https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodes...b07b3650f15d24
I am negative about this game lately but hey, this is a good change. They are making foundational investments in this game and this is an excellent sign.
Good for you SE. This actually gives me hope. Thank you. Let's hope it leads to good and big things and if it does I will be a customer the whole way.
"In order to deliver an optimal gaming experience for future updates, we will be upgrading the hardware of our North American data centers. An extended period of maintenance will be scheduled for all Worlds while the equipment is being replaced."
What I'm speculating here is that whatever features they are planning on rolling out wouldn't work on old server hardware so they just have to upgrade the entire thing. This is a huge investment for a company so it's likely an indicator that whatever they have planned its worth upgrading the servers for.
If it were a small thing it would be better to axe the planned feature and keep the existing infrastructure in place, its cheaper. As for the graphics update thats mostly client side. With the changes to the netcode as well this is the stuff solid, big changes come from. It's true. It could be a whole lot of nothing but it doesn't make sense to make these moves just to keep providing more of the same we've seen in previous expansions.
Per their statements as well its clear this is for the future, not just maintenance because old servers are failing.