Servers offline during July 4th Holiday?

[VelKallor]

Id say its more a case "We have been working our rears off to get this done, we need to GET IT DONE, so we go on this date"

The devs have a massive workload, and no doubt this is on THEIR schedule, Id also say that this is the best chance to get it completed..the fact its also a 24 hour maintenance and a MASSIVE undertaking that HAS to be done right is foremost on their minds.

You would literally blanch if you knew how much needs to be coordinated, how many teams need to be ready to go, what their workload is, how much coordination is required.

I was a spectator in a NOC during a system overhaul for a VERY large company, was a complete rework of their primary systems and interfaces. I was allowed to watch and say NOTHING for an hour then told to leave. The sheer complexity of it..I barely understood any of it, but every system had to be checked and rechecked, so many stages, so many go or no go checklists, so many staff involved.

I was told before admission that this upgrade had taken them THREE MONTHS to prepare. All hands on deck, no one off sick or away for any reason. The tech told me later that having this go south would be catastrophic..his actual words were "we cant afford to make the same mistake once"

( BTW, if anyone is curious, being even allowed INTO a network ops centre when you arent part of the NOC is not only a special privilege, its almost unheard of as thats usually a very high security area. Admission is rigorously restricted )

It has to be done, it has been an anticipated feature for the game a lot of people are looking forward to.

It seems that having a Wednesday patch cycle makes more sense, worldwide, as it falls in the middle of the business/school week, when populations in game are lowest.

You and I have no idea what they have to do, how much work went into even making this possible ( though i have a small understanding ) , but this is a case of "Are we ready to go? Are all teams ready? Are we all coordinated, briefed, are the programs and procedures ready? Then we GO."

Here is a basic summary of what it is meant to accomplish

Data Center Travel is a feature that will be implemented in Patch 6.18, allowing players to visit another logical data center (logical DC) to socialize and participate in matchmaking.

Currently, player characters belong to a logical DC (Aether, Primal, Crystal, etc.) and are limited to playing with others within that same logical DC. With the upcoming Data Center Travel feature, for example, players from Aether will also be able to play with others in Primal and Crystal.

The Data Center Travel process typically takes somewhere between less than a minute to three minutes to complete. We hope you’ll make use of this feature and socialize with your newfound neighbors!

Activities Available When Visiting Other Logical DCs

Similar to the World Visit System, you can take part in a wide variety of activities, such as:

Chatting through Say/Party/Yell/Shout/Tell
Joining and chatting in cross-world linkshells (CWLS) created in the destination logical DC
Adding players to the Friend List
Forming and recruiting parties
Progressing through quests
Social interaction in various in-game locations, such as cities, areas and residential districts
Participate in various in-game content, such as dungeons, raids, and PvP
Crafting and gathering (excluding Unspoiled and Legendary gathering nodes)
Purchasing items from the market board
In addition to World Visit System restrictions, free company chat / CWLS in other logical DCs / PvP teams / Fellowships features (aside from searching) will be restricted.
With the addition of Data Center Travel, you will be able to use your main character to play outside of your Home World’s logical DC without having to create new characters specifically for visiting another logical DC. The scope of your communication and gameplay will expand dramatically as you can participate in raids with others, play with previously unreachable friends and acquaintances, tour player housing, participate in player events, and more!

It will affect every single system in the game, it is, as far as I can see, one of the biggest changes to their datacentres in the last five years or more.

its monumental, costly both in terms of resources and staffing on every level.

This project has been planned and prepared for a very long time, and the date may very well ( though I cant say for certain as I dont know ) have already been decided as their projected launch date when this concept was in its design stages.

I very much doubt that whatever holiday it was overseas was high on their list of priorities.

[diverscott]

Id say its more a case "We have been working our rears off to get this done, we need to GET IT DONE, so we go on this date"

The devs have a massive workload, and no doubt this is on THEIR schedule, Id also say that this is the best chance to get it completed..the fact its also a 24 hour maintenance and a MASSIVE undertaking that HAS to be done right is foremost on their minds.

I was a spectator in a NOC during a system overhaul for a VERY large company, was a complete rework of their primary systems and interfaces. I was allowed to watch and say NOTHING for an hour then told to leave. The sheer complexity of it..I barely understood any of it, but every system had to be checked and rechecked, so many stages, so many go or no go checklists, so many staff involved.

I was told before admission that this upgrade had taken them THREE MONTHS to prepare. All hands on deck, no one off sick or away for any reason. The tech told me later that having this go south would be catastrophic..his actual words were "we cant afford to make the same mistake once"

( BTW, if anyone is curious, being even allowed INTO a network ops centre when you arent part of the NOC is not only a special privilege, its almost unheard of as thats usually a very high security area. Admission is rigorously restricted )

It has to be done, it has been an anticipated feature for the game a lot of people are looking forward to.



