Do all servers need to be shut down?

[Detoxy]

From what I understand not all servers are in Japan and that some r in ths USA. If this is true then maybe they should bring the servers that are not located in Japan back online.

[bishop]

Trust me we can all do without FFXI for a week or so.

[Naturebeckles]

From what I understand not all servers are in Japan and that some r in ths USA. If this is true then maybe they should bring the servers that are not located in Japan back online.

True or not, why let people on Shiva play, but not Sylph? It's better that all of them are shut down, regardless of server location until their disaster contingency plan has been implemented or the power situation gets better.

[Lushipur]

first of all: all server are indeed in japan.
second: we are in front of one of the biggest catastrophe of the human history, 11th sept. is nothing compared to this.
its a time we we should thinks what is truly important to us. family, our dearest, or loved one, friends from all other the world. not some damned piece of equip that is not even real.

[Topdogg]

Its the fairest way i guess. Better get use to it, might not be on til middle april or early may lol

[Detoxy]

Ya guess ur right but I just heard there where some in USA didnt know that for sure.

[Detoxy]

I dont live under a rock I know its bad over there just didnt know where all the servers where is all

[Mirage]

Each game world is actually hosted on a number of different physical servers. Each server hosts a certain selection of zones on a certain selection of worlds. For example, one server could be hosting whitegate, al zahbi and bhaflau thickets on Shiva, odin and bahamut, while another server could be hosting all the dynamis zones on two different worlds.

That makes it tricky to just keep a few physical servers up. To make one world go online, you might be running all the servers to also bring up 60% of a different world, and 80% of even another world, and so on.

[Detoxy]

thats all i was after thx

[Rambus]

The servers are all in Japan.. that is why they have claim advantage. That old complaint is not a rumor I sat and watch Japanese draw their weapons on mobs that did not exist to me yet.

the only thing in other counties are support centers that deal with account management and such.

[Samunai]

first of all: all server are indeed in japan.
second: we are in front of one of the biggest catastrophe of the human history, 11th sept. is nothing compared to this.
its a time we we should thinks what is truly important to us. family, our dearest, or loved one, friends from all other the world. not some damned piece of equip that is not even real.


I totally agree. if u must even think about and posting 'why all servers down? cant we play pweaase?' then u really have to get urself some sense to live! WTF os wrong with those ppl who think gaming becomes on the first place after this disaster has happened to Japan and other areas!? how is ur stat of mind?! are u a lunatic? think about it! SE shut down servers to not only provide mroe energy for rescue operations, but also to make U think about the situation. to bad u think like a twat and only care for urself and ur pixels. idm to wait a week.... or 2. even tho its damn boring, but life is life and not a ggame. ffs get over it and just pray all the stuff thats going on over in Japan aint getting worse and that the rebuilding progress will be on god speed.... if u so care about ur pixels, then do that!


rawrawraw im mad at those ppl who think gaming is the prior thing in life. U have an addiction if u think u can just even discuss such a thing when this is happen in real life.... ulg rawrarw

[Mirage]

Another thing is, if you're SE and you have FF11 as an important source of income, why would you shut down servers that weren't affected by the disaster? It makes no sense from a business perspective to shut down servers that are hosted in the US because electricity needs to be conserved in Japan.

[Dazusu]

11th sept. is nothing compared to this.

I really just read this, didn't I?

You just compared terrorism to a natural disaster?

They are worlds apart. Get a clue.

[Ica]

SE shut down servers to not only provide mroe energy for rescue operations, but also to make U think about the situation.

Wat.

I wanted to just post that, but my message was too short. :(

[Mirage]

I really just read this, didn't I?

You just compared terrorism to a natural disaster?

They are worlds apart. Get a clue.
Well it's technically right. The amount of damage to both property and living beings is much higher.
But it's still a strange thing to say :p.

[Chamaan]

We could always go to war with the Earth. Get some guys in combat fatigues to start digging and shooting into caves.

[Mirage]

we could call it
the war of the worlds

[Chamaan]

I just know I'd end up betraying the humans in that fight. YOU PUNY SURFACE-DWELLERS WILL RUE THE DAY

[Nahal]

I really just read this, didn't I?

You just compared terrorism to a natural disaster?

They are worlds apart. Get a clue.

distruction and death cause the same damage weather caused by terrorists, human error, or a natural disaster, the point isnt HOW it happened, but WHAT happened. so yes, you can compare to 2.

[RAIST]

to continue Midnitelouie's point fromn a recently closed thread on this issue (which may soon happen to this one as well)...

