Why is there a 15 day shut down of the World Transfer Service?

[Atoli]

15 DAYS?! I have important business trips to the other servers?!!! What am I supposed to do walk?!!!!

Just bring your character over physically. Go to SE in Canada, ask them for your character data and then just take a plane to Japan or Europe or wherever you need to go

[Gyson]

15 days seems like an awfully long time for maintenance on a system that seemed to be working reasonably well to begin with.

[Resh]

The 15-day lock makes sense. The server transfer involves copying over every character's information to the new servers in Europe. This process begins well before the actual day of maintenance. The lock out of transfers and the prevention of making new characters will reduce the amount of information the new servers will have to update and will reduce the downtime. The original estimated maintenance was supposed to be 5 days. This change has reduced the downtime to a day and a half.

[seekified]

I'm just speculating here, but from an IT datacenter perspective I'd guess that they've already moved all the data from Chaos to the new datacenter in Europe and are only doing incremental copies of changes between now and the live date. Actually transferring character presence data in and out of the datacenter during this period would probably increase the likelihood of data mismatch headaches.

Just informed speculation, but it might be one reason.

[SecretCrowds]

Character transfer earns SE money. If SE chooses to make a money making feature unavailable for 15 days, you can be sure they have a very good reason for it.

For example, character transfer has probably never experienced high traffic at one go. With the new EU data centre, they are expecting a huge traffic, which might cause issues such as missing characters. They are probably optimising the service to prevent that.

Another possible reason might be that the current character transfer system is not designed to handle the new server locations. They probably need to make sure that the character transfer service will be able to handle transferring to and from the new data centre location.

There might be several reasons. Reasons which they don't think they need to share. Whatever the reasons are, you can be sure they thought over them carefully. Remember, it's not just the players that are affected by the downtime. SE won't earn any money from that service during that period too.

[Martin_Arcainess]

Pretty sure they said if you are in the chaos data centre if you wish for a server transfer it's going to be free for a set amount of time.

Gimme a min or so and I'll get the link.

ah here it is,

"World Transfers
Because the Chaos data center is being relocated, certain players may find they are no longer playing on a desirable World. In order to address this issue, players will be allowed to transfer from Worlds within the Chaos data center to Worlds within the Elemental, Gaia, Mana, Aether, or Primal data centers free of charge for one week.

Residents in the North American region playing on the Chaos data center may begin to experience issues with latency after the transition. We ask that you try the game after the transfer, and if you experience connectivity issues disruptive to gameplay, consider using the free World transfer service while it is available.

* The free World transfer service will not apply to characters moved from the Elemental, Gaia, Mana, Aether, or Primal data centers to the Chaos data center.

As with normal World transfers, more than three days must have passed since last using this service. Please note that when applying for a World transfer via the FINAL FANTASY XIV: Mog Station, the total balance for any characters transferred from the Chaos data center should appear as $0.00. If your total balance is not $0.00 before finalizing your transaction, please confirm you are transferring characters from Worlds applicable to the free World transfer service."

http://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodest...156bf3372fae42

[Noshpan]

I'd rather have the world transfer be unavailable for two weeks to ensure that there will be as few kinks as possible. There's no telling what kind of mess will be made due to the relocation of the EU servers.

You are crying as if a world transfer would be something INCREDIBLY IMPORTANT, and couldn't wait a fortnight... sigh...

I wonder if you're the same sirDarts I know from Twitch...

[sirDarts]

I wonder if you're the same sirDarts I know from Twitch...

Yes, Noshy, yes I am. spazWave

[TontonTinyblade]

It's funny, just last night I was thinking hmm, Balmung has a great RP community, and my friend plays on Balmung. I should buy a world transfer to Balmung..

And BAM, no transfer for you. :l

[Noshpan]

Yes, Noshy, yes I am. spazWave

Woo! CHEEEEEEEEEEESE! spazHey