Servers offline during July 4th Holiday?

[Krotoan]

How do you feel the rest of everyone else who plays this game would feel like if they had to wait another week because we have a holiday and can't miss 24 hours of a game that is up about 350+ Days of the year?

[MilkieTea]

An "American" Holiday
not a "North American Continent and also Central America and Brazil since a lot of them play on the NA servers, oh and EU/UK players playing with friends - and don't forget OCE players who don't want to move to OCE servers for whatever reason" holiday.

[VelKallor]

Id say its more a case "We have been working our rears off to get this done, we need to GET IT DONE, so we go on this date"

The devs have a massive workload, and no doubt this is on THEIR schedule, Id also say that this is the best chance to get it completed..the fact its also a 24 hour maintenance and a MASSIVE undertaking that HAS to be done right is foremost on their minds.

You would literally blanch if you knew how much needs to be coordinated, how many teams need to be ready to go, what their workload is, how much coordination is required.

I was a spectator in a NOC during a system overhaul for a VERY large company, was a complete rework of their primary systems and interfaces. I was allowed to watch and say NOTHING for an hour then told to leave. The sheer complexity of it..I barely understood any of it, but every system had to be checked and rechecked, so many stages, so many go or no go checklists, so many staff involved.

I was told before admission that this upgrade had taken them THREE MONTHS to prepare. All hands on deck, no one off sick or away for any reason. The tech told me later that having this go south would be catastrophic..his actual words were "we cant afford to make the same mistake once"

( BTW, if anyone is curious, being even allowed INTO a network ops centre when you arent part of the NOC is not only a special privilege, its almost unheard of as thats usually a very high security area. Admission is rigorously restricted )

It has to be done, it has been an anticipated feature for the game a lot of people are looking forward to.

It seems that having a Wednesday patch cycle makes more sense, worldwide, as it falls in the middle of the business/school week, when populations in game are lowest.

You and I have no idea what they have to do, how much work went into even making this possible ( though i have a small understanding ) , but this is a case of "Are we ready to go? Are all teams ready? Are we all coordinated, briefed, are the programs and procedures ready? Then we GO."

Here is a basic summary of what it is meant to accomplish

Data Center Travel is a feature that will be implemented in Patch 6.18, allowing players to visit another logical data center (logical DC) to socialize and participate in matchmaking.

Currently, player characters belong to a logical DC (Aether, Primal, Crystal, etc.) and are limited to playing with others within that same logical DC. With the upcoming Data Center Travel feature, for example, players from Aether will also be able to play with others in Primal and Crystal.

The Data Center Travel process typically takes somewhere between less than a minute to three minutes to complete. We hope you’ll make use of this feature and socialize with your newfound neighbors!

Activities Available When Visiting Other Logical DCs

Similar to the World Visit System, you can take part in a wide variety of activities, such as:

Chatting through Say/Party/Yell/Shout/Tell
Joining and chatting in cross-world linkshells (CWLS) created in the destination logical DC
Adding players to the Friend List
Forming and recruiting parties
Progressing through quests
Social interaction in various in-game locations, such as cities, areas and residential districts
Participate in various in-game content, such as dungeons, raids, and PvP
Crafting and gathering (excluding Unspoiled and Legendary gathering nodes)
Purchasing items from the market board
In addition to World Visit System restrictions, free company chat / CWLS in other logical DCs / PvP teams / Fellowships features (aside from searching) will be restricted.
With the addition of Data Center Travel, you will be able to use your main character to play outside of your Home World’s logical DC without having to create new characters specifically for visiting another logical DC. The scope of your communication and gameplay will expand dramatically as you can participate in raids with others, play with previously unreachable friends and acquaintances, tour player housing, participate in player events, and more!

It will affect every single system in the game, it is, as far as I can see, one of the biggest changes to their datacentres in the last five years or more.

its monumental, costly both in terms of resources and staffing on every level.

This project has been planned and prepared for a very long time, and the date may very well ( though I cant say for certain as I dont know ) have already been decided as their projected launch date when this concept was in its design stages.

I very much doubt that whatever holiday it was overseas was high on their list of priorities.

[Kurando]

A lot of games companies put their big patches out on a Tuesday because it's often the quickest they can get it out to the consumer, especially when it comes to other platforms. Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo etc will use that Monday or even some of Tuesday to do any final checks to ensure the patch is safe for their platform before sending it to the masses. The business hours of the companies also need to be considered as well, if a patch is due to go live at 6pm GMT on a Monday, obviously that's not going to be the same everywhere in the world, e.g. Japan offices would be closed at this time, so they wouldn't have had chance to perform final checks.

But alas the moral of the story is, the US is not that important. There are plenty of Europeans, Central/Southern Americans, Canadians, Asians etc residing on NA data centres, and most do not care about US public holidays the slightest.

[Kaurhz]

Honestly, is it really that difficult to occupy your time with something else?

[VelKallor]

Tbh if we did complain about it we'd probably get mocked for it even worse and 9 out of 10 of the people who complain about it here would suddenly understand how silly it is and tell us '' it's a US studio duh ''.

Actually that IS what WOW players told the rest of us "Its an American game, for Americans"

i will leave you to imagine how that comment was received.

[Jojoya]

I'm not complaining or trying to be US-centric. I'm curious to the rationale they used. Did they look at the calendar and discuss the fact that a great majority of the North American data center would be on holiday break, therefore presenting an opportunity to put FFXIV into their holiday plans? Or, is the scheduling simply a result of the "Well, we always patch on Mondays" line of thinking? It seems that having a Wednesday patch cycle makes more sense, worldwide, as it falls in the middle of the business/school week, when populations in game are lowest.

I doubt they plan schedules around US consumer availability. Far more likely the schedules are planned around the availability of their employees and contractors.

Most of us don't have an issue with this. We have things to do with friends or family or other games to play if we're not forced to be working on the holiday.

Do you and your friends have nothing else to do other than play FFxIV? Could be a good opportunity to try out other games to play.

[Themarvin]

It is not relevant.... servers is also down in other parts of the worlds National Holidays and the likes... it is no biggie really.

[Kes13a]

part of it will be actual availability of technical support if required.

doing it on a monday means the rest of the week will be better staffed for any issues that may come up, not just on the support side, but also on the dev side if their are unanticipated software issues that need a hotfix.

plus, we have zero idea of what other factors are going on behind the scenes. despite your holiday, SW and Yoshi-P have to have some form of schedule for these things as a responsibility to head office as well as the shareholders. we have no idea if the schedule for release already had to be delayed for something else that came up and they are at the end of the window. not defending SE, but this is real world reality, not the wants of the player base.

lets face it, if they could avoid inconveniencing players and employees, I believe they would do that, most reasonable companies would. but in the greater scheme of things, its not something we at our level control. period.

[RobynDaBank]

Surely a company that had to shut down sales for quite a valuable time period of hype needs to base itself just around the whims of the USA audience for more money.