Minimise the downtime please.

[Anethia]

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.

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

[bishop]

Go outside and play a game of street ball.

[Amperage]

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.

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.

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.

[Midnitelouie]

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.

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...

[Chamaan]

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.

[Emdub]

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=-

[Skyrant_Kangaroomouse]

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

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!

[Kitheren]

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~

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.

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

[Valix]

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

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.

[Kitheren]

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.

Agreed. Thank you for stating that.