Development Officially Delayed due to COVID-19

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Originally Posted by Gemina

Glad to see everyone's support and understanding. Such unity on the forums is as rare as an alignment of stars. That's as good of a silver lining as any in my book. As is the fact the servers will remain online. SE can't very well charge subscribers for a service they cannot provide, so this is really good news for everyone that we can still play the game we love so much. Hopefully this let's us all know to not take privileges like that for granted.

On a lighter note: could you imagine if SE was able to maintain patch schedules despite things like national sports and global economical shutdowns?! The task forces of all the allied nations would have to do whatever the hell SE would be in that situation. xD

Thank you Yoshida. For everything you do.

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Honestly it feels like everyone is acting out your signature to keep the gaming going strong.

(As of the date of this post lest it be changed)

Too FF14 staff thank you for your work during these times look at yourselves. We will be here waiting when you are able to fully return. :D

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On a lighter note: could you imagine if SE was able to maintain patch schedules

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You mean like US developers and publishers are having to do cause they're considered non-essential in California, Washington and Texas? Some of those have already been working entirely remote for a month now.

Guess Japan doesnt do the working remote thing?

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Originally Posted by Barraind

You mean like US developers and publishers are having to do cause they're considered non-essential in California and Texas?

Guess Japan doesnt do the working remote thing?

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Are they though? We've had numerable game delay announcements the last few weeks. And even if so, working from home slows things down, even if the required infrastructure was already in place.

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Are they though?

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AENet is still releasing scheduled content and hasnt been in the office since March 6.

Darkpaw (formerly Daybreak formerly SOE) is hitting their monthly update schedule from home (their one delay had to do with a different kind of stupid) and is doing developer q&A's on the topic.

SWToR moved their monthly patch back a week due to issues in their Vancouver studios recording voice work, but have their next content patch targeted for the original date in june.

ESO is delayed a week for a similar reason; they couldnt get French translations.

Blizzard hasnt announced any specific delays, but Blizzard never releases anything on the first few dates they give anyway.


The only other major MMO suffering delays right now is Runescape, and JagEx UK handles that for western releases, not Netease NA.

Inevitable that this would happen at some point considering just how good Coronavirus is at spreading, I didn’t expect sqeenix to pull a GameStop and continue operating.

Its good too, we wouldn’t wanna risk loads of SE staff getting sick cause of Coronavirus, wouldn’t just be bad for development but their health and well-being.

The only question is what we we’ll do with the lull in content, maybe I’ll start crafting again...

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Originally Posted by Barraind

AENet is still releasing scheduled content and hasnt been in the office since March 6.

Darkpaw (formerly Daybreak formerly SOE) is hitting their monthly update schedule from home (their one delay had to do with a different kind of stupid) and is doing developer q&A's on the topic.

SWToR moved their monthly patch back a week due to issues in their Vancouver studios recording voice work, but have their next content patch targeted for the original date in june.

ESO is delayed a week for a similar reason; they couldnt get French translations.

Blizzard hasnt announced any specific delays, but Blizzard never releases anything on the first few dates they give anyway.


The only other major MMO suffering delays right now is Runescape, and JagEx UK handles that for western releases, not Netease NA.

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Meh? There's too many unknown factors that determine the productivity any company is able to sustain. Much of what you mentioned pertains to content already released for those particular games and platforms, and by all retrospect, we could add FFXIV patch 5.25 among those as an 'on time delivery'. We don't know exactly how much content is going to be delayed. That is TBD.

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Originally Posted by Barraind

You mean like US developers and publishers are having to do cause they're considered non-essential in California, Washington and Texas? Some of those have already been working entirely remote for a month now.

Guess Japan doesnt do the working remote thing?

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Maintaining patch schedules now is living hell - I would know since I work for a company that isn't delaying games/patches despite everyone working from home. It's absolutely awful and they are pushing forward at the expense of the physical and MENTAL health of their employees. Several people have already quit from my company because of how horrible and taxing it is to keep up the corporate schedule while all of this is going down.

Good on SE for taking the health of their employees into consideration.

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Originally Posted by Tsumdere

Good on SE for taking the health of their employees into consideration.

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Exactly this. I'd rather have delays than the staff literally riding roughshod with horrible physical/mental health. A delay to the game just means I have to wait until a later date to enjoy the content, but staff having horrible physical/mental health from being pushed too far in these times means they could end up hospitalised, or potentially even dead from the stress causing their immune system to fail on them. yeah, I'll take the delay over hospitalised staff thank you very much.

Seeing as by the end of this pandemic I will most likely be homeless, jobless and facing years of financial ruin and misery, the delay is the least of my worries.

The positivity in this thread is definitely nice to see. I just hope the understanding continues in the future given that the impact here might be felt for months or even years depending on how long the pandemic takes to manage.

And for those who are personally suffering in this time, I really am sorry for it. I know it's probably little comfort for some stranger on the internet to say it but I hope you manage to come through this well even if it seems dark right now.

