Minimise the downtime please.

Just going to add my 2 cents here but there is more at stake as SE than just the power situation in Japan at the moment. My heart goes out to everyone that was effected by this disaster. I for one would be happy to see the game back online hosted temporally in another location until power is restored to Japan at the level to host the game there again, because I would like to see the SE Japan employees to have the job security left to be able to deal with their troubles at home without having to worry if their job will be safe as they search for their loved ones. Flame me if you like but it stands to reason. I know some Katrina survivors and some of their biggest concerns were on top of the disaster being cleaned up and finding their loved ones was what about my livelyhood after? The power situation over there is a major issue and if anyone thinks it will be fixed in a week or two they are overreaching. No one wants to see people loose their jobs over being shut down it may be insensitive but it is business sense the longer they stay shut down the more likely to loose customers the more likely to cut jobs especially to those who will still need the income to get back to their lives after things have been sorted out.

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Originally Posted by HFX7686

And yet you continue to read my posts. I'm not really concerned with you reading my posts, actually. I just want to make sure others don't believe your nonsense.

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I don't, I'm pretty sure just last year they said the game has finally started to make more money through its subscriptions than what it costed them to make it, so if it took like 8 years to actually start making money from this, I doubt a week or a month of downtime will make any difference financially. If players leave, they leave. We can't control that as much as we can't control earthquakes and tsunamis. If anything I guess all the impatient people will have left.

Gotta love Ignore Lists. Just another way to see the world the same way Fox News reports it.

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Originally Posted by Meril

AGAIN
for a company that provides serviceis to 6 CONTONENTS .... there backup plan shold NOT even have to DO with JAPAN!

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These services are not essential to any of those six continents. I am sure everyone can survive for a few weeks without FF11.

I don't even understand why they would need/foresee the need for a backup plan in a disaster of this magnitude. People in Japan are running out of food. The grocery stores can't get food on their shelves. I don't think that people are screaming about the lack of a backup plan for that. They're actually waiting calmly in line, getting what they can, without panic or anger. Can't you do the same for a video game?

THIS SITE WAN NOT CREATED TO EXPRESS HEART FELT WISHES TO THOSE IN DISASTER!!! IT HOW TO MAKE SE STAY AFLOAT!!!!!
Make dontaions and prayers @ www.yajoo.com!!!

EVERYONE NEEDS TO SEPARATE SE FROM JAPAN!!! END OF!

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Originally Posted by Birdkiller

I don't, I'm pretty sure just last year they said the game has finally started to make more money through its subscriptions than what it costed them to make it, so if it took like 8 years to actually start making money from this, I doubt a week or a month of downtime will make any difference financially. If players leave, they leave. We can't control that as much as we can't control earthquakes and tsunamis. If anything I guess all the impatient people will have left.

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I think you are completely and totally right.

I'm sure there having business discussion's going on about the situation and find a way to work it. But for the here and now were going to have to wait instead of making up conspiracy theories on stuff they may well be out of there control. Should they consider a backup yes I can agree on that. No buisness is perfect they can reflect on this and either correct it or not but for the current circumstances they have to make a call.

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Originally Posted by Meril

EVERYONE NEEDS TO SEPARATE SE FROM JAPAN!!! END OF!

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End of what?

SE is a business NOT a country OR DIYING PPL!

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Originally Posted by Meril

Mindless dribble

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LOL, I get it!

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Originally Posted by Schultz

Gotta love Ignore Lists. Just another way to see the world the same way Fox News reports it.

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Actually, ignore lists are good for saving unnecessary stress. I hope there isn't a 200 person limit like there is on the game.

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Originally Posted by Meril

SE is a business NOT a country OR DIYING PPL!

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So were does the business reside at? Where do they get the energy to support there company? Guess SE better make big plan's on making a huge man made island off the coast and offically make it there own.

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Originally Posted by Schultz

Gotta love Ignore Lists. Just another way to see the world the same way Fox News reports it.

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lmao I don't agree with your point of view /ignore

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Originally Posted by Naturebeckles

Actually, ignore lists are good for saving unnecessary stress. I hope there isn't a 200 person limit like there is on the game.

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Blinkers are great things for the stubborn.

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Originally Posted by Odintius

So were does the business reside at? Where do they get the energy to support there company? Guess SE better make big plan's on making a huge man made island off the coast and offically make it there own.

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lol Call the mega movers.

Look at Tokyo, I don't think I've heard of any buildings that have suffered major structural damage. The city has been build with earthquakes in mind. Tsunami's and Nuclear Meltdowns, that's something you can't plan for and mitigate easily. SE has decided that their services are not as important as others.

