Please don't shrug this off SE...I am not stating this sarcasticly or anything like that.

I am serious with this idea.

Bounce the servers each night at their lowest load point.

Shouldn't take long for them to reboot in comparison to normal maintenance activity.

The idea comes from my time playing Dust514. They ran a short maintenance on a regular schedule. Everyone knew when it was going to happen, so never planned to play at that time. The same would apply, once the ideal time to restart them was announced.

I don't intend this as a real fix, just a temporary one until the real fix can be put in place. There isn't much of a downside to this, provided you guys are actually working towards a solution that can be fully implemented soon. There really isn't much reason for people to stay logged in while AFK now. There is no Bazaar (retainers replace that), you get rested xp when logged out in a sanctuary, and you aren't having to watch for that elusive ToD for an NM like we had in XI. So, it shouldn't really matter if the AFK'ers get bounced. Everyone else will know when the reboot will take place and for how long the game will be unavailable, so they won't be expecting to be able to play.

Again, this could be a temporary fix at best for the 1017 issues, but it could at least relieve some of the frustration with the playerbase. Should be a simple enough thing to implement. I've scripted shutdowns countless times for both servers and clients in various environments.

Please, take this under advisement with your IT guys and not just the Devs and execs. This is a plausible and doable remedy for the short term for a LOT of players.