SE owns two complete subnets, and have 4 DNS servers to manage their own network. ie... It's a MASSIVE network. There are a BUTTLOAD of servers dedicated to running just FFXI. Your client taps at least 2 servers at all times while online. I have run netstat in the background to track IP's when having connection issues to help out with support and seen mine hitting as many as 4 servers at once when changing areas.

The point is--to have full redundancy to an offsite location would be a logistical nightmare, and quite frankly not cost effective for what we pay. They would likely have to be running their own private Fiber lines to keep the bandwidth up. This game relies heavily on UDP for data transfer, so there is no stor/forward mechanic like what is builot into TCP/IP (hence the skipping you get when running sometimes...packets are lost and people blink when a new packet is recieved showing them in a different location). The data loss recieved as is running across the current T1/T3 backbone shows how problematic redundancy would be. They would need a MASSIVE transfer rate to keep duplicate servers running in full time with instant failover support. This is just not practical.

Bear in mind, they have taken radiadion readings at the sites and they are equivalent to roughly 1 year's worth of normal radiation leaking out roughly in 1 hour at the plant. They have had to evacuate a 12 mile radius around the reactors having problems. As dense as the population is over there, thats around 200-300 THOUSAND PEOPLE being displaced. They are having to secure power for PRIMARY SERVICES first (health/emergency/communications services), putting them under the threat of rolling blackouts for secondary services--not a good thing for "nonessential" servers and networks. Your server might be up, but the ISP's routers could go down. Redundancy would be broken. Redundant networks could be caught in a loop of continuous failovers, and eventually the forest of servers will no longer be in synch. With the reduced manpower and reduced reliability of both the outside and internal network structures--it is best for ALL INVOLVED to go offline and try to find a better way of doing business. It's just the way things HAVE to be for now.

For all we know, they are already in the process of bringing a new datacenter online offsite somewhere. But we are talking about terabytes of data per server, and it will take time to set it up. Be patient...it will happen. They wiill be back on line somehow, some way, somewhere.

Raist

[Detoxy]

ALL I ASKED WAS DO ALL THE SERVERS NEED TO BE SHUT DOWN!!!!!!aaarrrghhhhh PEOPLE!!!

[Mirage]

@raist: Good post, too bad there's no reputation in place here

@detoxy: People are just being more specific on why it's not possible. There's no reason to be mad. Personally, I love learning the whys of things.

[Selzak]

first of all: all server are indeed in japan.
second: we are in front of one of the biggest catastrophe of the human history, 11th sept. is nothing compared to this.
its a time we we should thinks what is truly important to us. family, our dearest, or loved one, friends from all other the world. not some damned piece of equip that is not even real.
Terrible tragedy for all involved, and I hope they recover quickly...but this is definitely not one of the biggest catastrophes in human history. Nor is it at all comparable to September 11th, which was a terrorist attack and not a natural disaster. Entirely different consequences involved there.

I wish FFXI was up, I wish SE had the capability to keep the servers up, but the one thing you are right about is that this game means absolutely nothing relative to the concerns of real people facing the aftermath of a natural disaster.

[Alhanelem]

From what I understand not all servers are in Japan and that some r in ths USA. If this is true then maybe they should bring the servers that are not located in Japan back online.
This is false. All servers are in japan. And why would it be fair for some people to be able to play and some not based purely on what server your character is on?


ALL I ASKED WAS DO ALL THE SERVERS NEED TO BE SHUT DOWN!!!!!!aaarrrghhhhh PEOPLE!!!
YES THEY ALL NEED TO BE SHUT DOWN!!!!arrrrrrggghhhh PEOPLE!
-.-

Please just accept the fact that the aftermath of a major natural disaster is in progress and resources are at a premium and wait patiently for service to be restored.

[RAIST]

Power company announced rolling blackout schedules to run through this week. Roughly a 3.5 hour block for each of 6 zones:

http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/press/corp-com/release/11031406-e.html

Regardless..even if they had managed to keep the servers up, they would be forced to go down at scheduled intervals.

Raist

[NrvnqsrKhaos]

really awesome post filled with information and explanations

Raist

I think this may be the best post I've seen on these forums so far. Bravo, sir, and thank you for the information that I would have no idea about without your exposition.

[Wenceslao]

Really guys, we can get well by not playing a week or so, but they indeed need to save as much energy as they can, they are suffering from one of the biggest disasters in all time, and really guys FF is not life....

[Detoxy]

Agn all i asked was about where the servers r.And yes i have accpeted that fact. Just a simple question is all it was!!!

