"All Worlds Maintenance"... is it me, or they're happening way too often?

All Worlds Maintenance since Patch 7.4

• Dec 15–16, 2025 — 22:00 → 02:00 (PST) — 4h
• Dec 18–19, 2025 — ~20:00 → ~01:00 (PST) — ~5h (Emergency)
• Dec 24–25, 2025 — 20:00 → 02:00 (PST) — 6h (Emergency)
• Jan 26–27, 2026 — ~19:00 → ~01:00 (PST) — ~6h
• Feb 4–5, 2026 — ~22:00 → ~02:00 (PST) — ~4h
• Mar 2–3, 2026 — 19:00 → 02:00 (PST) — 7h
• Mar 10–11, 2026 — ~23:00 → ~03:00 (PST) — 4h
• Mar 11, 2026 — (follow-up) — ~4h
• Mar 23–24, 2026 — (scheduled) — ~4h

Total approximate downtime: between 38 to 44 hours (some few ended earlier)

I know maintenance is necessary, but isn't it a bit excessive? A lot of these are to implement hotfixes. Are they short in QA staff? Some may say "you can go play other games", which is true but there's a reason people are paying to play the game, not to sit through frequent maintenances.

At least they're fixing things... in a way? But what are your (civilized) thoughts on the subject?

Small indie dev please buy mogstation

I don't know.
Perhaps they've already started the transition of getting their QA mostly done by AI and it's causing a mess?

Pictured: Square Enix's only IT guy (the rest were fired to fund Babylon's Fall development) contemplating his life after being told by his boss to make the servers 'work gooder' or they'll dock another 5 minutes from his break time

https://i.imgur.com/zUGlrIy.png

Most other MMOs I've played had a few hours of maintenance every single week, simply to restart the servers and make sure they ran smoothly. I'm surprised this one doesn't.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by synthwev

All Worlds Maintenance since Patch 7.4

• Dec 15–16, 2025 — 22:00 → 02:00 (PST) — 4h
• Dec 18–19, 2025 — ~20:00 → ~01:00 (PST) — ~5h (Emergency)
• Dec 24–25, 2025 — 20:00 → 02:00 (PST) — 6h (Emergency)
• Jan 26–27, 2026 — ~19:00 → ~01:00 (PST) — ~6h
• Feb 4–5, 2026 — ~22:00 → ~02:00 (PST) — ~4h
• Mar 2–3, 2026 — 19:00 → 02:00 (PST) — 7h
• Mar 10–11, 2026 — ~23:00 → ~03:00 (PST) — 4h
• Mar 11, 2026 — (follow-up) — ~4h
• Mar 23–24, 2026 — (scheduled) — ~4h

Total approximate downtime: between 38 to 44 hours (some few ended earlier)

But what are your (civilized) thoughts on the subject?

---

Dec 24-25 until Jan 26-27 is a 1 month gap
Feb 4-5 until March 2-3 is a 1 month gap
March 11 to March 23 is 2 weeks gap

Even all things considered, that's 44 hours in 3 months, so ~14 hours a month averaged. Compared to my other game that has 15 hours a month mandatory.

I'm EST so:
Dec 15 -> 1AM-5AM, no effect
Dec 18 -> 11PM-4AM, barely an effect
Dec 24 -> 11PM-5AM, barely an effect
Jan 26 -> 10PM-4AM, barely an effect
Feb 4 -> 1AM-5AM, no effect
March 2 -> 10PM->5AM, barely an effect
March 10 -> 2AM->10AM, no effect

West Coast is scuffed.
East Coast is fine.
Entirety of EU is unaffected besides the extreme minority that needs to play in the mornings before/at lunch.
JP is early afternoon/evening so they don't lose prime hours at all either.

You mention paying to play the game, but if we're talking about that in generalities of playing at any given time of the day and not just prime hours analysis, that's 44 hours against 98 days for 2352 hours total you could play. You got 2308 vs. 2352, which is 98.1%. That's barely $0.28 out of a $15 membership. I can't personally complain about that. 30 cents in exchange for hotfixes is fine for me.

I've mentioned it in another thread but I really wish they'd have done infrastructure/network code upgrades to do Hotfixes like WoW does barely requiring downtime instead of the graphical overhaul for Dawntrail. At most, if I remember, they'll do an hour maintenance every other week like Astronis said for simple stuff.

But that would require them to actually spend money on their own hardware/hosting. Dream on I guess.

