What the hell SE

[Seirra_Lanzce]

As a programmer, I understand the complexity of hte task. However character files are merely that, files. No one in their right mind would store character information in a database. What, a new table for every character? Or one table, with a billion columns with an x for every flag/item/etc? They're stored in files. So, if you even went with a new database, it wouldn't be that hard to write a script to re-write the character files for hte new database format, because new file format for storing character data is very reasonable. However a batch job to convert what, 20,000 character files to the new format? far from difficult.

I'm all about having 2.0 be as great as it can be. However to toss people out is pretty brutal. They are trying to stay afloat, this stuff costs money, and that comes from subscriptions. So as much as folks may want to say "do away with the nay-sayers".

Sometime is easily to say as a programmer to fortify any claims or so what ever, but really. Business.

[Delsus]

So basically, I can keep playing if I want, but anything I accomplish will be gone. I think not. You're going to lose a massive amount of players saying either a) you can't play for 2 months, particularly over the holiday when a lot of people have time off, or b) you can play, but we're just going to wipe out anything you accomplish.

It should not be that hard to migrate character data to the new system. People that play want to keep playing. I log in and fish in my spare time, or level some jobs, ie make progress in the game. That is completely pointless if you're just going to wipe it. It's like playing FF1 half way through, then the battery in your cartridge dies and you have to start over.

There has to be another way.

You obviously don't know much about Server structures etc, we have over 200,000 characters on these servers, which all need to be migrated without corruption, all of this character data will be a few terabytes in size, when was the last time you copied lets say 4TB between servers, it will take ages. Now lets add into the equation constantly changing data if they allow saves we would see ARR in about 1 year. You cannot have the data changing if you want ARR out soon.

The most recent datacenter I have seem (I was in there yesterday) had over 150TB of storage for a few thousand users, I don't know how much data our server side accounts are for FFXIV but it will be a lot, if its just 1GB, we would be looking at 200TB of data to transfer, the time frame is acceptable, and anyone that doesn't think this obviously knows nothing about it.

SE isn't doing this like a normal company would because they can't, if a company was migrating this much data to new servers they would do it in parts, so data on xxx drive gets copied one night, xxx drive another, weekends you might be able to migrate more drives, and over time the migration will be complete and you can decommission the old servers. What this means though is during the migration some people will be running on old servers and some on new ones, which SE cannot do and that is why they need the game to not be saving for 1-2 months.

[Icehunter]

As a programmer, I understand the complexity of hte task. However character files are merely that, files. No one in their right mind would store character information in a database. What, a new table for every character? Or one table, with a billion columns with an x for every flag/item/etc? They're stored in files. So, if you even went with a new database, it wouldn't be that hard to write a script to re-write the character files for hte new database format, because new file format for storing character data is very reasonable. However a batch job to convert what, 20,000 character files to the new format? far from difficult.

I'm all about having 2.0 be as great as it can be. However to toss people out is pretty brutal. They are trying to stay afloat, this stuff costs money, and that comes from subscriptions. So as much as folks may want to say "do away with the nay-sayers".

There will be downtime. You can't convert 427k+ accounts in a day or two to the new format.

I work for one of the largest CRM provider's in North America and we had to convert our customers to the new version. It took three months in staged releases and testing.

As a programmer worth your salt you would know the limits of such. If this is the be-all end-all for you; and it will cause you to quit; I hope you find a game worth your time.

SE wants money; but really what they want to is to honor the FF franchise and build a quality product above all else. If it means shutting down some of the game for it; so be it.

[Seirra_Lanzce]

You got to remember about those other people who never played 1.0 but they have bought, registered and played like few seconds of the game. =.= they too may be potential customers.

[Kluya15]

We had over a year free, why thank them? If anything they should be charging the people who want the game back up.

Because they didn't have to give us a free month, and I really enjoy the game in it's current state, let alone the upcoming 2.0 goodness. Enough people bitch that they want this game F2P, and yet when Square gives something for free, no one says a peep. They just find something else to whine about. And let's face it, the "first free year" wasn't exactly the game we are playing now

[Nero]

20,000 character files to the new format? far from difficult.

Add 410.000 to your 20.000 and you have a correct number. currently we have 50k active characters and 430.000 in total. do you think SE will leave those behind, which didnt play for a while? they have to do it for ALL of them.

beside that saying you are a programmer and still dont understanding system integration made me giggle. being a programer and system/database integration are 2 seperated things. basic knowledge.

[Starlord]

Add 460.000 to your 20.000 and you have a correct number. currently we have 50k active characters and 480.000 in total. do you think SE will leave those behind, which didnt play for a while? they have to do it for ALL of them.

beside that saying you are a programmer and still dont understanding system integration made me giggle. being a programer and system/database integration are 2 seperated things. basic knowledge.

Well for the Betas sake, they may transfer the Active accounts first before the non-active, so that we can play as our character in zee beta. but in Total they will be transferring 500k subs all together ( Active and non-active).

[Seirra_Lanzce]

Well for the Betas sake, they may transfer the Active accounts first before the non-active, so that we can play as our character in zee beta. but in Total they will be transferring 500k subs all together ( Active and non-active).

in the end is going to take more time.

[Nero]

Well for the Betas sake, they may transfer the Active accounts first before the non-active, so that we can play as our character in zee beta. but in Total they will be transferring 500k subs all together ( Active and non-active).

We dont know how they do it, but im pretty sure they will do it the most efficient way.

[Seif]

Seriously just take it down whenever you feel like it SE.

They have several times told about the cost of maintaining servers and I just hope they don't take too big of a hit to their wallet for keeping the servers up for these trivial reasons.

Focus on ARR with all your might and have a long alpha and beta phase for once.

1.0 was what it was let's give them time and resources to make ARR as good as it can be. With freed up server assets they can probably test even the large scale battles server wide AH systems and all that crazy stuff.

Let 1.0 go, don't be selfish and think about the long haul people. Please.

There are plenty of games you can play in the holiday season in the meantime. FF I-XI are still out there on your shelf luring you in with Uematsu songs.