Maintenance window

[Domeric]

If I had to guess, it might have to do with being multi-platform. It's admittedly an armchair opinion.

[HaelseMikiro]

Even if maintenance is completed early, I expect they'll keep it closed until the weekly reset, only because they're adding a new 24 man with a weekly reward. Yes, it's new content and it might be unlikely that many people could clear it between maintenance and reset time, but if there's a chance of it happening, they'll keep it shut down.

[Dement]

Even if maintenance is completed early, I expect they'll keep it closed until the weekly reset, only because they're adding a new 24 man with a weekly reward. Yes, it's new content and it might be unlikely that many people could clear it between maintenance and reset time, but if there's a chance of it happening, they'll keep it shut down.

Bingo.

Non-patch maintenance can and frequently does end early.

Patch maintenance will never end early. They learned their lesson in the early 2.x series when they released new tomestones and finished maintenance early. Some people got on and were able to complete various trials to get a large chunk of the new tomestones before reset giving them an advantage moving forward. Since then patch maintenance hasn't ended early.

In regards to the why 24 hours question, I always guessed it likely doesn't take them 24 hours to implement most patches but I'm guessing they give themselves 24 hours in case something goes amiss they have time to fix it before the scheduled finishing time. Then once everything is up and running, they still can't release it until the scheduled time for the aforementioned reasoning regarding weekly resets. I assume the reasoning to be it's better to take away the final day of a dying patch than to end up with game breaking problems and have to take away the opening day of a new patch (the rioting mob would rapidly get out their pitchforks and torches). Even with fairly significant hot fixes needed, they typically don't shut the game down to implement them on patch day but usually the next day (Wednesday night expect a short patch).

[HaelseMikiro]

Even if maintenance is completed early, I expect they'll keep it closed until the weekly reset, only because they're adding a new 24 man with a weekly reward. Yes, it's new content and it might be unlikely that many people could clear it between maintenance and reset time, but if there's a chance of it happening, they'll keep it shut down.

And so SE outsmarts me, maintenance is over 90 minutes early, and they forced weekly reset to occur early to compensate for it. Outstanding work devs, I'm truly surprised and proud this time around

[Vurtney]

Welp, this is a great excuse to fire up XV and try that new game plus. S-E has been really punctual with their schedules in the past. It'll be up before you know it.

[Tatiana]

lol I saw that it was 24 hours and was like whoa. o_o...iCry

[Lexia]

We get 24 hour maintenance every 3 months for the major patches, it should be expected by now unless a person is a new player and they don't open the servers early for major patches.

[aesteval]

Not really sure why a 24 hour maintenance is necessary for a patch, but longer than average maintenances compared with other games are the norm for FFXIV it seems.

Usually it's better to schedule too much time for maintenance instead of too little just in case a disaster happens and they have to recover / fix and repatch. There's also likely some testing once the patch is applied on the live environment.

[Adire]

Usually it's better to schedule too much time for maintenance instead of too little just in case a disaster happens and they have to recover / fix and repatch. There's also likely some testing once the patch is applied on the live environment.

Well, these long maintenances usually do go for the entire time. I've played many MMOs and FFXIV by far takes the cake for long maintenances.

Patches are usually bug free for the most part, but other games accomplish the same thing in a much shorter time, mostly due to having a testlive system. Hopefully SE will look at speeding up the process sometime in the near future.

[aesteval]

Well, these long maintenances usually do go for the entire time. I've played many MMOs and FFXIV by far takes the cake for long maintenances.

Patches are usually bug free for the most part, but other games accomplish the same thing in a much shorter time, mostly due to having a testlive system. Hopefully SE will look at speeding up the process sometime in the near future.

These long maintenances usually go the entire time because the servers won't be available for play before the weekly reset of new content happens and where there will be a rush to acquire certain things (ie: new housing, mats for new recipes - there's a rush on the MB for old mats madely newly relevant the moment the patch comes up.) If they did trim time off of the maint schedule it would be the servers going down later rather than coming up early - but better to be safe on case something goes really wrong and have too much time than too little.