Maintenance Downtime

I understand that each online game requires weekly maintenance to keep things in proper running order, but there comes a time when it becomes way to much. Sure it's nice to run maintenance at night when most players are asleep, but at the same time players who are exclusively on during the downtimes suffer severely. You need to come up with a solution such as Guild Wars did by doing maintenance without ever shutting down servers. Then releasing a new build for players to download when it becomes available. I'm tired of coming home from work with hours to spare and I cant play because every 2 days there is a freaking maintenance. Figure it out SE.

Ahhh thank you I can update my list

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Originally Posted by Thaliss

just for the fun of it, been a while I didn't see one of the threads :p

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...-a-FREE-MONTH.

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...magine-that%29

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...46-maintenance

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...ble-to-play%29

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...52#post2041852

Let's have a maintenance free server, but no one allowed to complain about lag, bugs an no content added :p

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The maintenance currently listed is listed as Infrastructure maintenance and is only for NA/EU.
This type of maintenance don't happen very often, and it's quite possible that it's due to outside factors rather than planned for by SE alone.

Maintenance is also scheduled for a time when it affects the least number of players. Unfortunately for you that happens to match your playtime.

And saying every 2 days doesn't match maintenance history at all.

Considering that "infrastructure" was the main reason behind the slew of 90k and colossal lag errors a month or two back, mayhap they've finally been able to hash out a solution with Level3...

Geez....there's been like 3 maint. in the last month not including patch day, and this one is the first that was longer than a couple of hours in a long time. The game had a rough startup but since Patch 2.2 it's been one of the most stable games out there with a remarkably low amount of downtime and next to 0 prime time downtime. FYI I'm not sure how GW pulls off that update style but it wouldn't work with FFXIV which often has both server and clientside software updates and in most cases wouldn't be able to afford having players running two different revs of the game at the same time. Software updates on the server require a reboot. Rebooting the whole datacenter takes a couple of hours.

Multiple maintenance sessions right after a big patch is pretty normal for this game and should be expected by now - especially by the Devs >.> (seriously, taking down both data centres during the Welcome Back weekend? That's not exactly welcoming).

I started playing this game about 2 weeks ago. I play during the week but Friday night is my primetime. First Friday I play and after an hour I get a downtime message. 7pm until 11pm.....wiping out my night in the game.....so I go play something else. Tuesday night comes around....another 3 hour outage. So I'm now wondering just exactly how much maintenance is done in this game. I'm looking forward to this Friday to get into FFXIV only to find there will be another outage from 6pm until 1am wiping out my second Friday night.

So yeah, this game looked really good but it seems my timezone (New Zealand) coupled with the incredible frequency and duration of outages may make this game non-viable

Furthermore I have read other threads on this topic with the "all MMO's are like this" excuses and as a 10 year veteran of at least a dozen MMOs I am certain that FFXIV is the worst I have ever come across. I know my timezone doesn't help by my god how many hours a week is this game down.....

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Originally Posted by Vehdren

I know my timezone doesn't help by my god how many hours a week is this game down.....

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Normally? At most 2 hours/week.

I understand your points but Guild Wars was a free to play game with little micro transactions. They pulled it off with ease. All you had to do was log out of the game, log back in, and boom it started downloading. Im sure that at $15 a month for each subscribed member, they could EASILY afford to do that.

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Originally Posted by SirDemigod

I understand your points but Guild Wars was a free to play game with little micro transactions. They pulled it off with ease. All you had to do was log out of the game, log back in, and boom it started downloading. Im sure that at $15 a month for each subscribed member, they could EASILY afford to do that.

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Er, you do know that the micro-transaction games tend to make more money in the long run than static sub games? If they're not, then they've failed as a "F2P" game (from a financial point of view).

So, we had maintenance last night... And again tonight? Is this correct?

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Originally Posted by Eggnook24

So, we had maintenance last night... And again tonight? Is this correct?

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What maint was there last night? There was one three days ago to supplement frontlines, and today's is datacenter maintenance. None yesterday.

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Originally Posted by Eggnook24

So, we had maintenance last night... And again tonight? Is this correct?

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No.

/10char.

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Originally Posted by whoopeeragon

What maint was there last night? There was one three days ago to supplement frontlines, and today's is datacenter maintenance. None yesterday.

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Yeah, it was for frontline... hehe...

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Originally Posted by SirDemigod

I understand your points but Guild Wars was a free to play game with little micro transactions. They pulled it off with ease. All you had to do was log out of the game, log back in, and boom it started downloading. Im sure that at $15 a month for each subscribed member, they could EASILY afford to do that.

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Not the same game engine (fortunately) It just doesn't happen like that. They would have to rewrite the entire game engine to make it do it that way after the fact (game launch) If it wasn't designed that way in the first place, its not going to easily happen. They based their new game engine with FFXIV 1.0 in mind, not GW

I do wish more games were as flexible as GW2, a single market for a whole datacenter, guesting on other servers with just two clicks, live maps being flexible enough to create copies if the map was full (overflow) and using said copies when there was a new update, giving people 1 hour to update to the new build, no queues but a cross server party finder...

