SE you have a Worldwide Franchise, and your support is a let down.

[Basher]

I'll find ya on the online AH then an msg u from there, since this place has no
/msg system i'm aware of. If you don't have a name on there yet to take claim of\
ur char then I'll wait till the game is back up an msg u then =)

Note: Anyone thinking my forum name = my char name = very mistaken =p
I won't have any server hunts for me tyvm I enjoy my peace for what little I have.

I happen to agree with both of you. From a business stand point it wouldnt be overly expensive to maintain a backup set of servers in the US or Europe. I'm sure SE has plenty of hardware laying around from all the servers they have merged in the last year or so. The other impact the disaster has had on Japan is economic, and by not being able to supply a service to its customers SE has become part of the problem. They have to pay wages and they have no income. The great thing about gaming is they dont have to grow, manufacture or produce anything. All they needed was a backup. People are crying expense, well what about their insurance? Dont tell me a company the size of SE doesnt have any? Heaven forbid a nuclear reactor does meltdown, more people die, infrastructure is lost. If they lose all their data they lose their entire FFXI customer base. What does that do for the people of Japan who need money food and housing, where are they going to get an income from? The beauty about gaming and monthly charges is its if you have remote backup's you're up and running fairly quickly and maintaining an income which is vital for recovery. People are saying "How were they to know". Well they sit on the edge of the "Ring of fire" and they have had previous disasters ie Kobe's Quake. No one is saying we dont feel bad for Japan. We do. But from a business standpoint, there wasnt any real planning in place for this. Does that make us mean and cruel? No, it just means we are being a little more honest than flamers who think we're picking on SE.

[Auriga]

Yep Same name as here

I'll msg you over there then, fairly soon.

=======

@ Basher - Hell if SE sent me a server to hook up & host I'd do it, I'm fairly
sure I got the space for one or 2 servers. As for the bandwidth.. that's another
story.. they'd have to supply the t3 line or w/e.

[RAIST]

it is common practice for software firms to archive there source code with a third party. There is an entire industry built around it. Even the small local Firm I used to work with archived their java apps with Iron Mountain on a weekly basis. I'm sure if their building got wiped off the map, the code would be somewhere where it could be retrieved and rebuilt if they were driven to do it.

I would really like to see someone who has any information on their backup and recovery policy so we can actually know if it's truly worthy of all the criticism they are getting. Again... for all we know, they could be in the middle of doing exactly what their policy calls for, and doing exactly what so many people have been crying for--but for whatever reason it is proving to be a long, drawn out process. It may have well een a process expecting to take one week once they reviewed it, only to find that it is taking longer thatn they expected.

We simply have no details on exactly what is going on, so I really don't see why they deserve criticism for that--if anything, they deserve criticism for non-disclosure of just what is going on. THEN, maybe all this other criticism may have a foundation.

Raist

[Vedabe]

All right see you there Auri

[Auriga]

All right see you there Auri

Sent! =p 1234567890 because SE says the post is too short lol.

[Basher]

Yup, agreed but that was one of the points the OP made, poor communication with the customers. Its always been an issue with SE. Its similar to what happened here in NZ after our quake. People were frightened to send them purchase orders for goods and services after the quake because we were all trying to be considerate. But thats the opposite of what they needed. They needed those orders to keep the money flowing, keep their minds occupied. Japans intellect economy is a beautiful thing and its invaluable to them, it needs to be up and running for them as quickly as possible.

[Auriga]

Yup, agreed but that was one of the points the OP made, poor communication with the customers. Its always been an issue with SE. Its similar to what happened here in NZ after our quake. People were frightened to send them purchase orders for goods and services after the quake because we were all trying to be considerate. But thats the opposite of what they needed. They needed those orders to keep the money flowing, keep their minds occupied. Japans intellect economy is a beautiful thing and its invaluable to them, it needs to be up and running for them as quickly as possible.

Once again.. what should be done.. could be done.. wasn't done.. and sadly none of said people
in charge are any of us.. nor will they hire us towards any of these ideas. Though if any of us
are wrong it would be cool if one of their own would come down here to be like "this an that
is the logic behind why we didn't" but I'm considering too much.. far far too much.. a childrens
forum will never be taken "seriously" by any company.

So in the words of Prof. Hubert J. Farnsworth:
"Yes, but they won't listen! Everybody's always in favor of saving Hitler's brain. But when you put it in the body of a great white shark - uuuh, suddenly you've gone too far." // "Wait... wha?"

[Glitch]

To all of you who are complaining about SE not having "backup" servers:

SE certainly has backup servers. The backup operating servers are in Japan with the rest of the live operating servers. This is how they manage to restore the game so quickly after emergency maintenance due to hardware failures. They also have backup data servers, some of which probably are in other countries since many companies outsource server space. But these servers only function to store information so that it can be restored to operating servers when they are back to a functional condition.

Very few businesses of any kind have servers in other countries. If they do, they are not operating servers, they are simply data servers. In fact, the only businesses I can think of at the moment that would have redundant operating servers are very large banks/financial institutions, airlines, or data processing companies (like Axiom) who would be bankrupt if they had complete shutdown for only a matter of hours. Delta Airlines was quoted in an IT magazine (I can't remember which one or when) as saying that they would go out of business if they lost data resources for more than one hour.

From a "strictly business" point of view, and this has already been partially addressed, there are entire teams of people in any large organization that calculate and weigh the risks vs. investments. Some of these risks absolutely include the risk of losing angry customers due to their inability to provide services (this was part of the reason for Delta Airlines' statement). A few million dollars a month do not warrant the type of backup resources it would take to operate something as huge as a global MMORPG. Millions of dollars a day; "We need redundant operating servers somewhere else in the country." Tens of millions of dollars a day; "OK, now we're seriously considering global backup servers." Hundreds of millions of dollars a day; "Yeah, we need operating servers in another country." Not only does it cost a fortune to have such resources, having those resources in a different country opens up a whole new set of tax and regulation concerns that can get tremendously expensive on their own. Get the picture?

No video game has redundant operating servers in multiple countries. Any servers that are in other countries are either regional servers, which, as others have already pointed out, mean that different countries cannot play together in the same "world", or are simply data backups and cannot actually run the game.

It is most definitely not wrong to voice your opinion, but you should really make sure you know what you are talking about before you do or you are simply flexing your ignorance muscle in public.

I would also like to point out that they provided us with an update that the servers would be down for a couple of extra days a full three days before their original projection was to arrive. Most of us can't even imagine what it would be like to have to make that decision until the last possible moment in hopes of not having to suffer an incredible financial loss. I think this is an exemplary example of how dedicated SE is to us and I applaud them for it.

Additionally, Glitch IS my character name, and if you want to flame me in /tells go right ahead. Prove how much of a child you really are. I have a /blist entry with your character name on it. t('.'t)

Finally, I apologize for my lack of candor. I wish I could be more tolerant of unsympathetic boobs, and no I'm not referring to funbags.

[Basher]

lmao.. scarey @auriga

[Tsukino_Kaji]

I wish I could be more tolerant of unsympathetic boobs, and no I'm not referring to funbags.

Not to say that I don't, but why should people be sympethetic of a multi national corporation?