So FFXI and FFXIV will be down for an unknown length of time, could be a week, could be a month, could be a lot longer.
I do understand the situation in Japan and I also understand that the situation didn't really effect Square directly that much as a company and the server downtime is more because of the power stations asking big companies to conserve power(correct me if i'm wrong). 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?).
Would Blizzard let the game be down for an unknown amount of time if this happend, would any of the big TV stations? This maybe just a game but SE is a games company and that's pretty much all they are. Their entire work force exists to make and run games so it's a big deal for them. Something like this is a godsend to your competitors in the MMO field, ie Rift and WoW.
The reason I say this is because I assume long downtime will do damage to the games userbase, downtime on addictive games like MMOs that require a monthly payment and want to keep as many players on board as possible is a bad thing. What if a large number of your subscribers go off and try other MMOs and get hooked on those or if they lose the yearning to carry on with the games, I've had breaks from many games in the past and wholely lost intrest when I had the opportunity to go back.
FFXI is currently in an upsurge and I would hate for that to slide away. If this is a week then that's one thing but if there is a chance it could be extended and go on for a long time I hope there are plans to get around it and get the game back up asap.
Since FFXIV has been run for free for 6-7 months which is being done at a vast loss of money I can assume money can also be spent on something like this, which is far more important to both games and the bottom line of SE as a company long term.
This post is not being mean, it's not trolling it's being realistic.