Servers are Down

[origamikitsune]

Why would SE not setup their service in another country not affected while they are affected in japan?

Short version, it takes weeks, if not months to plan that sort of change.

They have to purchase the servers, get them as close to their current servers in specs, re-program the game and all web-services to point to the new servers, and then they still have to transfer the data which in and of itself would take hours probably in order to do it without taking down already crowded data lines. MMOs are not small games. It is not like downloading an MP3 from iTunes.

Once all that is done, they have to test, debug, fix hardware, fix software, patch, test again, debug again, fix software, patch, test again, etc.

Right now, Tokyo is expecting mandatory rolling black outs, expecting to last up to three hours in some areas within the city. There is no way they would have had time to do it.

Edit: Also, assuming they were willing to use data centers owned by third party vendors at all, there aren't likely many data centers in the world outside of the corporate, government, or educational institutions that could handle that traffic. I can only think of a few.