Starting to look like a long downtime for 2.0

[Mijin]

Yoshida also has a unique challenge - unlike any other in the MMO genre – how to handle the switchover from the current version of FFXIV to A Realm Reborn. He explained to me that this won’t be a gradual process, but instead a pre-planned event will herald the start of over a month of downtime. “The current version that we have now, the players are still playing and learning about the story that we have now. But one day there’s going to be a big event. And during this event, the servers are going to go down.” That date has since been confirmed as November 11th, 2012.
“This is because all of the player data has to be prepared for the new Realm Reborn client, and that will take time. So that we have time to do this, we need to shut down the servers to begin the data transfer. We pretty much already know that with the number of characters that exist right now - hundreds of thousands of characters - to physically convert all that data with the hardware limits is going to take at least a month. So we can tell you right now that the servers will be down for at least a month.” This won’t be a quiet time for players, with plenty of beta testing still to be done before the servers come back up with the new game. Yoshida also announced a poll in his most recent producer letter, where he suggested leaving the servers running even though character progress wouldn’t be migrated over.

Source: http://www.zam.com/story.html?story=30484&storypage=1

As I've been expecting, the evidence is already starting to show that we're in for a long downtime. The last time Yoshida commented on this it was, "It will take longer than a few days, but it's something I hope wont take as long as a month [laughs]"

I predict there are going to be a lot more problems than expected in beta, they basically rebuilt the game in a little over a year... If they're going to take the time to implement all the changes before the release I think we'll be lucky to see the game before march.

[Denmo]

From the looks of your sig, you seem like you could use some downtime.

[Mijin]

From the looks of your sig, you seem like you could use some downtime.

Lol yeah, you may be right.

[Alhanelem]

edit. im just stupid. it looks very similar to the original interview asking about the shutdown though.

[Mijin]

That's old news you quoted there, long before the dates for shutdown and testing were given.

The post isn't about the shutdown dates, we all know that the last save is on November 1st and the server go down (if they go down) on Nobember 11th. What no one knows is when the servers come back up with 2.0. That's what this post pertains to, and this is new information, the interview was posted 16 hours 50 min ago...

[Pooky]

After what happened with 1.0, they better take as long as it takes(even if it means 2013) to get the 2.0 launch right. I'd rather get pissed and antsy because 2.0 is taking too long than get it on time and have to wait for miracle patches yet again. The game will not survive another bad launch. It is incredible that it is getting a second chance, don't mess it up.

[Mijin]

After what happened with 1.0, they better take as long as it takes(even if it means 2013) to get the 2.0 launch right. I'd rather get pissed and antsy because 2.0 is taking too long than get it on time and have to wait for miracle patches yet again. The game will not survive another bad launch. It is incredible that it is getting a second chance, don't mess it up.

Yeah I agree with you there. I'm just throwing this info out there because it seems like everyone's expecting the downtime to be just a few days or something lol.

[Denmo]

From what I understand, most new games go through about 3-4 months of alpha/beta testing. XIV is a special case because we already have the content in place, it's more or less a matter of debugging now. (Ironically, the opposite was true at 1.0 launch, and yet their major focus was debugging.)

We know that Alpha testing will begin soon, probably a week or so. And it'll mostly just be testing server loads and scoping out major bugs. Beta is already scheduled to begin sometime in late November early December. PS3 beta will follow shortly after, most likely, and by then we'll all know a solid release date probably.

My guess is late February, early March.

[JusticeReborn]

What I've found interesting about this downtime is that, if substantial, it gives players a time to get their "fix" elsewhere, and perhaps develop an attachment during said downtime there instead. Be it FFXI (imagine if the new expansion pack came out before ARR comes back online), another company's MMO, or even just offline games, not only will SE be trying to attract new players, but they'll have to work towards convincing those that have spent their time gaming elsewhere during the downtime to return before they grow attached to another game.

[Mijin]

What I've found interesting about this downtime is that, if substantial, it gives players a time to get their "fix" elsewhere, and perhaps develop an attachment during said downtime there instead. Be it FFXI (imagine if the new expansion pack came out before ARR comes back online), another company's MMO, or even just offline games, not only will SE be trying to attract new players, but they'll have to work towards convincing those that have spent their time gaming elsewhere during the downtime to return before they grow attached to another game.

I thought about that too, but I guess SE probably doesn't care if they lose some players as long as they gain a large amount of new ones.