Servers offline during July 4th Holiday?

[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.