World Visit Stuck - can't go home

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Originally Posted by Hasrat

Today I learned there are actually large amounts of players that regularly spend a great deal of time away from their home server.

Weird.

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I don't spend a lot of time away from mine, but I do shop around if there's a high priced item I'm after. I was actually just about to do that before the world server travel was shut down. I really dodged a bullet there.

Two of my alts are stuck on Siren. I was supposed to help decorate our new FC house. Sucks ><

I live on Coeurl, went to Bryn to meet up with a friend and do Diamond weapon normal + EX, by the time we finished EX and I wanted to go back home world travel was suspended. I have 9 retainers I can't use that have my gear for UWU/TEA (so probably no runs this week,) all my crafting mats, all my MB sales and ventures, I can't pick up new Zonureskin maps or sell the ones on hand, I can't go back to my house and tend to my plants, won't be able to do Cactpot this week, etc. I am stranded on Bryn and I only know like two people here. If it's going to be like this for more than a day or two it's bad enough that this is like, free-month-of-sub or something, level of bad.

To everyone stuck on Balmung, don't worry, we'll take good care of you. One of us. One of us.

https://i.imgur.com/AHG2uMD.gif

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Originally Posted by Hasrat

Today I learned there are actually large amounts of players that regularly spend a great deal of time away from their home server.

Weird.

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No so weird. I don't spend a LOT of time off my home world server but I was attending a Hunt A-class train that was underway in Midgard when the snafu happened trapping me there. A-Class Hunt trains are now a great way to collect Nuts which can be turned in for twines and such for gear upgrades. The call for the series of Hunt trains often roll out in a series from world to world going after monster after monster (two in each zone) earning a lot in a short period of time. Tomes too!

Now my hunt linkshells are defunct, and I cant travel cross worlds to join them even if I could hear the call on discord and the lone CWLS I have.

I am also cut off from my friends who I play with regularly also.

All of this hobbles my daily routines so badly that the game is effectively broken for me. It is more than an "inconvenience". I'm paying for services like extra retainers I cannot access. I am loosing out on important market opportunities that only come along rarely during new chapters. I cannot even gather the full range of materials I would need to craft items let alone being unable to sell them. This "inconvenient" bug is ruining my gaming experience. But rather than shutting down for emergency maint to fix this right away they're putting it off (long enough apparently to cause them to suspend auto-demolition... that implies we're in for a very long wait.) I'm so frustrated I am considering leaving the game for an extended hiatus again. The last one was almost a year and I had continued to pay my veteran subscription fees... yeah I've been playing this game off and on for that long (pre-ARR) and paying continuous dues which is a heavy investment when you add it all up.

I'm just glad I didn't pay for and schedule an eternal bond with my partner during this like I had been planning or I'd be out that money too.

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Originally Posted by Dusk_Shardveil

No so weird. I don't spend a LOT of time off my home world server but I was attending a Hunt A-class train that was underway in Midgard when the snafu happened trapping me there. A-Class Hunt trains are now a great way to collect Nuts which can be turned in for twines and such for gear upgrades. The call for the series of Hunt trains often roll out in a series from world to world going after monster after monster (two in each zone) earning a lot in a short period of time. Tomes too!

Now my hunt linkshells are defunct, and I cant travel cross worlds to join them even if I could hear the call on discord and the lone CWLS I have.

I am also cut off from my friends who I play with regularly also.

All of this hobbles my daily routines so badly that the game is effectively broken for me. It is more than an "inconvenience". I'm paying for services like extra retainers I cannot access. I am loosing out on important market opportunities that only come along rarely during new chapters. I cannot even gather the full range of materials I would need to craft items let alone being unable to sell them. This "inconvenient" bug is ruining my gaming experience. But rather than shutting down for emergency maint to fix this right away they're putting it off (long enough apparently to cause them to suspend auto-demolition... that implies we're in for a very long wait.) I'm so frustrated I am considering leaving the game for an extended hiatus again. The last one was almost a year and I had continued to pay my veteran subscription fees... yeah I've been playing this game off and on for that long (pre-ARR) and paying continuous dues which is a heavy investment when you add it all up.

I'm just glad I didn't pay for and schedule an eternal bond with my partner during this like I had been planning or I'd be out that money too.

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You wouldn't be out the EB money, those can be rescheduled.

Also, its something broken enough that they can't replicate it. Imagine if they caved and did emergancy maint, and it just wiped whatever was on your char while it was off your home world. I imagine you'd be pretty upset over that.

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Originally Posted by Valkyrie_Lenneth

You wouldn't be out the EB money, those can be rescheduled.

Also, its something broken enough that they can't replicate it. Imagine if they caved and did emergancy maint, and it just wiped whatever was on your char while it was off your home world. I imagine you'd be pretty upset over that.

