"All Worlds Maintenance"... is it me, or they're happening way too often?

[synthwev]

All Worlds Maintenance since Patch 7.4

• Dec 15–16, 2025 — 22:00 → 02:00 (PST) — 4h
• Dec 18–19, 2025 — ~20:00 → ~01:00 (PST) — ~5h (Emergency)
• Dec 24–25, 2025 — 20:00 → 02:00 (PST) — 6h (Emergency)
• Jan 26–27, 2026 — ~19:00 → ~01:00 (PST) — ~6h
• Feb 4–5, 2026 — ~22:00 → ~02:00 (PST) — ~4h
• Mar 2–3, 2026 — 19:00 → 02:00 (PST) — 7h
• Mar 10–11, 2026 — ~23:00 → ~03:00 (PST) — 4h
• Mar 11, 2026 — (follow-up) — ~4h
• Mar 23–24, 2026 — (scheduled) — ~4h

Total approximate downtime: between 38 to 44 hours (some few ended earlier)

I know maintenance is necessary, but isn't it a bit excessive? A lot of these are to implement hotfixes. Are they short in QA staff? Some may say "you can go play other games", which is true but there's a reason people are paying to play the game, not to sit through frequent maintenances.

At least they're fixing things... in a way? But what are your (civilized) thoughts on the subject?

[Oizen]

Small indie dev please buy mogstation

[Sunhwapark]

I don't know.
Perhaps they've already started the transition of getting their QA mostly done by AI and it's causing a mess?

[NegativeS]

Pictured: Square Enix's only IT guy (the rest were fired to fund Babylon's Fall development) contemplating his life after being told by his boss to make the servers 'work gooder' or they'll dock another 5 minutes from his break time

[Astronis]

Most other MMOs I've played had a few hours of maintenance every single week, simply to restart the servers and make sure they ran smoothly. I'm surprised this one doesn't.

[Voidsent-Uchiha]

All Worlds Maintenance since Patch 7.4

• Dec 15–16, 2025 — 22:00 → 02:00 (PST) — 4h
• Dec 18–19, 2025 — ~20:00 → ~01:00 (PST) — ~5h (Emergency)
• Dec 24–25, 2025 — 20:00 → 02:00 (PST) — 6h (Emergency)
• Jan 26–27, 2026 — ~19:00 → ~01:00 (PST) — ~6h
• Feb 4–5, 2026 — ~22:00 → ~02:00 (PST) — ~4h
• Mar 2–3, 2026 — 19:00 → 02:00 (PST) — 7h
• Mar 10–11, 2026 — ~23:00 → ~03:00 (PST) — 4h
• Mar 11, 2026 — (follow-up) — ~4h
• Mar 23–24, 2026 — (scheduled) — ~4h

Total approximate downtime: between 38 to 44 hours (some few ended earlier)

But what are your (civilized) thoughts on the subject?

Dec 24-25 until Jan 26-27 is a 1 month gap
Feb 4-5 until March 2-3 is a 1 month gap
March 11 to March 23 is 2 weeks gap

Even all things considered, that's 44 hours in 3 months, so ~14 hours a month averaged. Compared to my other game that has 15 hours a month mandatory.

I'm EST so:
Dec 15 -> 1AM-5AM, no effect
Dec 18 -> 11PM-4AM, barely an effect
Dec 24 -> 11PM-5AM, barely an effect
Jan 26 -> 10PM-4AM, barely an effect
Feb 4 -> 1AM-5AM, no effect
March 2 -> 10PM->5AM, barely an effect
March 10 -> 2AM->10AM, no effect

West Coast is scuffed.
East Coast is fine.
Entirety of EU is unaffected besides the extreme minority that needs to play in the mornings before/at lunch.
JP is early afternoon/evening so they don't lose prime hours at all either.

You mention paying to play the game, but if we're talking about that in generalities of playing at any given time of the day and not just prime hours analysis, that's 44 hours against 98 days for 2352 hours total you could play. You got 2308 vs. 2352, which is 98.1%. That's barely $0.28 out of a $15 membership. I can't personally complain about that. 30 cents in exchange for hotfixes is fine for me.

[Darnath]

I've mentioned it in another thread but I really wish they'd have done infrastructure/network code upgrades to do Hotfixes like WoW does barely requiring downtime instead of the graphical overhaul for Dawntrail. At most, if I remember, they'll do an hour maintenance every other week like Astronis said for simple stuff.

But that would require them to actually spend money on their own hardware/hosting. Dream on I guess.

[Atreus]

For maintenance and fixes? Yeah this seems more than usual, but I'm not fussed, even as MST time.

Overall, truthfully, no. It's not happening enough. I've wanted job adjustments to come at a completely separate, more frequent cadence from the patch cycle and that will require more downtime. I think SE is already so overly cautious about taking the game out of service that it hinders adjustment timings. I'd gladly sacrifice some game time to see that happen.

[Ryvick]

I've mentioned it in another thread but I really wish they'd have done infrastructure/network code upgrades to do Hotfixes like WoW does barely requiring downtime instead of the graphical overhaul for Dawntrail. At most, if I remember, they'll do an hour maintenance every other week like Astronis said for simple stuff.

But that would require them to actually spend money on their own hardware/hosting. Dream on I guess.

Is it Irony that I just googled wow downtime over the same time period and they also have had about 40 hours of downtime? In before the "but X game never has any downtime ever" posts.

[CidHeiral]

Doesn't bother me at all. Back when I played WoW it had maintenance like that every week and it wasn't conveniently in the middle of the night like FFXIV. Just go do something else, it's not that big of a deal.