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Originally Posted by Tsumdere

Maintaining patch schedules now is living hell - I would know since I work for a company that isn't delaying games/patches despite everyone working from home. It's absolutely awful and they are pushing forward at the expense of the physical and MENTAL health of their employees. Several people have already quit from my company because of how horrible and taxing it is to keep up the corporate schedule while all of this is going down.
Good on SE for taking the health of their employees into consideration.

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Working remotely from comfy home is living hell, then what should tell those working in transport/food/health industry?

IT always full of themselves, as usual.

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Originally Posted by Nedkel

Working remotely from comfy home is living hell, then what should tell those working in transport/food/health industry?

IT always full of themselves, as usual.

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Generalization is fun!

Anyways, while he clearly exaggerated, it isn't exactly all comfy rainbows and rose smelling farts. Working from that comfy non-work environment, under the same load, with the technical and practical issues it introduces to the work process, it usually means extra hours, or lowered output.

Wouldn't compare the difficulty to some of the front line jobs in this situation (for multiple reasons), but for the sake of fairness, lets not belittle it either.

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Originally Posted by Lersayil

Generalization is fun!

Anyways, while he clearly exaggerated, it isn't exactly all comfy rainbows and rose smelling farts. Working from that comfy non-work environment, under the same load, with the technical and practical issues it introduces to the work process, it usually means extra hours, or lowered output.

Wouldn't compare the difficulty to some of the front line jobs in this situation (for multiple reasons), but for the sake of fairness, lets not belittle it either.

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Sorry but no.
IT remote jobs does not even stand close to what regular keyworkers has to come by with during the lockdown. A lot of people are on sick notes or staying at home, and those forced to do those jobs have to work extra hard due to the staff shortage and higher demand.
If someone is working in IT and have problem to set up their job remotely then just oof.

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Originally Posted by Nedkel

Sorry but no.
IT remote jobs does not even stand close to what regular keyworkers has to come by with during the lockdown. A lot of people are on sick notes or staying at home, and those forced to do those jobs have to work extra hard due to the staff shortage and higher demand.
If someone is working in IT and have problem to set up their job remotely then just oof.

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Ah yes, oof. A shorthand term for unpaid vacation or lay off. Totally not an issue for those involved.

My point was: these are hard times for everyone. We all have our issues. Some, more than others. It's good to have perspective, but no need to belittle a group, just because another has its different kind of worse problems. Even more so, since the guy you responded to made no such claims to begin with.

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Originally Posted by Nedkel

Working remotely from comfy home is living hell, then what should tell those working in transport/food/health industry?

IT always full of themselves, as usual.

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I never said that those working transport/food/health aren't going through a hard time either. Those folks are doing God's work. However, one person's struggles do not invalidate another's.

IT is putting themselves through the wringer to please people at the expense of their own happiness/mental health. Imagine working all day, every day because servers are buckling under the strain of everyone being locked at home all day. Or working all day because customer support cannot keep up with the incoming volume of tickets. Or being subjected to constant verbal abuse, gore pics, and death threats because you're not doing something a customer wants as fast as they want because the employees cannot keep up with the sheer influx of players/requests and the normal patch cycle.

Once again, bless to everyone who is working at this time, no matter the job. Everyone is putting their physical and/or mental health on the line to make people happy/healthy. Bless to the non-essential companies who take into consideration their employees and not cowtow to babies who couldn't cope if their patch didn't come out RIGHT NOW!!!!

People's lives and well beings are more important than a patch for a video game. I hope everyone stays safe. Please take as much time as you need. As this has been said before, we are all in this together!

Not sure what scare this is all about I got it lasted 4 days and was over it. When I got West Nile virus in the past that was way worse.

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Originally Posted by hynaku

Not sure what scare this is all about I got it lasted 4 days and was over it. When I got West Nile virus in the past that was way worse.

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I'm not sure if you're serious or not, but just because you - probably a young and rather healthy person (my asumptions may be wrong, in which case I apologise) - only had mild symptoms doesnt mean this virus isnt to be taken seriously.
People with pre-existing conditions and/or of old age might have a very, very different experience.
Furthermore the virus can be transmitted directly from human to human - considering that it develops in your throat, coughing or even spitting some out is very likely. Thats why social distancing is so important: To lower the chance that you get infected by someone else or that you infect someone else (please tell me that you stayed away from people as much as possible for at least 14 days and not only for the 4 days you had symptoms... you can transmit the virus even when you dont show any symptoms...) Looking at West Nile virus: Thats transmitted through gnats - so social distancing would do nothing, other methods probably will and those will probably be taken in areas where there are gnats that are know to transmit the virus.

Lastly: We dont have a (curative) treatment or vaccine for Covid-19 - and yes, we dont have one for West Nile either, but as I could hopefully make clear: Its a lot easier for Covid-19 to spread through an entire population thats cuddling in public transport, offices, schools, restaurants, parks etc.
Hospitals in most countries arent prepared for everyone to get sick and in need of a hospital bed - even if only a fraction of people will need a hospital bed and help breathing, the hospitals are not prepared.

