Minimise the downtime please.

[Vivik]

To the OP:
There is a reason they are a multimillion dollar company. They know better than you.

[Kandu]

BTW, you will not be charged for the month of April for FFXI, which means, should they shut it down for 4 weeks, you have nothing to complaints about.

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

[Fincat]

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?).

Just a thought... there is probably some sort of travel restriction/fuel usage restriction in effect as well as the restrictions on electricty. I'd say moving game servers is pretty low on the list of things to spend time and fuel on.

I can't wait to see posts in a few weeks if the situation there doesn't improve.

[Anethia]

I posted this in the announcement thread but I felt it would be appropriate here as well:


It's only been a day since the servers were taken offline and I'm already suffering the withdrawal symptoms. But I would rather see the people of Japan get the help they need from the power saved by me not playing than get my last 4 seals for my drg. Am I inconvenienced? Yes I am. But my inconvenience is small beans compared to the disaster our friends across the ocean have suffered and are still suffering. I think SE's decision was the right one (never thought I would say that) and I applaud them for thinking beyond the pocket book. Good work SE, our thoughts and prayers are with you.

To those of you complaining about the servers being offline, that's pretty selfish and uncaring. They are not even going to charge you for april and yet you still complain? How about taking that money your going to save and put it into a emergency relief fund to help with recovery efforts. Thats my plan and it should be yours too. Doing something useful with the money, not something hurtful with your words.

I've taken months at a time off from the game so it's no big deal if it's down for a week or down for 2 months. SE is very aware of the financial implication this decision has, I did the math and if the game has 300,000 players with atleast 1 account and 3 characters per account that's almost 5-6 million dollars SE is losing for the month of April. More when you consider many players have more than 1 account. I think SE knows the financial draw back to a prolonged furlough. Show some consideration that for once SE has made the right choice despite the financial loss.

[Randwolf]

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

We actually are asking them to give us an 'opt in' for April charges. Not to the exclusion of the other Charitable Organizations, but so that they have a fund for any emergency needs their employees have. I'm sure S/E will be helping their employees from company funds. Of course that money comes partially from the fees we pay.

[Kjara]

Just watched the news, we're at 5000 deaths confirmed and around 10000 are expected... This sure isn't some of those "tragedies that happen everyday". My heart goes to them and I hope they will be safe from any future damage.

As for the break, who knows, maybe the one week pause is going to be used to move all SE's stuff somewhere else, where they won't have to worry about draining power to hospitals and other structures in Japan that now surely need it more. I doubt they expect to be able to turn serves on in Japan again in such a short time, so I'm sure they knew what to do when they asked only one week.

[Kavik]

For God's sakes people this is a GAME! Yes the company is important because of the amount of people that get their livelihoods from it, but its a god damn game, did anyone stop to think that at the very least 1/4 (I'm being conservative) of the people working at the Japanese site probabaly lost a loved one in this catastrophe, or if not a loved one a friend? I don't use disaster because it's not a strong enough word. This is the +2 (-2?) of what happened in hurricane Katrina, that was a disaster. If the US based SE was located in New Orleans the servers may never have come back up. That area has yet to fully recover years later and all it really did was flood because some moron decided it would be a good idea to put a city BELOW sea level behind a retention wall. The US freaked out when a couple thousand birds died off, we're talking about 2,000 Human bodies washing up on their coast, as many as 10k people missing that is 8,000 more under the rubble or washed out to sea etc, simply gone in one day. I don't know about anyone else but i grew up in a town of 5,000 people, my highschool had 3,000 students, to think about twice the population of a 'small' US town gone in an instant, as human beings we should be showing compation and not complaining about how our sitting on our asses is being disrupted because possibly hundreds of thousands of people are dying but it's not happening in our backyard so we don't care. Go read a book or *gasp* excercise.

[Runespider]

There is a reason they are a multimillion dollar company. They know better than you.

FFXIV.

So basic terms this thread is about having them set up back up servers in case something like this should happen again? Your not saying that they have to do it right now or anything just down the road right? And if the downtime should be more then a week you would be ok with that?

No i'm saying that these things should be being put into action if there is any indication that this could be a long term thing. Square US could rent servers and a few JP staff that know how to do it can hop on a plane with backups from the main servers and head to w/e to run the game from there or hand the torch over the america staff to do it. This is a multi million dollar game that brings a lot of revenue into the company not some small fry thing. Do you really think FFXI could not be run from the american office?

If FFXI and FFXIV will be down for 1-2 months it will have a horrible impact.

[Meril]

Basicly Il make it simple.... server went down... I started a 10 day trial of WOW... and Im getting invested. Give it 3 weeks and Il be gone for good. Trust me, Im not the only one. ITs just black an white, simple.

[Kindra]

Then this game is more important then the lives of fellow human beings.

I really don't care how long they take to come back up. I don't expect that someone from Japan should have to get on a plane just so I can play a video game. I hate to be blunt but if you had been saying its something that could be done to prevent this from happening again I could agree. I myself don't feel they should have to do it right now. I think that the state of their country is more important then a game or the profits they could get from it. They are not broke by any means.

Would I be happy if they did decide to do what your thinking if the game is going to be down more then a week or 2? Sure I would. But I am not expecting it. I just don't feel this is something they should be worrying about. When they come back up they are up, and I will be there.

Again this isn't in anger and just my thoughts on the matter.