But yeah it's not about money, SE makes more with FFXIV than NCSoft does with GW2, it's just that this game was designed that way and there's no way to change it now.

Generally I am not one to complain about maintenance as it is required for the most part, however the frequency over the previous week since 2.3 is rather frustraiting. It literally has been during the core playtimes for my country (which I am used to) every 3ish days, which is growing rather frustrating.

I don't really understand why 2 of the 3 scheduled/emergency maintenance didn't get pushed together. I think most people would prefer a 4-6hr maintanence, instead of 2x 2-3hr ones..

I have practically missed out on 3 of the last 7 days sub time during my time zone's prime time which was involuntary. If they were to have this many maintenances in such a short time, I think they should at least be somewhat staggered (even if there is a 3 hour difference), so that the downtimes don't fall on a single time zone's prime time, all the time.

A lot of people missing 1 day of prime play time is better then a small number losing 3 days in my opinion.

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Originally Posted by Rhas

Not the same game engine (fortunately) It just doesn't happen like that. They would have to rewrite the entire game engine to make it do it that way after the fact (game launch) If it wasn't designed that way in the first place, its not going to easily happen. They based their new game engine with FFXIV 1.0 in mind, not GW

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They based their entire game engine on the assumption that nobody would play it. A functioning queue at release? Ain't nobody got time for that!

The game is down for maintenance.

I don't know what to do with my life now.

;-;

So bored.

maintenance happens, and you can bet it's happening during other players "prime time" so this nothing new, nor the fact that a few unscheduled emergency maintenances would follow the release for a content patch to address issues. The unfortunate part is that this data center maintenance is happening now and for several hours when the free login campaign started just 15 minutes ago. For both US & EU data centers. At the same time. Very poor planning.

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Originally Posted by Mags

The unfortunate part is that this data center maintenance is happening now and for several hours when the free login campaign started just 15 minutes ago. For both US & EU data centers. At the same time. Very poor planning.

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It was all planned! They want you to believe the game is free but not actually allow you to play it!! xD

jk..

There is so much entitlement in this thread it needs to start it's own Tumblr. Maintenance happens people, the population that it disturbs is significantly smaller than the population of players that would be screaming for the devs head's on a plate if they just let everything break down. We deal with a few hours here and there of not playing, which God knows any dedicated MMO player could probably use to clean around the house/etc.

It's not the end of the world and they don't owe you one cent or "free days" in return. If you've logged in then you agreed to the terms and conditions which explicitly state the game will be unavailable for periodic maintenance from time to time.

...Maaaan. I hear so much "Waaaah! WaaaaH! Waaaah!" not enough. "Hey! Lets have a sane coherent conversation."


Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat?!

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Originally Posted by SirDemigod

I understand that each online game requires weekly maintenance to keep things in proper running order, but there comes a time when it becomes way to much.

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As you might forgot, but we got a big content patch last week. And this time of the year are always prone to additional maintenance as some problems/need for adjustments rise only during live playtest.

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Originally Posted by Wobi

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See the issue here isn't about money.. It's about the lack of playtime we get during our prime time when we get spammed with maintenance after patches. I guess what many of us are asking here is to share it around just a tiny bit?

If it were about money, you would see things like "I pay as much as the NA population (we actually pay more) and get to play less due to scheduled maintenance during our prime times, so I want free time or a reduced cost". Most of us aren't saying that, or even going there.

It's not an issue when it's just the standard once-in-a-while thing (some people complain about it but most of us don't really care), the issue is when we have 3 downtimes in a week, all during our prime times. Even pushing it forward/back 3hrs if there are multiple down times over a week would be huge. I would bet that half of the NA population would be on their way to bed 3hrs before maint starts anyway. At least those in EST.

For the most part, all many of us are asking is to share a little bit of the love, and reduce our downtime during our prime times when we get spammed with maintenance after a patch.

This is infrastructure maintenance. Meaning they are working on the physical hardware of the game. Likely cleaning and replacing servers. Do you complain because you had to turn off your computer to hit it with a blast of canned air? Same difference only those computers likely take up entire floors. It's going to take a while.

Also emergency maintenance is just that, emergency. There's a problem that has to be fixed and can't wait.

On the whole, this game has less downtime than WoW. In between major patches we have one maintenance a month. ONE! WoW has theirs once a week. Which would you prefer? One slightly longer maintenance a month? Or 4 to 5 shorter ones a month?

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Originally Posted by Linadae

This is infrastructure maintenance. Meaning they are working on the physical hardware of the game. Likely cleaning and replacing servers. Do you complain because you had to turn off your computer to hit it with a blast of canned air? Same difference only those computers likely take up entire floors. It's going to take a while.

Also emergency maintenance is just that, emergency. There's a problem that has to be fixed and can't wait.

On the whole, this game has less downtime than WoW. In between major patches we have one maintenance a month. ONE! WoW has theirs once a week. Which would you prefer? One slightly longer maintenance a month? Or 4 to 5 shorter ones a month?

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I'm pretty sure we have one every week too.