Why is there a 15 day shut down of the World Transfer Service?

When the downtime to upgrade is going to be 5 days at most...?

Push it back to the 15th, at the earliest!

Probably to make sure that no characters get caught in transfer limbo, and possibly deleted/reset/what have you.

They obviously have good reasons for doing this and it was stated several times they'd be bringing down world transfers when the data center process was going to start. Be patient.

Read?

"At the following time, in order to implement the previously announced transfer of the Chaos data center to Europe, as well as make improvements to the World transfer system across all Worlds, we will be performing an extensive maintenance. In preparation for this maintenance, the World Transfer Service will be temporarily suspended starting from Oct. 5, 2015, 1:00 a.m. (PDT), and will be unavailable until maintenance has ended."

Says it right there plain as day. You think they can magically do it faster if they push it back? Of course not, they are setting it to the dates they did because of how long the process is going to take to make sure they give themselves enough time to do it right.

I'd think you'd want the Character Transfer system to be in tip-top shape...
think about what would happen if someone were to transfer their character and something went wrong.

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Originally Posted by AskaRay

I'd think you'd want the Character Transfer system to be in tip-top shape...
think about what would happen if someone were to transfer their character and something went wrong.

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Eh. Let it happen. At least we would get to see some new threads lol.

Server instability... roll backs... stuck inside the matrix... loss of character data... angry players... customer service saying we can't do nuf'n... more angry forum posts... months later no one cares.

Though if you know this was going to happen from the 5th, you should have transferred before then. If not, then just wait it out. I was going to transfer too, but I decided to wait.

Do you want you character suddenly gone when do world transfer?

shut it down
pull it

maybe they'll actually raise the gil transfer limit

I will be very happy and sad at the same time if that happens. Spent the last few weeks trying to convert all my gil... Would def be happy to see a higher cap, but disappointed as I could have transferred some more as is.

The same reason they have been discussing and making posts and news about it for the last 3 months.

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Originally Posted by otarolgam

When the downtime to upgrade is going to be 5 days at most...?

Push it back to the 15th, at the earliest!

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The "5 days" thing is with regards to the Chaos servers being down, not the World Transfer Service. They are two separate things. The WTS maintenance will improve the service and make sure it can deal with the potentially large number of transfers both from and to the EU datacentre/servers.

You are crying as if a world transfer would be something INCREDIBLY IMPORTANT, and couldn't wait a fortnight... sigh...

15 DAYS?! I have important business trips to the other servers?!!! What am I supposed to do walk?!!!!

!lol I got rid of all my gil buying stuff to sell on another server last night only to discover I can't change yet hehehe

If they add a limit to how many tranfers an account is allowed, you can all blame me for that ^^;;

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Originally Posted by Etiken

Eh. Let it happen. At least we would get to see some new threads lol.

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Yes lol tired of the "crafting is dead" "pld blows goats" "dps dps dps" threads

I have a sneaking suspicion that "improvements to the world transfer service" is going to include "no more transferring to certain worlds that are locked for character creation."

Balmung has been a great source of revenue for them, I'm sure, but it's also bursting at the seams to the detriment of other players now.

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Originally Posted by Catwho

I have a sneaking suspicion that "improvements to the world transfer service" is going to include "no more transferring to certain worlds that are locked for character creation."

Balmung has been a great source of revenue for them, I'm sure, but it's also bursting at the seams to the detriment of other players now.

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would love if they did that - if a server becomes locked for character creation X amount of times over Y period it becomes ineligible for transfers for Z time period. of course, clearly this is a business so good luck with that ever happening.

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Originally Posted by Cwestcott18

15 DAYS?! I have important business trips to the other servers?!!! What am I supposed to do walk?!!!!

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Just bring your character over physically. Go to SE in Canada, ask them for your character data and then just take a plane to Japan or Europe or wherever you need to go ;)

15 days seems like an awfully long time for maintenance on a system that seemed to be working reasonably well to begin with.

The 15-day lock makes sense. The server transfer involves copying over every character's information to the new servers in Europe. This process begins well before the actual day of maintenance. The lock out of transfers and the prevention of making new characters will reduce the amount of information the new servers will have to update and will reduce the downtime. The original estimated maintenance was supposed to be 5 days. This change has reduced the downtime to a day and a half.

I'm just speculating here, but from an IT datacenter perspective I'd guess that they've already moved all the data from Chaos to the new datacenter in Europe and are only doing incremental copies of changes between now and the live date. Actually transferring character presence data in and out of the datacenter during this period would probably increase the likelihood of data mismatch headaches.

Just informed speculation, but it might be one reason.

Character transfer earns SE money. If SE chooses to make a money making feature unavailable for 15 days, you can be sure they have a very good reason for it.

For example, character transfer has probably never experienced high traffic at one go. With the new EU data centre, they are expecting a huge traffic, which might cause issues such as missing characters. They are probably optimising the service to prevent that.

Another possible reason might be that the current character transfer system is not designed to handle the new server locations. They probably need to make sure that the character transfer service will be able to handle transferring to and from the new data centre location.

There might be several reasons. Reasons which they don't think they need to share. Whatever the reasons are, you can be sure they thought over them carefully. Remember, it's not just the players that are affected by the downtime. SE won't earn any money from that service during that period too.

Pretty sure they said if you are in the chaos data centre if you wish for a server transfer it's going to be free for a set amount of time.

Gimme a min or so and I'll get the link.

ah here it is,

"World Transfers
Because the Chaos data center is being relocated, certain players may find they are no longer playing on a desirable World. In order to address this issue, players will be allowed to transfer from Worlds within the Chaos data center to Worlds within the Elemental, Gaia, Mana, Aether, or Primal data centers free of charge for one week.

Residents in the North American region playing on the Chaos data center may begin to experience issues with latency after the transition. We ask that you try the game after the transfer, and if you experience connectivity issues disruptive to gameplay, consider using the free World transfer service while it is available.

* The free World transfer service will not apply to characters moved from the Elemental, Gaia, Mana, Aether, or Primal data centers to the Chaos data center.

As with normal World transfers, more than three days must have passed since last using this service. Please note that when applying for a World transfer via the FINAL FANTASY XIV: Mog Station, the total balance for any characters transferred from the Chaos data center should appear as $0.00. If your total balance is not $0.00 before finalizing your transaction, please confirm you are transferring characters from Worlds applicable to the free World transfer service."

http://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodest...156bf3372fae42

I'd rather have the world transfer be unavailable for two weeks to ensure that there will be as few kinks as possible. There's no telling what kind of mess will be made due to the relocation of the EU servers.

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Originally Posted by sirDarts

You are crying as if a world transfer would be something INCREDIBLY IMPORTANT, and couldn't wait a fortnight... sigh...

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I wonder if you're the same sirDarts I know from Twitch...

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Originally Posted by Noshpan

I wonder if you're the same sirDarts I know from Twitch...

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Yes, Noshy, yes I am. :D spazWave

It's funny, just last night I was thinking hmm, Balmung has a great RP community, and my friend plays on Balmung. I should buy a world transfer to Balmung..

And BAM, no transfer for you. :l

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Originally Posted by sirDarts

Yes, Noshy, yes I am. :D spazWave

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Woo! CHEEEEEEEEEEESE! spazHey

I think this is ample time to take and see if things will work out out for me on balmung. If not, I'm gone when the lockout is lifted.