Excessive maintenance is starting to piss off the casual, non-raiding players.

[IDontPetLalas]

I just wish this maint didn't cut into people's time to finish their weekly stuff. That was a long maint for just some fixes

From your perspective it was "just some fixes", however from the maintenance warning, it affected the server infrastructure which is typically not a minor a minor patch. The length of the maintenance downtime would also indicate the number of tasks/impact of the work.

It's unfortunate sometimes if people have work that is left until the end of the week, however I don't think that there will ever be a time that is picked that will be convenient for everyone, everywhere.

[Packetdancer]

I just wanted to add to this. There are multiple physical servers for each World.

Moreover, different physical servers often handle different things.

For instance, you likely have one specific server (or pool of servers) which handles your inventory, and which other servers speak to; you want a central 'source of authority' for something like that.

Dynamic instance servers that do not need to persist data (e.g., dungeons, where the state of a dungeon when you leave it has no bearing on the state of the dungeon the next time you enter) are likely set up differently than dynamic instance servers which do need to persist data on teardown (e.g. housing interiors or Island Sanctuary... which is probably why Island Sanctuary seems to share the housing interior server pool).

Etc.

[Petite]

I come home from work at 9 PM EST and I agree that maintenances are getting annoying.

Not only are they twice as frequent as they've been in the past, they always occur between 11PM and 3AM, Could it not take place from 2 to 6 AM? I imagine it's even worse if you're on the West Coast.

[Deveryn]

They haven't gotten more frequent, but there were a couple of actual emergencies this year and the addition of new worlds. If you're this concerned about the updates they run, then you definitely need that brief time off.

[Petite]

They haven't gotten more frequent, but there were a couple of actual emergencies this year and the addition of new worlds. If you're this concerned about the updates they run, then you definitely need that brief time off.

Did you not read the part where I said I can only play after 9PM EST because of work? It's not like I don't understand they must do their own thing, but it doesn't mean I can't wish they would push maintenances to 2 AM.

[PharisHanasaki]

Did you not read the part where I said I can only play after 9PM EST because of work? It's not like I don't understand they must do their own thing, but it doesn't mean I can't wish they would push maintenances to 2 AM.

The game is japanese, they have to do maintenance during japan office hours.

Yes, we can wish none of us were affected by maintenance, but you'll have the dude that comes complain saying they can only play from 2am to 6am each day. Truth is, no time would satisfy everyone. We've had this conversation every odd year where maintenances stack up.

[FireMage]

Server typically goes down for a little while every week here recently. I can't think of a time it hasn't.

I can, go actually review maintenance times, it's only "frequent" when around a patch

[Packetdancer]

Server typically goes down for a little while every week here recently. I can't think of a time it hasn't.

Okay, I'm a programmer, and I'm curious, and I'm waiting for a hardware validation test to run. And I like data. And the Lodestone is available as a feed.

So, let's snorf in the Lodestone entries, and filter for the Maintenance category, and anything that has 'All Worlds' or 'Some Worlds' in it. (To exclude Lodestone, Mog Station, etc. maintenance.)

Assuming my incredibly-hastily-written Python code is correct in how it filtered things, this gives us 10 planned Monday-evening maintenance windows -- many of which are associated with a patch or a hotfix immediately after a patch -- and 8 emergency maintenance windows (mostly to do with datacenter travel, the housing lottery, or the rollout of the Materia datacenter).

Breaking it down for the year so far, week-by-week, striking out the weeks with maintenance:

• December 28 - January 3 - Planned (Monday)
• January 4-10
• January 11-17
• January 18-24 - Planned (Monday)
• January 25-31
• February 1-7
• February 8-14 - Emergency/Hotfix (Tuesday) - Materia DC only
• February 15-21
• February 22-28
• March 1-7 - Planned (Monday)
• March 8-14
• March 15-21
• March 22-28
• March 29 - April 4
• April 5-11 - Planned (Monday)
• April 12-18 - Emergency/Hotfix (Wednesday)
• April 19-25 - Planned (Monday)
• April 26 - May 2
• May 3-9
• May 10-16 - Emergency/Hotfix (Sunday) - Housing Lottery Fix
• May 17-23 - Planned (Monday)
• May 24-30
• May 31 - June 6 - Planned (Monday)
• June 7-13
• June 14-20
• June 21-27
• June 28 - July 4 - Planned (Monday)
• July 5-11
• July 12-18 - Emergency/Hotfix (Tuesday) - Datacenter travel
• July 19-25 - Emergency/Hotfix (Sunday) - Datacenter travel (NA only)
• July 26 - August 1 - Emergency/Hotfix (Tuesday) - Datacenter travel (4 EU worlds only)
• August 2-8
• August 9-15
• August 16-22 - Planned (Monday)
• August 23-29 - Emergency/Hotfix (Sunday)
• August 30 - September 5 - Emergency/Hotfix (Wednesday)
• September 6-12 - Planned (Monday)

That gives us roughly a 50/50 of weeks that have some maintenance and weeks with none.

But the bulk of the 'Planned (Monday)' ones that happen right before reset are either a patch, or a hotfix in the week or two right after a patch. And taking out the 10 planned windows (e.g. things necessary to actually roll out a patch, or the immediate aftermath thereof) gives us only 8 instances of emergency maintenance over the course of the year so far, despite all the disaster surrounding both the housing lottery and the initial rollout of datacenter travel.

And it's worth noting that three of those eight -- the Materia DC one, the NA-only one, and the time when four specific worlds choked and died on datacenter travel -- only affected some people, not the entire playerbase.

As someone on Primal, only 16 of these maintenance windows affected me. And if you're an EU player and not on one of the four worlds that had to be taken down on July 26th, you were only affected by 15 -- of which ten were the rollout of patches/new content, or hotfixes for just-rolled-out new content.

Honestly, I've seen many live services with far worse uptime and maintenance records. That said, I will grant that between the DC travel issues and the rollout of 6.20, 6.21, and hotfixes for 6.20, we've had 7 of the past 10 weeks be ones that had maintenance windows. (Though unless you play on both NA and one of four specific EU worlds, you were affected by at most 6 of those.) Given the human tendency to grant far more weight to negative experiences than positive ones, it's not surprising a few people would feel like maintenance is constant.

[Sotaris]

Not really bothered. They usually 4am to 10am for me.

[LianaThorne]

Did you not read the part where I said I can only play after 9PM EST because of work? It's not like I don't understand they must do their own thing, but it doesn't mean I can't wish they would push maintenances to 2 AM.

You can be frustrated but at the end of the day, they're doing it during the JP work hours and asking them to push maint & stay late at work just so you can get a couple hours in before bed is pretty entitled. Play something else on those nights and enjoy FF the next day, you'll survive.