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You're just making things up to attack my statement and belittle me and my frustration with this. There is no indication that would be the consequence. Personal attacks aren't necessary.

They have already fixed similar issues on other data centers.

I'm talking about real loss of services I paid for, real money, real time, plus my routine game progress. Yeah the money I would have sent in for the EB would have been saved by rescheduling but the time off of work my partner would have taken to attend would have been a real world loss considering that the times they normally have off are always booked before we can get to them. Regardless I am fortunate that it was not an issue we're going to put it off indefinitely.

I'm really hoping that they read these forums because they do not provide any other means of communicating my frustration at these circumstances to them as it is the only avenue they give you for doing so. I have invested an enormous amount of time and money into this game. As have a lot of other players who are similarly afflicted by this bug.

My regular gameplay is important to me. Currently I am cut off from socializations with my normal pool of friends. I am left only with quests that feel like gophering (go-for this go for that fetch this fetch that) that do not award any significant gill and I'm capped on XP already in my preferred classes, and while I normally enjoy the MSQ story lines this issue has really put me out of the mood for them. I guess there's beast tribe quests to advance reputation with the tribes but those only eat up a small block of time and are limited.

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Originally Posted by Feronar

Yikes. As someone who works in web development, having to deploy a such a sensitive fix to business-critical production servers without being able to reproduce it on an internal test server would be a terrifying prospect. I'm sure glad I'm not on the team that has to do that. *shudder*

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Same. It's one of those yeehaw moments you gotta be careful with. So I can understand their utmost caution in the fix, because whilst yes, it's a problem for players, they don't exactly want to make it worse as the old song goes, "there are 99 bugs in the code, patch one out and there are 127 bugs in the code".


Speaking as somebody who heavily uses world visit and inconvenienced by this problem, it is what it is, bugs happen and the fact they couldn't replicate it in a test environment should explain how it slipped through. With the best efforts in the world live and test environments are different and only so much you can test when putting something live without making maintenance ridiculously long, even then bugs can still get missed.

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Originally Posted by Dusk_Shardveil

But rather than shutting down for emergency maint to fix this right away they're putting it off (long enough apparently to cause them to suspend auto-demolition... that implies we're in for a very long wait.)

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You're assuming they CAN shut down for emergency maintenance. If they can't even replicate it on internal servers, then mucking around with things on the production servers without understanding the cause could make things 100 times worse.

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Originally Posted by TaleraRistain

You're assuming they CAN shut down for emergency maintenance. If they can't even replicate it on internal servers, then mucking around with things on the production servers without understanding the cause could make things 100 times worse.

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Yep I back that complaetely. Patching production servers blind, is something done very slowly and very carefully - with a full rollback plan. Doing anything less can lead to much bigger problems.

I have my fingers crossed for everyone trapped off world, it's not a nice way to be stuck. But this is something that needs to be done very carefully, and with a lot of planning.

My guess is what someone said here, that it's an issue with folder permissions that happened when they did the maintenance. Like a folder ending up set to read only or something and when they tried to fix it the setting wouldn't take. Folder permissions are finicky enough in Windows, but they are even more finicky in Linux. I'm not sure which OS they use on their production servers, but take it from someone who has fiddled about with both, if permission settings go wonky it can really foul things up.

Really gotta wonder why they made this system without a fail safe that would be able to force people's character back to home worlds if ever needed.

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Originally Posted by Enla

To everyone stuck on Balmung, don't worry, we'll take good care of you. One of us. One of us.

https://i.imgur.com/AHG2uMD.gif

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Exactly! We don't bite...at least not hard. ♥

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Originally Posted by White_Wolf_X

Really gotta wonder why they made this system without a fail safe that would be able to force people's character back to home worlds if ever needed.

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This. This a thousand times. There should be a limited way to return to home server.

I guess it depends on the kind of problem it is, especially given the bug is that people can't return home. So a failsafe that returns you home would likely still have the same bug.

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Originally Posted by White_Wolf_X

Really gotta wonder why they made this system without a fail safe that would be able to force people's character back to home worlds if ever needed.

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Even if such a failsafe existed, how do we know it wouldn't be broken by the same bug?

Exactly.. they have to give us something.. I sent them a ticket wanting a refund. Paying for sub and retainers and not being able to access it is just unacceptable without some kind of refund.

Thisssss^^^^

Exactly.. There are so many ways to prevent this... 15min warning of world transfer shutdown. A failsafe button to return to your homeworld. Block every world transfer except going back into your home world etc...

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Originally Posted by Rekido

Thisssss^^^^

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No one can see who you are replying to so it looks like you just agreed with yourself btw. you need to use reply with quote lol.

