Quote Originally Posted by Nyarlko View Post
If they scheduled maints to be convenient for us, that would most likely put them in the middle of the night for them.
I totally disagree and for two reasons:

1) I did not mention any specific customer or location! As I mentioned earlier (maybe you missed it), my work requires I follow a Japanese day. Thus I wake up in the US evening and go to sleep in the US morning.

I am not advocating in anyway shape or form SE make their maintenance convenient for North or South American customers.

I am advocating SE management try to be convenient for ALL customers anywhere in the world!

2) I gave an example: Moving the maintenance from TUESDAY 08:00 JST to WEDNESDAY 08:00 JST.

Maybe I missed something, but how is Wednesday 08:00 JST in the middle of the night for them? Honestly, I don't understand how someone can complain about a 24 hour difference. It isn't in the middle of the night for them, but it would have been more convenient for every player, in the world.

Also I seriously wonder if having it between April 1 and 10th at 08:00 JST wouldn't have been possible. I suspect, though, they wanted to spend the Yen during this quarter and not the upcoming one, thus scheduling it this week not next. If this is the reason they scheduled it for this week, well, they did the right thing. I'd only suggest next time try to do it between the 1st and 10th of March.

But again doing it on WEDNESDAY at 08:00 JST would NOT put it in the middle of the night for them is my main point!


Quote Originally Posted by Nyarlko View Post
You mention "high-end blade servers", but I've never heard about SE saying anything about the hardware this runs on. Do you have proof of some sort? (Not being mean, genuinely interested.)
I've always been curious about how difficult it might be for them to keep the server software running fine given 15yrs of hardware advancement.
Sure! I read it several years back, but don't have the link on me right now. As I read, each area (or some are groups of areas) run on a blade. Thus Bastok Mines (for example) runs on say blade 15, while Port Sandy run on blade 25. In some cases, it might be a group of areas running on one blade. This is one reason, when you change areas there is a delay or why when entering certain battle fields there might not be room for you.

As for operating system, it has its basis in Unix / Linux, but is specific to the game.

I will try to find the articles and threads I read.

I can say this immediately: There is a private server for FFXI play and they use "The server is hosted on enterprise level hardware and a 75mbit connection, so speed isn't an issue." Also if you look at the main website, they show multiple servers supporting the one world of Nasomi at: http://nasomi.com/status/

(Please note the above paragraph includes 3 links to help you understand.)

Of course this information is not about SE directly, but again I don't remember right off my head where I read the information on the SE hardware and software. I'm giving you what I remember off the top of my head.