[Dale]

first of all: all server are indeed in japan.
second: we are in front of one of the biggest catastrophe of the human history, 11th sept. is nothing compared to this.
its a time we we should thinks what is truly important to us. family, our dearest, or loved one, friends from all other the world. not some damned piece of equip that is not even real.

To be honest i think Square Enix should be complimented that people like their game so much. I really do think people are being way too hard on the people who are upset over the servers being shut down. It does suck. We can understand the reasons of course, but it still sucks - so please let's stop making out everyone who is pissed off over the servers being shut down as being the devil. They aren't lol

[Alhanelem]

Agn all i asked was about where the servers r.And yes i have accpeted that fact. Just a simple question is all it was!!! Any hostility was most likely based on the assumption that you should have known this before coming here. If there were NA and JP servers, there would be no JP on the NA servers and vice versa.

I will accept that this isn't the norm for other MMos, but SE built the game to be international and multilingual, while most MMOs are released seperately for each region and each region cannot play with people from another.

[CaelThunderwing]

as Rambus said on the first page the only thing the servers outside of Japan are the POL Website, Forums account management etc the server in cali is likely the POL Lobby server. the only good keeping up POL would be, to use If that the PlayOnline Chat and well who uses that anymore?

[Siviard]

From what I understand not all servers are in Japan and that some r in ths USA. If this is true then maybe they should bring the servers that are not located in Japan back online.

I find your screen name to be incredibly ironic. lmao

[SheKicksHigh]

I surmise that SE is unable to replenish their diesel supply for the backup generators at this time, so it would be unwise to run the data center with the scheduled blackouts and risk data loss. Plus its good PR for them within japan to shutdown for the power savings.

[Kailea_Nagisa]

I surmise that SE is unable to replenish their diesel supply for the backup generators at this time, so it would be unwise to run the data center with the scheduled blackouts and risk data loss. Plus its good PR for them within japan to shutdown for the power savings.

This has nothing to do with PR, and a backup power source would make no difference.

All companies and businesses are being asked to use the least amount of power they can, the FFXI servers are non- essential, so they where shut down.

[SheKicksHigh]

get a clue, maybe go watch some NHK or TBS before you put any more of your misinformation. Please there are people here that dont know any better, oh wait youre one of them.

[Venat]

The servers are all in Japan.. that is why they have claim advantage. That old complaint is not a rumor I sat and watch Japanese draw their weapons on mobs that did not exist to me yet.

the only thing in other counties are support centers that deal with account management and such.

I Agree. That and your Enternet Speed.

[Lushipur]

you all people should think what happens after the death and the loss. the global impact on the economy will be far over what happened in america. we are talking about 180m dollars of damage so far. it will take years for a nation like japan to rise again. and this will be on the back of everyone for years.

I really hope the OP is a children and is still living in a fairy world...gl waking up in the real world lol

[RAIST]

I surmise that SE is unable to replenish their diesel supply for the backup generators at this time, so it would be unwise to run the data center with the scheduled blackouts and risk data loss. Plus its good PR for them within japan to shutdown for the power savings.

Um... just.. no.

The country's power grid simply is not reliable now. Ever see what happens when a data server tanks because someone kicked the plug from the power supply? Sure, the OS may recover fine, but when a massive database is shut down in a dirty state you can catch hell trying to get it back on line. It took me two days to get a hotel resort's Exchange Server (Micro$oft corporate email server, for those that don't know) back up and running because thier server went belly up and they din't have a good backup. That was just about a 20GB database...I'd hate to see the what would happen if the monster databses behind SE went AWOL on us.

They are cycling through sections of the country and running just over a 3.5 hour blackout on rotation now--Tokyo is split into 3 blocks for those rollouts. So for almost 1/2 of the day, roughly 1/3 of tokyo is WITHOUT POWER AT ALL.

Think about it...any freaking game server is NOT high on the priority list for having much of any up time during this crisis.

Raist

[Marianka]

I even heard the japanese prime minster say it was the biggest disaster to happen to Japan since WO II. That bit left me a bit confused to as to how to compare a natural disaster to a war Japan entered at it own will and where the soldiers were known for quite a lot of atrocities.

Comparing this to anything has no use, for the ones who has lost family and friends it will be no solace at all that they made the top x disasters.

[pim-ptarutaru]

Another thing is, if you're SE and you have FF11 as an important source of income, why would you shut down servers that weren't affected by the disaster? It makes no sense from a business perspective to shut down servers that are hosted in the US because electricity needs to be conserved in Japan.

Yes is a business, but i'm pretty sure they have insurance for a time like this. Most likely they are not to worried about money, there likely more worried about there country and there people. All the play servers are in Japan. The only servers they have in America payment/registration.