While I do think it's frustrating that people can't get back to their home worlds and that means players are cut off from certain features, I think it's too soon to be demanding anything be done for players right now.

We don't know how long the issue will last. They are doing emergency maintenance tomorrow in hopes to fix the issue.

A few days of impacted game play is not enough to warrant refunds if the fix they're putting in place works.

If things are going to take a while (weeks), they do need to figure out something for those who have been affected by this issue. Especially for those paying for extra retainers that they can't use at the moment.

And if it's going to be for an extended unknown time frame (like they are thinking months), giving affected players who request it a couple of free home world switches - done by IT so the player can't bank the home world transfers - once to the home world they're stuck on and once back to the previous home world. Or figure out some way to allow for usage of items and services on worlds you're traveling to. Mainly the retainer and selling things. Even if just temporarily.

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Originally Posted by White_Wolf_X

Really gotta wonder why they made this system without a fail safe that would be able to force people's character back to home worlds if ever needed.

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There most likely IS a failsafe, but the fault broke it too.

Even with multiple redundancies, planes still can crash.

I hope the fault does get fixed in this emergency maintenance coming up, and everyone is home safe, soon. *fingers crossed/thumbs pressed for all*

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Originally Posted by Enla

To everyone stuck on Balmung, don't worry, we'll take good care of you. One of us. One of us.

https://i.imgur.com/AHG2uMD.gif

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https://media1.tenor.com/images/5eae...itemid=7883713

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Originally Posted by Valkyrie_Lenneth

No one can see who you are replying to so it looks like you just agreed with yourself btw. you need to use reply with quote lol.

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I bet that was his plan lol

Emergency Maintenance whether you like it or not in two hours.

https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodes...07245b168f9508

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Originally Posted by Rekido

Exactly.. they have to give us something.. I sent them a ticket wanting a refund. Paying for sub and retainers and not being able to access it is just unacceptable without some kind of refund.

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If today's fix works you'll have lost what, a dollar's worth of fees? Much less if we're just talking retainers because let's face it, you can still play the game. Hardly a refund worth kicking and screaming about.

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Originally Posted by Rekido

Exactly.. There are so many ways to prevent this... 15min warning of world transfer shutdown. A failsafe button to return to your homeworld. Block every world transfer except going back into your home world etc...

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The bug is that people can't go back to their homeworld. If this is the problem then this solution would not be a fix because for this to work then people would need to be able to return to their homeworld.

It sucks, but these things happen and they've been very quick to respond and to try and resolve the issue. I think it's way too early to be asking for refunds. It sucks, it's an inconvenience, but eh, at least they're not dragging their feet about it.

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Originally Posted by Rekido

Exactly.. they have to give us something.. I sent them a ticket wanting a refund. Paying for sub and retainers and not being able to access it is just unacceptable without some kind of refund.

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Yeah good luck with that. Could you still play the game? Yes. Will they give you a refund? I do not think so.

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Originally Posted by Breezelyn

I can't even access my alt now because of this.

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Why?

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Originally Posted by Breezelyn

I do get it--but for me to pay for something I can't fully access?

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Originally Posted by Breezelyn

SE better compensate people who are basically 100% stuck.

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I'm confident TOS covers this. Game isn't unavailable and will most likely be fixed in the next 1.5 hour so you "lost" access to your retainer for 2 whopping days. We're talking about 86 cents. (13 / 30 x 2 days).

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Originally Posted by Feronar

Yikes. As someone who works in web development, having to deploy a such a sensitive fix to business-critical production servers without being able to reproduce it on an internal test server would be a terrifying prospect. I'm sure glad I'm not on the team that has to do that. *shudder*

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Software dev here, I agree lol.

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Originally Posted by Hasrat

Today I learned there are actually large amounts of players that regularly spend a great deal of time away from their home server.

Weird.

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Yeah I made same comment on reddit, I got shit for having friends on my home server. Weird world we live in when you have friends on your own server vs having them spread around.

I made the comment somewhere that "this is why you always always log out on your home world!" I didn't realize the world travel system was shut down while servers were live (as in people went on things like hunt trains or shopping and got stuck). I take back that comment, and I'm praying this emergency maintenance fixes things quick like and in a hurry. But, you know. Well done so it doesn't break MORE things.

I made it back home.

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Originally Posted by JillyBean

I made it back home.

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YAY welcome home!

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Originally Posted by Sotaris

Yeah I made same comment on reddit, I got shit for having friends on my home server. Weird world we live in when you have friends on your own server vs having them spread around.

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I have most of my friends on my server and only use World Visit to check MB prices, do special fates and hunts occasionally, but there are absolutely valid reasons having friends spread out.