Maintenance Times

[Tarnac]

I have been playing FFXIV for about three weeks, but have had maintenance about 10 times during the time that I am able to play. I have not seen any type of rotation of server maintenance and I am wondering why.

I played FFXI for over 7 years and they would rotate maintenance and updates so that one particular time frame was not affected. The times that I've noticed maintenance/updates to occur is anywhere from 12:00 a.m. - 6:00 a.m. PST. This is a large time frame to have to deal with every few days.

I have looked back at the other maintenances and unless it has been emergency maintenance it has always been scheduled during those times. Wouldn't it be more prudent to rotate the maintenance times so that everyone has an equal amount of time to play? What do you think?

[Hysterior]

What do you think?

I think there is a thread about this topic at every maintenance and it has been discussed to death

[HEC]

Well - keep in mind the "working" / playing time mostly relate to japanese time zone.

[Niwashi]

Well - keep in mind the "working" / playing time mostly relate to japanese time zone.

Only the Japanese Data Centers have maintenance based on the Japanese time zone. The NA Data Centers generally have maintenance from 12:00 a.m. - 6:00 a.m. PST, because that's the lowest traffic period in North America. (I think that would actually be peak evening hours in Japan.)

There's always the conflict between whether they should choose times to inconvenience the fewest players (i.e. always go with the lowest traffic period of the day) or choose various different times so the inconvenience is spread out and they're not always bothering the same players. They've clearly chosen the former approach.

[Mcshiggs]

Honestly when it comes to maintenance, no player group is close to the front of their mind, if you look at this upcoming one, it is 25 hours long, it affects everyone, but they are expecting a fair amount of issues, so it's not so much about when they plan for it to start, but when they plan for it to stop, they need the game to come back up when they have plenty of people there to help with any issues, and bringing the game up at low peak times helps because the problems come more gradually, and not so many all right at the same time, so it's easier to pinpoint the issues.

[HEC]

Only the Japanese Data Centers have maintenance based on the Japanese time zone. The NA Data Centers generally have maintenance from 12:00 a.m. - 6:00 a.m. PST, because that's the lowest traffic period in North America. (I think that would actually be peak evening hours in Japan.)

Well actually - the way it's scheduled is like this - for regular weekly maintenances:

1. Japan center for 2 hours (this is in still fairly peak hours for Japan between 21:00 - 23:00)
2. 1 hour gap (to cover for eventual overrun)
3. NA / EU center for 2 hours (more or less off peak for EU / UK between 08:00 - 10:00 CET / 07:00 - 09:00 GMT)