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

[HFX7686]

i meant about the idea of not having an alternative after all of these years that ppl have been paying, when you have a world wide multiplatform business, you don´t have all the stuff that makes it work in one place, that is what i believe is wrong, i am sure other companies do that in order to ensure better and faster costumer support and service.

That is a terrible, terrible idea.

I do not think you have thought this through completely.

First, if they had back-up servers in another location, they'd have to pass on the cost of maintaining those back-up servers onto the consumer. This means our monthly subscription cost would go up.

Second, if they had back-up servers they would not be able to back up the data continually. It would be weekly, or monthly (depending on how much they want to jack up our fees). Therefore, if they had switched to back up servers we'd have lost 2-3 weeks or possibly more worth of data on our characters.

Third, if any company is unable to maintain their service because of a huge disaster in which people have died and are suffering and the reason they have temporarily suspended services is to help those people, I do not see how anyone could possibly disagree with that decision. Especially since they're not even going to charge us for the downtime. It is absolutely mind-blowing to me that anyone could possibly disagree with this decision.

Finally, from everything I read all the 'hardcore gamer' people at BG are completely okay with the decision to shut down the game temporarily and are doing other things in the meanwhile. I don't understand why the majority 'casual gamer' player base is having a problem with it.

[Hanabira]

having replica servers running in a different country that would have been used once in the past 9 or so years would have been a extremely silly business decision, had OP be the lead of the operation and saw the bill for "alternate servers in case of earthquake + tsunami 400k/mo" he'd be like "wtf is this crap, why isnt this money going into my pockets??" it was far more expensive than offering a free month

in fact, odds are that peter griffin would have used his volcano insurance before those off shore servers were used

on a side note, the offshore servers would likely be housed in california, which sits on a fault thats believed to one day rip the state off of the continent.

[IT_76]

I was sent here, where it looks like some people think it's stupid to have a disaster-recovery plan. XD

I was told that there are around 500k users spread out over 30 servers. That's 500,000 x $15 US per month = $7,500,000. Using someone's previous pricing of $425,000 per month to have a backup server that I assume would be replicated once per day, (resulting in one day's data loss, if that), leaves a 7.1 million dollar gross income... MONTHLY... So, could the mathematicians in the house please explain to me why everyone continues to say it isn't possible to have disaster recovery? While it is true that it does come at a loss, what do you think the investors or player-base think about their decision to skip it? That's even if it comes at a loss... The simple truth is that they are already spending money on foreign trade, so why not add a disaster-recovery plan with the pre-existing costs that they were already paying to begin with?

=)

[RAIST]

you apparently didn't read this thread in it's entirety, seeing how quickly you posted here... but glad you took the advice and moved

Edit: and, fyi,... that 500k PLUS figure you quoted is just a rough estimate of online players one might expected to be on at any one given point in time. The game's original infrastructure for just FFXI alone was for 32 game worlds, capable of supporting 15,000 to 20,000 users--roughly up to 7 million users. A couple years ago, we hit 2 million. It also does not account for their company's own internal message system for 180,000 employees that uses redundate servers and data storage, that was laid out in detail in a PDF document I linked in one of these threads. Then there is also all the data for the Taito Corp. also housed in that building. You REALLY need to go back and read this thread, and follow the links.

[Aureus]

I was sent here, where it looks like some people think it's stupid to have a disaster-recovery plan. XD

I was told that there are around 500k users spread out over 30 servers. That's 500,000 x $15 US per month = $7,500,000. Using someone's previous pricing of $425,000 per month to have a backup server that I assume would be replicated once per day, (resulting in one day's data loss, if that), leaves a 7.1 million dollar gross income... MONTHLY... So, could the mathematicians in the house please explain to me why everyone continues to say it isn't possible to have disaster recovery? While it is true that it does come at a loss, what do you think the investors or player-base think about their decision to skip it? That's even if it comes at a loss... The simple truth is that they are already spending money on foreign trade, so why not add a disaster-recovery plan with the pre-existing costs that they were already paying to begin with?

=)

The real reason is, for better or worse, MMORPGs do not have any SLA. So downtime really doesn't have any actual "cost" to them, beyond having to refund some time or a theoretical amount of users leaving.

Compare this to a real service, with an actual SLA. Going under five nines uptime will have you losing millions almost instantly. These services have a real incentive to have live backups ready to go; FFXI does not.

[IT_76]

you apparently didn't read this thread in it's entirety, seeing how quickly you posted here... but glad you took the advice and moved

Edit: and, fyi,... that 500k PLUS figure you quoted is just a rough estimate of online players one might expected to be on at any one given point in time. The game's original infrastructure for just FFXI alone was for 32 game worlds, capable of supporting 15,000 to 20,000 users--roughly up to 7 million users. A couple years ago, we hit 2 million. It also does not account for their company's own internal message system for 180,000 employees that uses redundate servers and data storage, that was laid out in detail in a PDF document I linked in one of these threads. Then there is also all the data for the Taito Corp. also housed in that building. You REALLY need to go back and read this thread, and follow the links.

