Quote Originally Posted by FJerome View Post
Here are some actual examples of not-especially-dramatic times various members of my FC have not been able to log-in for 35-day periods.

1) A & B went on a 40 day road-trip overseas, left PS3 at home (wouldn't have worked anyway, that whole voltage and PAL vs NTSC thing).
2) C had a study-abroad term, also left PS3 at home.
3) D bought a new flat, ISP service continually bungled reconnection because it was a new-build block and they couldn't figure out the wiring. It wasn't a major problem because they had mobile wireless but you can't install the launcher to an iPhone.
4) E's city got hit by the mother of all blizzards, ice damaged their outside wiring and their ISP was overwhelmed by other incidents and took forever to get around to fixing theirs. A friendly neighbour let them piggy-back off their wireless signal but there wasn't enough bandwidth between them to run the game without being a jerk about it.

Granted, this didn't happen all at once but there's no reason it couldn't have. Life happens.

This is a game.

Asking a group of people to make a serious long-term and constant commitment to the game to keep their group's progression isn't fun and it's a good way to make sure that when they drop their subscriptions they won't be coming back with the next patch.
Having to come up with a story like this to make it justified for a FC to be absent 35 days, is proof enough that this isn't a problem.... Also, 4 people in the whole FC ? and they have a FC house ?

They could maybe increase the days to 40-50 to be on the safe side, but still... If your whole FC can't log in even once during 35 days, then the FC is dead....

Even if your whole FC for some reason isn't home for 35 days (why??), at least one could log in, either with a laptop, or from an internet café or something....

Point is, that FC's can easily find solutions to this problem, and if they can't bother with those solutions, then they might as well give up the plot to someone who will use it better.