be it.

Then when they turn the servers back on after that month and subscriber numbers are at an all time low what then? sack half the online MMO staff? more server merges? Any company that can't look beyond the problems right now and think about the situation they are putting the company in after the fact is going to be in serious trouble. XI makes a nice chunk of money for Square and they are hardly in a position to lose that.

Servers being down for a long time is a really really bad move.

A week is fine, we can find stuff to do for that long but 2-4 weeks++ isn't and will lead to subscribers looking into other MMOs and since a lot of people won't want to keep 2 subs going that's going to hurt Square, even more if they don't feel like resubbing to XI and instead stick with the new MMO.

1) minimize

Both are correct, I live in the uk.

[Kraggy]

Would Blizzard let the game be down for an unknown amount of time if this happend

Utterly silly comparison.

Blizzard's operations are huge and split across three US data centres (I believe) and several in the EU, as such there is no single point of failure barring World War III.

SE is based in Japan alone, while there are regional data centers they're purely account management.

As such, I'm sure SE have 'disaster recovery' plans which, like all but the largest of national and pan-national corporates envisage a 'local' disaster (fire, plane strike, whatever), but I'd be staggered if they had any thoughts about transferring operations off-shore due to a national disaster of this magnitude.

In any case, even supposing they DO have plans to move themselves lock-stock-and-barrel offshore, just how long do you think that will take?

If they haven't already got a plan for that written and tested it'll be more than a couple of weeks.

[Chiibi]

I do understand the situation in Japan

I honestly dont think you do AT ALL. People have died our friends and family are unable to be contacted so yeah STOP COMPLAINING ABOUT THE TIME FFXI IS DOWN