For maintenance and fixes? Yeah this seems more than usual, but I'm not fussed, even as MST time.

Overall, truthfully, no. It's not happening enough. I've wanted job adjustments to come at a completely separate, more frequent cadence from the patch cycle and that will require more downtime. I think SE is already so overly cautious about taking the game out of service that it hinders adjustment timings. I'd gladly sacrifice some game time to see that happen.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Darnath

I've mentioned it in another thread but I really wish they'd have done infrastructure/network code upgrades to do Hotfixes like WoW does barely requiring downtime instead of the graphical overhaul for Dawntrail. At most, if I remember, they'll do an hour maintenance every other week like Astronis said for simple stuff.

But that would require them to actually spend money on their own hardware/hosting. Dream on I guess.

---

Is it Irony that I just googled wow downtime over the same time period and they also have had about 40 hours of downtime? In before the "but X game never has any downtime ever" posts.

Doesn't bother me at all. Back when I played WoW it had maintenance like that every week and it wasn't conveniently in the middle of the night like FFXIV. Just go do something else, it's not that big of a deal.

I am just kinda tired of this topic.

Every time it is the same song and dance, maint gets announced, some don't care because it doesn't impact them which is valid, some are annoyed because it hits the exact timeframe they have the time to play which is valid, and it is argued back and forth for a few days leading nowhere.

Yes, I would prefer fewest maintenance possible, I would also prefer to have problem addressed as soon as they are noticed, no I don't think this is lack of QA, a thousand QA testers under a deadline can only stress test a fraction of what tens of thousands of players can and things will always come up, it is just the nature of any form of software development.

Other games exist…

Honestly. If maintenance has to happen, it has to happen. I would rather see them patching stuff and maintaining servers than letting their game/services rot for 6+ months while they queue up one or two major patches a year (like some other games...)

I know it sucks when maintenances occur during our only play window, but would you rather the alternative (a game riddled with bugs and broken functions?).
I know I dont want that, so I'll deal with the mild inconveniences as they come.

Every single one is in OCE primetime.

I would rather there were weekly one hour maintenance, rather than 4-6 hour maints. It would mean that OCE gets some playtime in every day.

I think it's just you. The maintenances are extremely rare. It's not as if they are every day, and your listed dates go back... 4 months. That's a massive stretch.

This game is over 13 years old so i imagine the codes are running out of control, it's understandable that they have to do maintenance more often and regularly to fix bugs and clear caches or even change some outdated or corrupted equipments in the data centers and their HQ. Be happy and grateful they work for their money and not completely neglect the errors and bugs lol.

QA was fired to make room in the budget for Forspoken, Babylon's Fall, Symbiogenesis, Killer Inn and Foamstars.

Hard for me to say, especially on EU.

I don't think it's inherently a bad thing... Can't really say where or what the issue is either, as it's not just as simple as "QA not doing their job", or "QA no exist".

I don't really think it's that catastrophic... I'd rather them fix problems than not fix them, especially if they can do so.

It really isn't that big of a deal. As someone else just pointed out, over the same period of time WoW has had a similar number of maintenances. And unlike WoW we don't have game breaking bugs where people get completely phased out of the raid to where they can't do damage, take damage, or interact anyway with their group until they've restarted and deleted their WTF folders which is a problem that happened with WoW's first season launch. Could you imagine the outrage if that happened here?

Honestly, SE has figured out a really good time slot. It's unfortunate that OCE gets the short end of the stick, but they are by far the smallest region and there is no time that is perfect for everyone. And since all servers have to come down for maintenance, because even WoW does that, then it happens. Better than being WoW and it being nearly 9:00 PM EST before servers come back up eating into a much larger target audience.

Once again a lot of the thread is coming from a place of EU & NA entitlement. For OCE players these maintenances last the entire server up time and OCE only has 4 hours of "uptime" per day which is about as busy as NA or EU downtime.

It effectively makes the game unplayable for a night from 5-9 AEDT which I can understand annoys Aussies and Kiwi's because we also pay for the game and want to play after work.

I just read through the replies. I'm still sort of new to the game and it just occurred to me to check. But thanks for the explanations to the ones that gave more details!

I guess there's no ideal time to do them, some people will always be affected by it. At least it seems to be handled better than in WoW (never played that, lol).

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by synthwev

I just read through the replies. I'm still sort of new to the game and it just occurred to me to check. But thanks for the explanations to the ones that gave more details!

