Really love the game, but your service forced me to quit.

[Aldora]

I'm not gonna write some long and boring sob story about why I quit, but I'll give you a rough explanation and a lengthy legitimate reason, in hopes that Square realizes what they are doing and sort their procedures out.

I followed ARR since the very beginning when it was announced, I watched every single live letter, read every single Yoshi letter and even purchased the CE for myself and my partner. I love the game, it's graphically amazing, gameplay is smooth and feels great, the story was/is amazing and overall, I'd give the product 9.5/10.

The Problem.

You may think doing maintenance every 2 days is fine because you're only doing it for 3-4 hours right? Square you could be sitting there thinking to yourselves "surely our subs won't drop over something like this..."

wrong.

I have quit, 5 of my friends and my girlfriend included have all quit. We were all very passionate about this game, we loved every single detail and enjoyed the hell out of it.

I understand the game is new and these things need to happen, unfortunately you are doing these maintenance every 2 days, and it's always roughly at the same time. Most of us (my friends) live in New Zealand and New South Wales Australia, meaning as soon as we come home from work every 2 days, we are hit with prime time maintenance. This means we get no game-time whatsoever because the servers only come up just before bed time.

This isn't just an oceanic problem, there's heaps of Americans and Europeans that work unusual hours and are constantly hit with these things, they are basically paying 14.99 to play for 19-20 days a month, how is this fair?

The only logical thing to do would be to ROTATE the emergency maintenance. If you have enough time to warn us 1 day in advance, surely you could make arrangements to not screw the same people OVER and OVER.

This will never end, you have no PTR whatsoever meaning whenever a major patch launches, you will spend 2-3 months fixing bugs with "emergency maintenance" and continue screwing the same people. As much as I would love to pay for this game and enjoy the product, I can't see myself giving you 14.99 a month for only 20 days game time and always cutting into my playtime, that is not a service.

I'm sorry to see you, your girlfriend and your friends (and of course others) go due to the amount of maintenances we had so far. Surely, it wasn't SE's intention on executing a maintenance more often then once a week, but due to the circumstances (like the recent hacks, the server instability, etc) they were forced to execute them. I'm not saying that i condone them, but i see them as a necessity which will eventually (i hope after 2.1) will return to its regular weekly maintenance (which rotating maintenance schedules).

Maybe we'll "see" each other after that.

[gadzi_h]

Have you been through a game launch before,

Back when I started playing games they had to launch them right the first time because they came on a cartridge.

[AngryPanda]

Perhaps better time management will alleviate you of the stress from not being able to play for 3 hours in the middle of the night?

[Grundy]

Trust me, I wouldn't mind whatsoever if it was once a week.. but not being able to play every 2-3 days is becoming quite a nuisance, and it's not something I'm willing to pay for.. which is really unfortunate because I really love the game and the communities.

All I can really say to that is kthxbi. Come back when things have settled down. I'd get shafted for two days on FFXI living in Europe, the first night was for maintenance, and the second was waiting for the update to download and install, I can live with 3 or 4 hours at a time. It will get better, the game is young, and God forbid they update the game during their working hours.

Back when I started playing games they had to launch them right the first time because they came on a cartridge.

That really made me laugh. =)

[Noxe]

I am also from New Zealand, and I agree that the frequency and timing of the maintenance can be quite inconvenient! However, I am with Aldora on this one, and positive on the notion that this aspect will improve with time. For me at least, the game is worth this hopefully temporary inconvenience

[Shneibel]

I d like to read an "I quit" thread that ppl dont claim they are huge fan or passion or w/e, this is getting old

[Seezur_Undies]

4 months isn't "game launch" buddy. This is a company that has managed an MMORPG for 10 long years, they should be more professional than this. Once again, you fail to understand the real problem. Also, real mature...

*does math in his head even though he is bad at it* So i got a free month for buying the game, prepaid 90 days, have 46 days left... so 2 and a half months, now do i think maintenance is annoying...absolutely. if you think this is bad seeing the game is just getting off the ground, I hear WoW lost thousands of users, sure they could use 5 new players. Not to sound insensitive, but this is kinda petty.

[Noxe]

Perhaps better time management will alleviate you of the stress from not being able to play for 3 hours in the middle of the night?

For Rekujen, maintenance is happening during the evening after work (ie, around 7 or 8pm and onwards), not in the middle of the night =)

[Wolfbite]

Not sure how I got here, must have unintentionally clicked after reading the patch notes.
So, I work bizarre hours... rotating schedule nights days, noons, whatever.
At worst I find the maintenance inconvenient.
At best it gives me a few minutes to get to my backlog of console/steam games...
Sorry it doesn't favor the Oceanic Time Zone and obsessed insomniacs...but considering what we went through in 1.0, I'll take the here and there weekly fixes. People who quit over this stuff aren't that into the game. I've scarcely read a letter from the producer, or any of that other jazz you use to build up your pillars of devotion...I just play the game.

Good luck in your future endeavors.

[Gilgamesh-Merodach]

So you're on Oceanic time and you're playing on NA / EU servers hoping your prime/peak would not include maintenance periods?

That's your own fault right there. It's their off peak for their region so there.

Tonberry and I'm on GMT +8 JP being +9 and maintenance usually ends before prime time or starts in the wee hours of the morning.

I admit there's been a lot of maintenance but it's your own logic and reasoning that's been causing you all these "grief"