They have voluntarily turned off their service to help. At the same time they understand that they offer a paid service and that even if the downtime is only a week, interruption to a paid service has further ramifications, so they are giving everyone a free month as a gesture of good will, and thanks for the understandings of what they did.

Anyone with their nose out of joint still should get a reality check. No moving the servers wouldn't have helped the situation, disasters like this could happen anywhere. Sure having redundancy built into your service by having server farms on a few different continents would have been a wise thing to do, but that would mean that they would need to employ more people to maintain those server farms hardware wise.

I would rather have one skeleton crew maintaining one server cluster and the money saved on maintaining 3 international crews used to further develop the product. Don't get me wrong, I deal with redundancy networks as a job and I know the value of having services up 24/7 even if something like this happens, but I think that a service of their scale might not be as easy to manage as we think.

A mod should lock this before anyone else says something they will regret later on. Some people are still in stage 1 grief at the moment, while most are already on stage 6. If you don't believe me, look at the players donating the money they would have spent on this months fees towards the Red Cross relief appeal.

Meril I am not saying this to be mean or anything but your asking people to separate SE from Japan. Please don't take this the wrong way but people may have a hard time doing that because SE is in Japan. We would say the same thing if SE's California office were having this very same issue, and people were worrying about them. They would say the people of California. Its hard to separate them because they are going through a very rough time. And because the people SE has working there in Japan are from Japan. Just trying to help you understand that its hard for us not to take that into consideration.

As far as if they should have had a back up plan i will be honest yes. But i can also understand why they wouldn't. And as i said before if SE decides to have back up servers or already has them and is just waiting to SE how this play out this week then so be it. I do hope they do put up back up servers somewhere else in the future if they haven't already.

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Originally Posted by Meril

SE is a business NOT a country OR DIYING PPL!

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your right SE is not a country, but the disaster has already affected worlwide businesses not just Japanese ones. so what point about business are you actually trying to make?

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Originally Posted by Dubberrucky

lmao I don't agree with your point of view /ignore

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I've seen you around on the server and didn't really know you too well. But I gotta say, I like what I read when I read you here on the forums. ;)

Can remote server be a possibility? It's easy and it works the same way as it is now.

Okay the the energy conserving was a "volunteer" thing SE shut their servers off. Looks to me they value their country more then money.

even Toyota and Honda and Nissan have suspended their productions, so... be patient! you will come back to play with more enthusiasm!! if you love FFXI you will come back when it will come back, like every player who quitted in the past and then they all come back...

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Originally Posted by Naturebeckles

Actually, ignore lists are good for saving unnecessary stress. I hope there isn't a 200 person limit like there is on the game.

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If you've ever worked in a public environment dealing, you'd know that people dribbling nonsense are a way of life. A teller with an angry customer can't just pull up their ignore list then stare blankly at the customer as if nothing is happening. They have to get their manager involved and resolve the dispute/situation.

IMHO Ignore Lists are just another way of saying, I'm right, you're wrong, please go away, I have no time for your opinion. A very right wing approach to opinion censorship. That's my opinion and I'm open to anyone elses opinion on the subject. I'm not out to prove anyone wrong, just stating my opinions on the conversation at hand.

To OP: With a disaster like this I don't think SE is worrying or carrying about their revenue right now. I wouldn't be surprised if they're donating a large chunk of the company's money to help support their country and those lives who are struggling whether it be strangers or loved ones. I have a feeling people at SE actually cares about their own people that they will actually risk going bankrupt just to do whatever they can to help those in their country that have survived this horrible tragedy. If you care enough about SE's profits then you should also be understanding and care for these people too and hope that these people will recover and survive on anything they can get.

The loyal fans of SE will remain with SE and FFXI/FFXIV even if the servers are down for many months. Even if the servers have to merge down to one server with a few thousand players I'm sure SE will prosper and pick up again with their other projects. SE has made the morally correct decision here by shutting off their power and people will respect the company for that. If SE kept their powers and server on just to satisfy their players and to gain profit, do you really think the company would have a good reputation around the world?

For myself personally, I don't think I'm going to touch another MMO until FFXI does come back. There are a lot of other games to play that aren't MMOs and there's a lot of other stuff to do outside of gaming as well. There's a million things that can be done everyday and maybe this is a good thing for those outside of Japan to finally get a break from their gaming addiction on FFXI. It's a horrible cause for this with Japan though. I really hope the survivors can survive and recover from all of this and that Japan can stand strong once again soon.