It sounds as if they do have a backup plan, which they should. Unfortunately, even though it is a global service, they did not upgrade their recovery plan. Since they're already paying or contributing money towards rent, utilities, backup servers, and high-speed data lines, then why is it so hard to just rent the building overseas and pay the same costs? The company I work for backs up their data in real time by mirroring it in servers on the other side of the country, at a building they are already paying costs on... Your post makes me question even more why this wasn't done. I wonder if anyone will lose their job over it...

[Auredant]

I understand what your saying Ved even though these guys dont understand. I am sorry for what happened in japan. I could care less about playing since i dont play often but your right there shouldve been some sort of back up plan.

LOL..are you bipolar? I am literally bustin a gut over here. On a previous thread the OP, not this OP but another, made an extremely long winded, look at me post about SE not having to "apologize to us" (which everyone agreed with) and how it was breaking his heart that they were and that we should be apologizing to them. People responded by saying that the Japanese were basically a very polite people and very bussiness savvy as well saying that they were apologizing as part of business 101. And you absolutely RIPPED those people. calling them heartless, among other things. And now you defend the OPs views. If this isn't the very definition of bi-polar then I don't know what is.

[Thizzerio]

Hello guys, ok; before you starting banging and bashing the thread with, "you are a selfish, childish, and a lot more stuff", let me say this.

I am not going to go with the hole catastrofic disaster that Japan has suffer, in fact i feel so bad for those guys, and i have already donated for the cause, they are in my prays, and i watch the news really close, cause i´ve been in Japan and i really enjoyed my time over there.
Also, Final Fantasy Xi is not my life, sure enough is my favorite game, and i can live without playing it anymore; but what i am about to say is a fact and period.

For a buisness point of view, the service of the game quite frankly is really poor, and let much to be desired, i honestly can´t understand how a worldwide franchise did not have a backup plan for this kind of unexpected issues, i know you can never control stuff like this, but i am still asking myself, why they never thought of having alternative servers, specially when the game has been online for YEARS.

I don´t know about you guys, but, if people have been giving me their hard earned money for a service i am providing, i would make sure i could offer the best experience and quallity, specially when the service i am providing depends on the INTERNET, and THAT is the main reason i see why FFXIV is just a complete let down, because you are not focusing on providing the best experience, instead you are just not understanding that there are differences in the way people think from other countries, and from the other side of the world. And to make things worst, you are forcing us to adapt to what you offer just because you used to have a good solid reputation, and we are still expecting for you to get back, to what you, as a company used to be, there is a rule, for every single buisness, and that is "the customer is always right" and you used to be like that.

For example, i don´t see any time Burger King or McDonalds, stop providing and supplying food from the restaurants all over the world, just because the main factory is unavailable, that would cause millions lost every single day.

Also, people have been paying their montlhy fee, and some of them since the beggining, and i am sorry for what i am about to say, but the truth is the way you based your philosophy of the company lately, is really "Square" minded.

I have been a huge Fan of the FF franchise over the years, and no matter what i used to buy your stuff, because you prove yourself of releasing good quality games, but i think it is time to ask yourself what are you doing with your company philosphy, and actually learn something from this catastrofic disaster.

"Start listening your community or else, you will loose it".

Once again, i repeat, i think this is a fact from a buisness point of view.

Just my 2 cents, and hope all your work and development team is all right. Life and health comes first no matter what.

And also sorry for my english, Spanish is my native lenguage.

Im going to MPK you.

[Auredant]

That is a terrible, terrible idea.

I do not think you have thought this through completely.

First, if they had back-up servers in another location, they'd have to pass on the cost of maintaining those back-up servers onto the consumer. This means our monthly subscription cost would go up.

Second, if they had back-up servers they would not be able to back up the data continually. It would be weekly, or monthly (depending on how much they want to jack up our fees). Therefore, if they had switched to back up servers we'd have lost 2-3 weeks or possibly more worth of data on our characters.

Third, if any company is unable to maintain their service because of a huge disaster in which people have died and are suffering and the reason they have temporarily suspended services is to help those people, I do not see how anyone could possibly disagree with that decision. Especially since they're not even going to charge us for the downtime. It is absolutely mind-blowing to me that anyone could possibly disagree with this decision.

Finally, from everything I read all the 'hardcore gamer' people at BG are completely okay with the decision to shut down the game temporarily and are doing other things in the meanwhile. I don't understand why the majority 'casual gamer' player base is having a problem with it.

The majority of the casual player base doesn't have a problem with it. Don't know how you came up with that assumption.

[Sesono]

arent, theres an english hotline. i have called it, a very pleasant man answered and resolved my issue.

service ++!
also yes you can, you totally can. its happening right now.

true³
Their telephone support became superb over the last years. I was surprised the last time i called in and very pleased thumbs up!