Why is the maintenance for NA servers in prime time NA?

As the title states, I'm curious about what motivations they might have for consistantly scheduling downtimes the NA servers in prime time for those time zones?

JP master timezone

Simple. They are in japan. It is 4:43am there right now. They do maintance during their business hours.

I find that 90% of maintenance(full day ones aside) are late at night for NA(usually starting anywhere from 10pm PDT to 12am PDT). By that time, a lot of players have already logged off(or just AFKed) and gone to sleep. Unless you work the mid-afternoon to late night shift, then it really isn't prime time, as there is a large population of players that do the 9-5 type grind for work.

Thanks for the responses.

To the contrary, Avatre, this maintence isn't late night or afternoon. If you work 9-5 then you get 3 hours to play tonight assuming you have no commute and skip dinner.

Also why should JP timezones matter? Aren't the NA servers physically located in NA?

Coordination. That way everyone gets to the content at the same time.

I don't understand the sudden need to move it up into NA West Coast Primetime either really and it seems like it always cuts you guys on the left coast short of playing in the evenings/night which doesn't seem right at all. You'd think it would been moved to a later time near the end of their day if they were going to change it but again, they must have their reasons. Hopefully they scheduled 3 hours but it completes much earlier than that for folks.

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Originally Posted by Siegurd

Thanks for the responses.

To the contrary, Avatre, this maintence isn't late night or afternoon. If you work 9-5 then you get 3 hours to play tonight assuming you have no commute and skip dinner.

Also why should JP timezones matter? Aren't the NA servers physically located in NA?

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Even with eating dinner, and my hour long commute(I leave work at 3:30pm PDT and get home 4:30pm PDT), I will still have a few hours to do some stuff.

Yes, it's an inconvenience that they are doing it earlier than normal, but with things like this, it's usually decided based on what is being adjusted, and how many people they feel they will need to ensure nothing else gets messed up along the way.

Other MMOs I used to play did the maintenance Wednesday mornings as soon as they had people arrive at the office(and it was on the PVP day - pretty sure at least 99% of people know of Ragnarok Online), or had no schedule at all and it was a "when we feel something needs to be tweaked/reset".

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Originally Posted by dynus

Coordination. That way everyone gets to the content at the same time.

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That's going a bit overboard for a hotfix, don't you think?

To be fair, the maintenance times usually seem to happen at around 11:00 p.m. PST or so...

I mean, it sucks that this one is particularly early, but I guess it's just one day.

But yeah...8:30 a.m. - 5:00 p.m. + one hour for the gym + another hour for making / eating dinner = one hour to maybe get an expert roulette in...boo.

Well the original maintenance was

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Jul. 7, 2017 from 12:00 a.m. to 3:00 a.m. (PDT)

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but for w/e reason they changed it to

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Jul. 6, 2017 8:00 p.m. to 11:00 p.m. (PDT)

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So it wasn't during prime time originally, even then it really only effects west coast.

They have to release content (including hotfixes) simultaneously. Otherwise what invariably happens is the people in 'the future' discover what changed and the people still on the old version can exploit the knowledge to their advantage. That's also why they never tell us what's in an update until after it goes live.

In any case, any time is inconvenient for someone out there. This particular one is irrelevant to me but I've had days off to play where I haven't been able to due to when the maintenance occurred.

11 pm isn't prime time.

I guess it boils down to what you consider prime time. I'd consider 11PM-12AM to be the end of prime time for any timezone. 11PM on the west coast is 1AM CDT and 2AM EDT which to me is well out of prime time no matter how you look at it.

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Originally Posted by Nixxe

11 pm isn't prime time.

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Time zones are a weird thing.

I'm pretty sure 7:00 / 8:00 p.m. to 10:00 / 11:00 p.m. is pretty canonically "prime-time."

If they changed the maintenance to an earlier time instead of going with their planned down time i would guess that there is something being address in that hotfix that cannot wait and needs to be addressed right away. SE is usually pretty consistence with maintenance and update windows.

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Originally Posted by missybee

Time zones are a weird thing.

I'm pretty sure 7:00 / 8:00 p.m. to 10:00 / 11:00 p.m. is pretty canonically "prime-time."

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They knew what they were getting into the moment they chose to live in an inferior time zone.

They should do it at noon PDT. That allows (i think) the majority of the player base to avoid the maint. If you work second shift, you can get online before maint, and if you work first shift, you will be at work. if you work third.....well, that sucks. but first and second shift i think, is where the majority of the players work.

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Originally Posted by Sylvaneste

They should do it at noon PDT. That allows (i think) the majority of the player base to avoid the maint. If you work second shift, you can get online before maint, and if you work first shift, you will be at work. if you work third.....well, that sucks. but first and second shift i think, is where the majority of the players work.

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Other countries exist.

Pretty sure this makes it more convienient for Japan.

Considering the size of the expansion... personally I'm surprised there haven't been a lot more scheduled and emergency maintenances. This one is pretty short.

All Worlds Maintenance

All Worlds =/= NA only

in europe it is 5 am - 8 am (middle europe summer time)

The world doesn't revolve around the west coast, sorry.

Ahh... So I'll have a little under 2 hours of play when I get home. Oh well. I'm already bored of the game.

I do wonder if 8pm will be the normal maintenance time though. That's gunna screw a lot of raid groups.