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Originally Posted by Schultz

If you've ever worked in a public environment dealing, you'd know that people dribbling nonsense are a way of life. A teller with an angry customer can't just pull up their ignore list then stare blankly at the customer as if nothing is happening. They have to get their manager involved and resolve the dispute/situation.

IMHO Ignore Lists are just another way of saying, I'm right, you're wrong, please go away, I have no time for your opinion. A very right wing approach to opinion censorship. That's my opinion and I'm open to anyone elses opinion on the subject. I'm not out to prove anyone wrong, just stating my opinions on the conversation at hand.

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Oh yes and the left would never ever would do something like this unthinkable keep the politics out of it just blinds you to reality! But for the ignore list I never use it to many people get there feeling hurt way to easy now and day's. Is really anybody right on there opinions no that why it called your opinion...

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Originally Posted by Schultz

If you've ever worked in a public environment dealing, you'd know that people dribbling nonsense are a way of life. A teller with an angry customer can't just pull up their ignore list then stare blankly at the customer as if nothing is happening. They have to get their manager involved and resolve the dispute/situation.

IMHO Ignore Lists are just another way of saying, I'm right, you're wrong, please go away, I have no time for your opinion. A very right wing approach to opinion censorship. That's my opinion and I'm open to anyone elses opinion on the subject. I'm not out to prove anyone wrong, just stating my opinions on the conversation at hand.

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I agree with your first paragraph. I have to deal with the public at school on the days I'm on the salon floor doing hair on clients that come in. I mentally prepare myself for that so I can handle it. However, when I come home and I'm on the computer to relax, I feel I should not have to put up with people who tell me I'm an idiot for having a certain opinion. I don't censor people who have something intelligent to say to me without insulting me. I do censor people for being douchebags to me, regardless if they think they have a right to do so or if they just like laughing about it. It's my computer screen, it's my stress level during a time I'm supposed to be relaxing... and I'm going to censor the people on this forum who raise my stress level. It's not about me being right and that person being wrong. It's about "I'm just not going to talk to you anymore, because it's pointless and I don't come on here for this stress."

I would just like to say that my thoughts and prayers are with the people of Japan. I would also like to suggest SE start a voluntary way for people to donate to a relief organization to help those displaced by this huge disaster. They can provide a link to an organization or collect the donations themselves. It's time we stop thinking about ourselves and help those that have no shelter, food or water and have lost loved ones!

I was actually not making fun of anyone in particular simply laughing at the reference and similarity to fox news. It was a true strike.

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Originally Posted by Dubberrucky

I was actually not making fun of anyone in particular simply laughing at the reference and similarity to fox news. It was a true strike.

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Ah yes, it is true for Fox News too!

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Originally Posted by CrystalWeapon

You keep arguing money but if they were not previously set up it would cost a huge amount to even just rent servers in another location for the 24 that we have in place now in Japan as a short time fix for the players not affected.

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About time I saw you pop in. Been waiting all day to see you say something.

Go outside and play a game of street ball.

First off.. My heart goes out to all of the families affected by this great tragedy. Watching the video feeds from Japan leaves me in awe of the huge undertaking the Japanese people have ahead of them in an attempt to recover from the recent disaster and continuing threats related to it and a newfound admiration for the people involved. I couldn't imagine facing such a thing in the US and maintaining any semblance of order.

Having said that I do have a couple points I would like to make regarding the apparent witch hunt going on in this thread. Anybody who suggests that a company such as SE who is at it's heart a games company and service provider should have a contingency plan in place in the event something like this should happen is being attacked by people on their moral high horses.

I don't think the OP is suggesting FFXI should take priority in Japan over the other problems they are facing, but merely saying that they consider resuming operation in another location temporarily to protect not only their bottom line but also all of the jobs of the employees currently employed by a company which honestly isn't "raking in the cash" at the moment.

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Originally Posted by Darka

Idiot was correct. You don't have a backup plan for a game that is already dying/declining. Secondary servers are expensive, XI doesn't make much profit, if anything it probably just makes enough to sustain the current servers, let alone backups. So you have no choice but to wait it out, QQing here changes nothing.

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I think you overestimate the costs of operating a small cluster of servers and the amount of actual player data contained on said servers. I maintain a number of local business networks and servers. Even stuff as trivial as employee personal folders are backed up off location to secondary domain/file servers in the event of hardware failure or otherwise. It's just not that expensive even for small businesses to maintain backups of pretty large amounts of data.

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Originally Posted by Amperage

I think you overestimate the costs of operating a small cluster of servers and the amount of actual player data contained on said servers. Even stuff as trivial as employee personal folders are backed up off location to secondary domain/file servers in the event of hardware failure or otherwise. It's just not that expensive even for small businesses.

