Indeed, OP. A better practice would be to have a maintenance that ends exactly when the reset happens. That way, the maintenance effectively ends the 'ARR week', and when the game is back on, fixed and ready to roll, you're free to play your char(s). That's the experience I got in other well managed MMO's, including free to play.

On a side related note, a weekly maintenance is a bit much for a game as recent as ARR. It was normal for MMO's a decade ago, but even those have managed to evolve to a weekly reboot (5 minutes off), if any, and a maintenance every 2-3 weeks. Nowadays I'd expect a maintenance every month or so, with the occasional reboot should that be required. Especially for a game that doesn't feature cutting-edge tech (ARR is made of basic instance servers, a zoned overworld, there's no phasing, no cross-realm features, no realm-wide balanced mechanics… It's all pretty basic tech in terms of end-user experience). That being said, Rube Goldberg machines… oh well you know.