Turn on the patch server already

[Silverbane]

What is this outside you speak of? I think I'm allergic to it.

True fact: sunlight causes cancer. Avoid it if you can, just get your vitamin D through your food.

[PizzaRolls]

lol. im excited for the new patch too and i agree as i "used" to have a very slow internet connection and downloading just FFXIV during ARR days took 29 hours to com plete so i can understand people with slow internet wanting it early so by time it is done downloading they can jump right in

[Kathyz]

What is this outside you speak of? I think I'm allergic to it.

The Outernet its scary...

[Moonleg]

Patience? Oh, I'm gonna be needing a LOT of that patience while downloading the patch at a snail's pace while the rest of you guys are actually playing.

I'm just asking that SE starts letting ALL of us start playing at the same time.

[Catwho]

Look, I get that you don't want people to do a lot of data-mining by preloading the patch while the game servers are still up, but data mining will not allow ANYONE to get an unfair advantage now, as no one can get to the market boards.

So for the sake of those of us on slow connections, for whom the patch may well take hours to download, just TURN ON the patch server so we can start downloading. Please.

Speaking as someone who has done data center maintenance, I would say it's likely that they are using this downtime to actually apply some patches to the server OSes as well. That includes the download server.

It'll come up when it comes up.

[HakuroDK]

I'm sure someone will post in this thread when the patch server comes up. And I assume the patch server will be up sometime this evening.

[Anarnee]

Doesn't is say they're also doing an infrastructure maintenance? :/ Be patient there's over half a day till servers are supposed to go live....

[Chessala]

Hm.....I work in an MMO company and a patch maintenance usually works like this:

- servers go down
- patch gets applied on the server
- patch gets tested by the QA/GM Team
- Possible issues get resolved (patch didn't get applied properly etc)
- Patch is made available for people

Not saying it is like this for everyone. I have a slow connection myself and don't look forward to patching but they will not make an untested patch available to people. What good would it be to apply the patch and make it available with issues? You never know what happens to the patch while it is being applied to the Live servers, there is so much that can go wrong. Be patient, I rather have them do it properly than end up with a broken patch that I have to download a 2nd time.

[Airget]

Ya, infrastructure is definitely gonna cause patch to come later.

This is my guess as to what they need to do.

"work on Infrastructure"

"Implement patch"

"Test Island Exploration with 9 groups entering at different times"

"If there is an issue tweak with Infrastructure to figure out issue"

"Implement Patch again"

"Try Exploration again"

"Rinse and repeat til they are certain there are no issues"

The reason I'm assuming Island exploration is because this content is one that treats instances differently from all other content that has been released. All content so far has had instances with a global timer, the moment of first entry and the exit time never change. Enter dungeon halfway, then you have the same amount of time left as the first person who entered. With Island exploration however you have 9 groups, 3 groups could share the same time but it's assumed that at most there will be 9 groups on 9 separate timers from entry meaning that if they want to make sure it's done right they have to be certain that they don't run into an issue where groups that enter after the first don't have the same timer as those who enter later on.

You wouldn't want to be group 5 entering 40 minutes since the instance opened and being given only 50 minutes to explore, that would suck and that's the part they need to adjust for the servers to handle the variables of different people having different timers on their instance duration.

The other thing to handle is how the dungeons refresh, these open instance will most likely have triggers to reveal bosses but see if three groups are in alrdy they might of beat a boss already and they have to make sure it's setup where the triggers for these bosses reappear right away/enemies respawn but since this does go across multiple servers and it's done through an instance, they are most likely deciding whether these instances will be open indefinitely or if they close after time and new ones are created as time progresses.

[Catwho]

Well, they'll have done a lot of the testing already on their sandbox servers, in regards to merging alliances in zones and such. The time to fix major problems with that was weeks ago.

Ideally, they'll fire it up and it'll work as intended. If it doesn't work as intended, it means they forgot to load another component from the merged build or someone dropped the ball horribly during alpha testing last month and would likely get fired.