As far as I know, it's the best all-round time for most of the world. It's just western NA that gets screwed over by it. For me, maintenance always ends up starting around 12:00am or 2:00am and ending in morning before I get up. For Japan of course, if it's the same time, it should be 12 hours off of me, so 12:00pm/2:00pm. Which isn't great, but should finish by prime time.

If this fixes the constant 90001 and 90002 I don't care if it's my prime time (west coast).
The game is literally unplayable.

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Originally Posted by Sylvaneste

They should do it at noon PDT. That allows (i think) the majority of the player base to avoid the maint. If you work second shift, you can get online before maint, and if you work first shift, you will be at work. if you work third.....well, that sucks. but first and second shift i think, is where the majority of the players work.

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What if your retired and no longer work like me?

C'mon...

Every. Single. Maintenance. has been at 7pm-11pm NZ time, we are ALWAYS hit with prime time maintenance, the odd chance NA gets hit is not a big deal. The amount of times I've had a rough day at work, gone home, booted up the PC and found out XIV is down for 3-4 hours thus I can't play at all because I need to be in bed by the time it's back up is always disappointing.

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Originally Posted by Rekujin

C'mon...

Every. Single. Maintenance. has been at 7pm-11pm NZ time, we are ALWAYS hit with prime time maintenance, the odd chance NA gets hit is not a big deal. The amount of times I've had a rough day at work, gone home, booted up the PC and found out XIV is down for 3-4 hours thus I can't play at all because I need to be in bed by the time it's back up is always disappointing.

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Uh, but NA getting hit is not odd. At least not for the WC. I think it was during patch 3.2 that we got constant emergency maintenance from 7pm or 9pm to 1am. So there were a couple of days a week for a few weeks that I couldn't play at all.

I should say, this is really only Prime Time for half the U.S.

11:00 PM is not prime time on a weekday for EST and at the very tailend for CST.

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Originally Posted by Siegurd

That's going a bit overboard for a hotfix, don't you think?

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No, I don't.

If people don't get the hotfixes at the same time, it's going to cause problems. Just because there are data centers set in different regions, doesn't automatically mean that people will only play on the data centers in their region. I have a friend who plays on a Japanese server so she can play with her brother, who lives in Tokyo, for example.

For reasons like that, and just globalization in general, things need to be lined up. A game made by a Japanese company is going to do it on their timeframe. It's just how it is. I work thirds so when they do maintenance on my off days I'm always screwed out of my prime time. Trust me, I feel your pain. Especially 'cause I always have Monday nights/Tuesday mornings off, meaning anytime there's a content patch I'm out of luck for playing.

But you got a roll with it.

It's a hotfix. They happen at any time and are there for a good reason. Get over it?

As i said before, Oceanic players always get hit with prime time maintenance, it's nice not to get screwed for once...

Every 2nd or 3rd day I would come home from work and I can't play because maintenance is 7pm-11pm this is a nice change for once

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Originally Posted by Semmi

The world doesn't revolve around the west coast, sorry.

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It doesn't, no, but we love our sub 40ms connections when the servers are up! :p

You guys obviously haven't been around SE for long or played FFXI... Making sure the Japanese players are happy always comes first. Heck the only reason ARR got made was to protect the Japanese players opinion of the brand. I can't necessarily blame them, the JP's are fanatical about their FF games and they sell 10x the copies of each and every one over there vs. over here. US and other regions have never been a priority for this company.

New player here. Is maintenance every other day a normal thing for FF? Probably just a bad first impression, however, from my perspective this seems like the norm?

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Originally Posted by Chadvantage

New player here. Is maintenance every other day a normal thing for FF? Probably just a bad first impression, however, from my perspective this seems like the norm?

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They do maintenance more frequently than many other MMOs I've played, but you get used to it after a while.

They also tend to slow down a bit after a little while, frequent maintenance is usually only a thing after an expansion or major patch.

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Originally Posted by Eclipsed

You guys obviously haven't been around SE for long or played FFXI... Making sure the Japanese players are happy always comes first. Heck the only reason ARR got made was to protect the Japanese players opinion of the brand. I can't necessarily blame them, the JP's are fanatical about their FF games and they sell 10x the copies of each and every one over there vs. over here. US and other regions have never been a priority for this company.

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And before people say that it's not fair, we've got a plethora of companies here that always have the States as their first priority. I can't imagine it's fun being a japanese GTA fan. I don't like the fact that companies prioritize one group over another, but that's just the way it is. Not much we can do about it sadly.

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Originally Posted by Chadvantage

New player here. Is maintenance every other day a normal thing for FF? Probably just a bad first impression, however, from my perspective this seems like the norm?

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Additional maintenance is more normal when big changes are made, such as an expansion. It's like this in other games as well, though some of them have made much more noticeable improvements to how maintenance works so that it's much less intrusive at this point than FFXIV's.

Hm. I understand the importance of maintenance and normally I wouldn't complain but this is a pay to play game. When you're an adult with responsibilities and the few times you're able to play are revoked due to frequent maintenance...you start wondering, what am I paying for exactly? Again, this is probably just a very bad first impression, hopefully they get this issue they're having sorted so new players like myself don't get discouraged and just quit. I know if I don't see an improvement in server up time in the near future I won't be subscribing. Which is a shame, looks like a good game.

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Originally Posted by Chadvantage

When you're an adult with responsibilities and the few times you're able to play are revoked due to frequent maintenance...you start wondering, what am I paying for exactly?

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You pay for access to the game whether the maintenance schedule fits with your life schedule not really any of their concern.