You got lucky. Grats.
Others werent so lucky. As of right now 2.673 people in germany were unlucky enough to die because of the virus - and afaik germany only counts the deaths directly linked to the virus, not those were someone with a tone of pre-existing conditions that probably would have killed them in the next few weeks AND caught the virus on top died.
Globally over 100.000 people died because of Covid-19 - not everyone only has mild symptoms.
You got lucky.

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Originally Posted by hynaku

Not sure what scare this is all about I got it lasted 4 days and was over it. When I got West Nile virus in the past that was way worse.

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Think of the spanish flu. The virus itself isn't really all that scary on its own, but it spreads fast and complications combined with previous conditions most prevalent in older age groups makes it... well, all that scary.

Also, the load on infrastructure. I'm sure you've seen the graphs about how we should flatten the rate of spread, otherwise we overload the healthcare system, which would lead to even more of a dire situation.

For the young to mid age groups its less about getting sick, and more about worrying for older family members, and mitigating the crisis before it leads to an even worse situation.

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Originally Posted by Vidu

I'm not sure if you're serious or not, but just because you - probably a young and rather healthy person (my asumptions may be wrong, in which case I apologise) - only had mild symptoms doesnt mean this virus isnt to be taken seriously.
People with pre-existing conditions and/or of old age might have a very, very different experience.

You got lucky. Grats.
Others werent so lucky. As of right now 2.673 people in germany were unlucky enough to die because of the virus - and afaik germany only counst the deaths directly linked to the virus, not those were someone with a tone of pre-existing conditions that probably would have killed them in the next few weeks AND caugth the virus on top died.
Globally over 100.000 people died because of Covid-19 - not everyone only has mild symptoms.
You got lucky.

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To top it all off, I know how serious it can be. I've personally had to deal with a death within my family due to the coronavirus (I received the phone call off my biological father on Thursday). I'm only going out if I need to buy essentials, or pick up medicine. Even though our lockdown allows for a couple of other reasons (e.g. exercise), I'm refusing to do that. Heck, our household has also implemented a policy of "No non-essential items to be delivered", which means the tech upgrades I'm after are probably about 18 months away. But if me waiting on my tech upgrades means lives are spared, it's a small price to pay. With regards to the family loss, nobody is allowed to go to the funeral either. We can't go to say our goodbyes.

So please everybody, I beg of you, take this seriously. I get it, it sucks, being stuck in the house isn't fun, but at the end of the day, we have to do this to protect our countries. Consider it a social vaccine if you will. With things like Discord, Skype, etc, allowing for video calls, you can still see each other's faces and talk to each other, though obviously the physical contact is gone. My best friend's partner has also had to temporarily move away because she's high risk and he's an essential worker. I'm sure you can imagine the toll that's taking on her because of this. She's not allowed out of her house for ANY reason (not even to get essentials, they have to be delivered to her door, and then the delivery person to step away from the house so she can pick them up) for 12 weeks, and she's younger than me (and I'm barely considered middle age, more likely young age still). Not to mention, we've had a few die here that were young (like, teenager age) with no underlying medical complications, because of coronavirus. Not to mention, our NHS is already buckling under the pressure of the coronavirus.

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Originally Posted by hynaku

Not sure what scare this is all about I got it lasted 4 days and was over it. When I got West Nile virus in the past that was way worse.

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2 Words: Collateral Damage. In 80% of people it's like a stronger flu, but in the remaining 20% it can hospitalise people to the point of needing a ventilator and of those who end up in intensive care suvival is about 50%. The real danger from all this is that if so many people get sick at once it overwhelms the health system leading to people who are stricken down with other health issues not geting fast enough treatment and dying from preventable complications. That's the main issue. Covid is basically Sars 2: Electric Boogalo World Tour, the last one didnt make it out of Asia but this one made it. Only have to look at the amount of older people being wiped out to see the damage not to mention those who have other complications or comprimised systems being struck down as well.

The whole situation sucks but without what's happening now we would be looking at far worse damage and fatalities, remember the spanish pandemic ended up wiping out 100m people a century ago, least were now in an age where tech lets a good chunk of people work at home and not need to put themselves at too much risk.

I hope they stay safe. I don't mind waiting. In fact it even works better for me, with work going insane.

I'm not looking forward for more people like hynaku to start coming out of the woods saying it wasn't that bad because "they got it" and they were fine. I can see it coming a mile away. In fact it has already begun.

Stay healthy and safe Yoshi P and team =^_~=

Stay safe, team! Better to protect your health.

Gives me a chance to get caught up on my backlog of games.

being healthy and safe is way more important than a game i dont mind the wait. I couldn't see anyone being against this.

I hope the devs take care of themselves. As much as I enjoy playing FFXIV and look forward to each new patch, people's lives mean much more than my personal entertainment. Stay safe, stay healthy. When things get back to some semblance of normalcy, then we can worry about playing catch up.

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Originally Posted by hynaku

Not sure what scare this is all about I got it lasted 4 days and was over it. When I got West Nile virus in the past that was way worse.

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I totally survived a car crash head on collision with a drunk driver with 0 ill effects. All these people talking about how deadly drunk drivers are are totally exaggerating.


... see how that sounds?


Just because it didn't happen to you personally does not lessen how serious the effects can be.