Temporarily shutting the servers down until 2.0 is NOT a good idea!

[Catapult]

Oh boy, reality check time, buddy.

Of course not. But then again, if you're suggesting that SE cannot transfer the player data to the new servers without corrupting it, I'm going to have to disagree.

Do you think SE is incapable of handling data transfer?

**EDIT** Incidentally, they're going to have to transfer our data over to 2.0 whether they shut the servers down or not. So shutting the servers down won't change anything in this regard.

If you do think that all our player data is going to be accidentally lost upon transfer to 2.0, then yes, that would be a valid reason to shut down the servers until 2.0. I just think there's virtually zero chance that that's going to happen.

When you copy and paste data on your own computer, altering that data while it is being copy/pasted corrupts the data. This is why computers have a fail-safe prohibition against altering data in transit. Saving files 101.
If people were still updating their character data as SE were trying to move it, all sorts of problems would arise, most notably the existence of partial roll-backs. Utter chaos I tell you.

Hence why I believe them competent, as they are shutting the servers down to do this.

And there's another problem with shutting the servers down. If they shut the servers down, the current players are probably not going to sit around, twiddling their thumbs for a year. They're going to go out and play different games, spending a year investing their time and effort developing characters in those games. That's going to make it more difficult to get those players back...

What on earth makes you think the servers are going down entirely for the next year? O_o

They have made it quite clear that the current system will continue to be updated and reviewed as it is the working model off which all version 2.0 content is based. Monitoring and amendments to the version 1 system will allow better development on the version 2 system.

Then when everything gets replaced by version 2.0 servers and engines, things will go down for a few days, maybe a week tops, to do the final copy/paste of current character and progression data into the new servers that have been prepared for this over the prior 18 months.

You're not being booted off the game right now. Heck, they're going to be charging us as of next month - they're not about to take the game away from us as well.