Emergency maintenance for...

[kiotsukete]

I don't know anything about server maintenance, so can anyone explain why such a minor hotfix takes 3 hours to implement? I guess it's not as simple as set dyeable flag to on, reboot, done?

edit: So what about all the other event items? Why not set all those to dyeable as well? That would be so much better than getting 4 recolors of the same animal head every new year...

[Vespar]

I'm a little shocked and in awe of this. I was expecting maybe some server-side fixes to help ease the DF and instance server congestion and lag issues we've seen recently... I was not expecting some items that came out last year to become dyeable.

This is not what I would call an EMERGENCY, so unless something else was fixed that is of importance, I feel this kind of thing can wait for the next patch.

[Gralna]

Those are just the changes they made to the "visible" game, anything that has to do with server maint such as any possible hardware/software upgrades, scans to check for corruption, and other various routine steps aren't listed since it would most likely be meaningless to us without knowing specifics about servers/game that isn't public knowledge.

[Zfz]

There's probably a lot of other stuff involved in maintaining persistence and integrity of the world when you take a server offline and restart it, and then there's probably also a rigid confirmation workflow they have to work through after restarting servers before they can put servers back online. I'd say 3 hours is probably like the standard "chunk" of time for a quick change accounting for all these workflows.

[Vespar]

Those are just the changes they made to the "visible" game, anything that has to do with server maint such as any possible hardware/software upgrades, scans to check for corruption, and other various routine steps aren't listed since it would most likely be meaningless to us without knowing specifics about servers/game that isn't public knowledge.

I understand what you mean to say, but SE could have specified something like that in the hotfix information. Just call it what it is then. But don't just make something dyeable and take 3 hours to do it. SE has been very good about being transparent about what they plan to do. I wish that transparency would also be reflected during maintenance. As a paying customer, I deserve to know the real reason why my service is being interrupted and when it will be restored. Just like any other service provider does for its customers.

[EinherjarLucian]

It took roughly the same amount of time for last week's patch cycle. Deployments aren't instant; it takes time to bring the servers down in the right sequence, deploy the new data and code changes in the right sequence, then bring the servers all back up in the right sequence, run whatever tests are needed to validate everything is working fine, then finally re-open the servers for logins.

It's not that it took 3 hours that bothers me, it's that they took a three hour uptime hit for something that seems fairly unimportant. Something like this could have easily been rolled up into a larger set of updates. I get that they'd want to have this available during the holiday event, but still, how important is it that valentione gear can be dyed? Were armies of gamers crying about it?

[BobbinT]

I hope this is really a joke, because it's really a terrible one.

Full maintenance for just making valentine clothes dye-able? Seriously?

[kyuven]

edit: So what about all the other event items? Why not set all those to dyeable as well? That would be so much better than getting 4 recolors of the same animal head every new year...

Some of the items, like the yukata, have more than one color as "primary". The Valentione outfits only have three colors: Red, white, and black, with Red being primary.
The only other outfit I can think of that would be worth being made dyeable would be the christmas outfits...but that would take away what makes them christmas outfits, while the valentione outfits aren't specifically tied to their holiday.

[BobbinT]

And seriously... indulge me this:

How come Final Fantasy XI can do partial maintenance, where players don't even have to log out (usually just have to zone out from affected zones), and Final Fantasy XIV - A "Realm Reborn", has to do a "full" logout maintenance everytime?

I've been pointing this out in various thread many... many times. Could someone really explain and not treating us like fools?

[Antanias]

And seriously... indulge me this:

How come Final Fantasy XI can do partial maintenance, where players don't even have to log out (usually just have to zone out from affected zones), and Final Fantasy XIV - A "Realm Reborn", has to do a "full" logout maintenance everytime?

I've been pointing this out in various thread many... many times. Could someone really explain and not treating us like fools?

I think during the early days of 2.0 there were times where certain zones received maintenance while others were left alone without going offline. Also, certain zones occasionally receive maintenance when a particular server or data center experience technical difficulties.