You and I have no idea what they have to do, how much work went into even making this possible ( though i have a small understanding ) , but this is a case of "Are we ready to go? Are all teams ready? Are we all coordinated, briefed, are the programs and procedures ready? Then we GO."
Here is a basic summary of what it is meant to accomplish
It will affect every single system in the game, it is, as far as I can see, one of the biggest changes to their datacentres in the last five years or more.
its monumental, costly both in terms of resources and staffing on every level.
This project has been planned and prepared for a very long time, and the date may very well ( though I cant say for certain as I dont know ) have already been decided as their projected launch date when this concept was in its design stages.

I very much doubt that whatever holiday it was overseas was high on their list of priorities.

Your information does make a good bit of sense. Again, it was not a complaint, as much as a question of whether the holiday and potential for increased play/growth had been taken into consideration. It's easy to think that the US market is a small percentage of players, but statistics show otherwise. Data from playercounter.com show FFXIV populations at:

Japan – 29.42%
United States – 29.16%
Germany – 5.02%
Canada – 4.16%
United Kingdom – 3.36%

[Kolsykol]

Your information does make a good bit of sense. Again, it was not a complaint, as much as a question of whether the holiday and potential for increased play/growth had been taken into consideration. It's easy to think that the US market is a small percentage of players, but statistics show otherwise. Data from playercounter.com show FFXIV populations at:

Japan – 29.42%
United States – 29.16%
Germany – 5.02%
Canada – 4.16%
United Kingdom – 3.36%

All this tells me is that 71% aren't from the US and the US holiday ain't relevant to them.
And that's not accounting for people that will spend their time elsewhere because of the holiday which tbh is probably most of them.
Hey I ain't gonna judge I don't rly care about most holidays and don't do anything on them either, but most people won't sit indoors and play FFXIV they'll be outside celebrating.
So it's even less of a % of the playerbase this is even relevant to.

[Jojoya]

Your information does make a good bit of sense. Again, it was not a complaint, as much as a question of whether the holiday and potential for increased play/growth had been taken into consideration. It's easy to think that the US market is a small percentage of players, but statistics show otherwise. Data from playercounter.com show FFXIV populations at:

Japan – 29.42%
United States – 29.16%
Germany – 5.02%
Canada – 4.16%
United Kingdom – 3.36%

Having maintenance on the 4th is not going to threaten long term player growth in the US or anywhere else. Most people have other things they'd like to be doing on a holiday than playing an online game.

This also isn't a mobile game where DAU/MAU is meaningful.

You're really stretching here to try to make your non-point.

[Kaurhz]

Honestly, is it really that difficult to occupy your time with something else?

[Themarvin]

It is not relevant.... servers is also down in other parts of the worlds National Holidays and the likes... it is no biggie really.

[Kes13a]

part of it will be actual availability of technical support if required.

doing it on a monday means the rest of the week will be better staffed for any issues that may come up, not just on the support side, but also on the dev side if their are unanticipated software issues that need a hotfix.

plus, we have zero idea of what other factors are going on behind the scenes. despite your holiday, SW and Yoshi-P have to have some form of schedule for these things as a responsibility to head office as well as the shareholders. we have no idea if the schedule for release already had to be delayed for something else that came up and they are at the end of the window. not defending SE, but this is real world reality, not the wants of the player base.

lets face it, if they could avoid inconveniencing players and employees, I believe they would do that, most reasonable companies would. but in the greater scheme of things, its not something we at our level control. period.

[RobynDaBank]

Surely a company that had to shut down sales for quite a valuable time period of hype needs to base itself just around the whims of the USA audience for more money.

[LianaThorne]

With the extended weekend July 4th holiday, in the US market, many of us had planned to do some extra play in game. This would be a great opportunity to introduce new friends to the game and to accomplish some goals that were long put off. I am just curious why the scheduled maintenance could not be performed on July 5th.

From personal experience, the holiday period has been a time when I and many other friends have gathered together to have a good time. Most MMOs take advantage of the holiday to promote the game to new audiences and hold events to build the community. It seems counter-intuitive to close the doors and ask those players to go find another game to enjoy, for the day.

Gather with your friends in real life or go visit family. It's a holiday meant for going to carnivals, barbecuing and watching fireworks with your loved ones. One day offline on a holiday that's literally about going outside and spending time in fresh air won't kill anyone.

[Bacent]

There's already a thread about this - https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...hr-Maintenance

It's on a monday. Mondays are always days when the game will be down for updates to XIV. It's part of their schedules. Always has been for anything new being added to the game (Emergency updates do not count)

July 4th isn't always on the same day of the week. It's also a day people typically spend with others watching fireworks, having BBQ/parties/ect.

It's literally not an issue.

Reset is every early tuesday morning.

Personally, I live in the US and I couldn't care less the game is down on one of the loudest days of the year.

It's literally NOT an issue. Go have some BBQ. Speaking of BBQ, if you cut hotdogs length wise into 4 pieces and boil them, they curl up. If you put BBQ sauce on them it's like a sloppy joe that looks like it's made of worms.