I guess there's no ideal time to do them, some people will always be affected by it. At least it seems to be handled better than in WoW (never played that, lol).

---

WoW handles maint pretty well tbh and at a better time. Midnight for OCE players, early morning for NA and mid afternoon for EU

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Ser_Arven

WoW handles maint pretty well tbh and at a better time. Midnight for OCE players, early morning for NA and mid afternoon for EU

---

I think this statement is ignoring that there is a 4th region XIV needs to pay attention to and is in fact their primary, home region.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by VeyaAkemi

I think this statement is ignoring that there is a 4th region XIV needs to pay attention to and is in fact their primary, home region.

---

Its before JP uptime which starts around the time the maint ends but these are the english forums so sue me for looking at the english regions.

JP uptime is from 9-2am(ish) AEDT and maintenance usually finishes at 9. I have a character on JP as the Elemental DC and Materia are closely linked

Try to be right however makes you feel good. But these maintenance are in the dead of night of NA, early morning EU, before JP uptime starts but right in the middle of OCE. Materia uptime is so quiet compared to other servers already that it makes the game unplayable for the whole day because nothing will pop.

I understand why people are annoyed.

Also maintenance right on weekly reset is kinda just stupid.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Ser_Arven

Try to be right however makes you feel good. But these maintenance are in the dead of night of NA, early morning EU, before JP uptime starts but right in the middle of OCE. Materia uptime is so quiet compared to other servers already that it makes the game unplayable for the whole day because nothing will pop.

I understand why people are annoyed.

Also maintenance right on weekly reset is kinda just stupid.

---

That is MMO standard to do maintenances with weekly reset. That has always been MMO standard. In fact, it's not just MMO standard but Software standard that updates go out on Tuesdays and many game launches are Tuesdays as well. The fact of the matter is that while it sucks for OCE standards, they are the smallest player base so these times impact the least amount of players possible. The probability of SE changing it is minimal.

And for those saying WoW is always up by EST prime time... no, no it is not. Their maintenances are notorious for extensions right into EST prime time. Most people just... deal with it. Well aside from those who make the same forum posts there every maintenance that we see here.

I guess I'm lucky that I'm virtually never affected by the maintenances being in the EU time zone.
In any case, the general occurrence/length of them don't usually cause me any worries yet, though perhaps I got far too used to 'expecting ''emergency extended maintenances'' from the likes of NCSoft and Nexon where extended downtime could range between a few extra hours or an extra day depending on whatever they were trying to implement/correct.

People have different schedules. The hours they have maintenance set for effectively mean I don't get to play on those days. I read or play Minecraft on those nights instead.

Yeah, there are too many maintenance; it always seems to happen on my night off work.

It's not that unusual. I think WoW has a similar amount of time doing maintenance. But it's worst on that game because they do their maintenance during the day in America so you really feel it.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Vrankyl

That is MMO standard to do maintenances with weekly reset. That has always been MMO standard. In fact, it's not just MMO standard but Software standard that updates go out on Tuesdays and many game launches are Tuesdays as well. The fact of the matter is that while it sucks for OCE standards, they are the smallest player base so these times impact the least amount of players possible. The probability of SE changing it is minimal.

And for those saying WoW is always up by EST prime time... no, no it is not. Their maintenances are notorious for extensions right into EST prime time. Most people just... deal with it. Well aside from those who make the same forum posts there every maintenance that we see here.

---

Then OCE people should get compensation on their sub. We pay the same amount as you and the whole world isn't American

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by CaptainLagbeard

QA was fired to make room in the budget for Forspoken, Babylon's Fall, Symbiogenesis, Killer Inn and Foamstars.

---

Hahahaha. Oh. You're serious?

The one-liner makes for a joke, but consider that Digital Entertainment has 3 separate subdivisions, each with its own budget and operating income. The MMO Division does not provide budget dollars for the HD Games division.

The only thing to remember is that Operating Income (also known as "Profits") goes to Square Enix as a whole, to be utilized for new projects and disbursements. Note that Babylon's Fall was developed by PlatinumGames. Its costs did not come from the HD Games division budget.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Ser_Arven

Then OCE people should get compensation on their sub. We pay the same amount as you and the whole world isn't American

---

I worked late shift most of FFXIV's lifetime so my main game time would be nuked on maintenance days. Thus is life. The devs are going to do it during their work days because that's their job.

Our sub is paying for the new content as much as server access, too. So, yeah.