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I think you underestimate the cost of a full Enterprise level network. We're also not talking just storage here. We're talking bandwidth.

So... You're looking at 25 servers. (24 if you don't count Atomos, the test server.) Then you're looking at...four? Five login servers clustered to handle the login process. And the PlayOnline servers. And the billing servers. And... On top of that? I go back to bandwidth. Even if you're looking at a server with a very low population, figure minimum online population of at least 500 at any given moment. And let's say for giggles that you're looking at everyone connecting with a 56k modem connection.

500x56 = 28000 or roughly 28 MB/sec. Multiply that times 24 for the servers, and you're looking at 672 MB/sec just for the server worlds alone...

Additionally, let's look at the human factor in all this. Would you want to be the President asking your IT crew to come in to work in extremely hazardous situations, just so you could transfer all this over? Or asking the GMs to attempt to ride herd over the complaints? Or the Customer Service department to handle the complaints due to login congestion, etc...etc...etc...

For the first time I can remember? I really have to applaud SE for handling this the way that they are. Which in my mind is the only humanitarian way that they could do it.

Screw this "It's a multi-national business! They're losing money!" line of thinking. You don't want to come back to an "empty" game? See ya. Don't let the door hit you where the good Lord split you. It'll make farming that much easier...

I'm sure the Prime Minister will get right on this. Emergency generators will be at the Squeenix offices by day's end, no doubt. That pesky Godzilla problem they're having with nuclear reactors can wait.

Also, I'm sure a company large as Squeenix had the foresight to invest in insurance that recoups revenue losses in the event of stuff and junk. If anything the forced break is nice. A lot of my friends have finals right now, and when we do come back to the game it'll be after a rejuvenating rest.

Go out, meet a woman, meet a man, whatever works. Or at the least find a cute one and follow her home and watch her shower from the tree outside her bathroom.

Greetings!

Although we always appreciate the flow of ideas and opinions we want to make sure that the posts are always polite and constructive. Not everyone will agree with a post from another player and they are welcome to discuss their opinions as long as they are constructive to the topic. If a thread goes off topic to a certain degree or becomes a flame war, we will have to moderate and take action on the posters involved. An excessive amount of inappropriate posts will lead to the suspension of posting privileges.

Having said that, please feel free to continue this discussion but be wary of posts that are inciteful, insulting or too far off topic.

We appreciate your understanding and cooperation and apologize for any inconveniences this may have caused!

Thanks!

-=Game Master Emdub=-

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Originally Posted by Kandu

They should charge us for April and then donate that revenue to the Red Cross or similar organization.

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Best Post i have read so far, Kudos to you Kandu!

SE, I support this idea, take my subscription and donate it to the efforts in japan as you see fit!

The reason Square Enix has decided to shut the servers down on both games is not to inconvenience any of us. It is because the power company in Japan has asked everyone in the country to conserve power by not using it on frivolous things. Maybe to you a game is not frivolous. But when that power could be put to better use like a hospital, I would sacrifice any amount of time needed of this game being down.

It's a G A M E. Get over it.

Too many people in this world care only for themselves and don't even bother to actually read the information that was stated. And I friggin' Q U O T E~

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Due to the continuous earthquakes occurring in the eastern regions of Japan since Mar. 11, 2011, the power companies in Japan have encouraged everyone to cooperate by conserving as much energy as possible as it is feared there will not be enough power supply. Based on the current situation, we have decided to shut down the game servers temporarily, and therefore to suspend services of FINAL FANTASY XIV, FINAL FANTASY XI, and PlayOnline temporarily.

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Don't believe me? http://www.playonline.com/ff11us/pol...ews20541.shtml So there.

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Originally Posted by Runespider

Would Blizzard let the game be down for an unknown amount of time if this happend, would any of the big TV stations?

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That is just a testament to how much your own country doesn't care about its people, They would rather keep there business running then help there troubled community.

I'm not from Japan (I am Australian if it makes a difference) but I think the people of Japan should feel proud of SE for putting aside business for the community, if other mega corps around the world could take a lesson from them the world would be better for it.

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Originally Posted by Valix

That is just a testament to how much your own country doesn't care about its people, They would rather keep there business running then help there troubled community.

I'm not from Japan (I am Australian if it makes a difference) but I think the people of Japan should feel proud of SE for putting aside business for the community, if other mega corps around the world could take a lesson from them the world would be better for it.

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Agreed. Thank you for stating that.