More All-World MaintenanceFollow

From:FINAL FANTASY XI
01/22/2004 21:20 [PST]

All Worlds Emergency Maintenance Notice (01/22)

At the following time, FINAL FANTASY XI will be unavailable due to emergency maintenance. During this time, FINAL FANTASY XI will be offline. We apologize for any inconvenience.

[Date & Time]
01/22/2004 22:00 (PST)

[Estimated Downtime]
4 hours

*The estimated downtime may be subject to change.

[Affected Services]
FINAL FANTASY XI

[Important Details]
Changes to the physical server structure will be effected.

It was just about new moon too! I guess I will miss the good fishing this time around. I needed sleep anyway.

I hope they get this worked out!

Am I crazy??? I went to playonline's website and all the servers were "UP"... yet the POL interface thing says it's under maintenance....

Yeah well officially I'm getting pissed at Squarenix now. Come on guys, you have time and time again screwed me out of the small amount of free time per day I have to play this game. Now it has been four times in the course of a week, none of which was planned maintanence. I think as paying customers we finally deserve a better explaination than "At the following time, FINAL FANTASY XI will be unavailable due to emergency maintanence..."

Here are the questions I want Square to answer:

1. What has caused the numerous situations in this week that have warranted all of the maintanence?
2. How much longer are these problems anticipated to continue?
3. Will rebates or restitution of some sort for lost game time opportunity be provided? (i.e. - for the total emergency maintanence = a free day on our billing period)
4. If not, why don't we deserve at least a free day for our trouble?
5. Why is having the servers located overseas a good idea if the integrity of the servers is in question?

I'm sorry if I sound pissy but come on, this has become absolutely rediculous. I've never seen this much emergency maintanence in such a short period of time in the MMORPGs I've played before. Not to say it has never happened ever, but this should be a big red flag that Square is certainly hiding something from it's customers.

Your other four questions are at least valid, if not a little misguided, since the more questions we make them answer, the longer it takes them to fix things. But your last question just doesn't make any sense. As far as Square is concerned, the servers aren't 'overseas'. They are a Japanese company with their servers based in Japan. Their location in relation to us has nothing to do with internal server issues.

Sooooo annoying and 4 hours of down time? Now I have to wake up early instead of playing late tonight. Arrgh aah well nothing I can do about it, but it is a little rediculous...

i wasted 3 hours with a crapy group and just when i get a sweet group bomb server maitianece.
well i guess thats why there other games out there. i think anyways, so they still amke other games to play

Ha! You guys think this is bad, have you ever played ragnarok online? ggahahhahah this isn't even close to as bad as RO.

Here are some occurances, stuff that happened pretty mcuh daily.

Christy (GM) announces: Um.. sorry, we have to shut down servers, i accdiently deleted all npc


Christy: Server will be offline in approximately 24 hours!
*10 minutes later*
Christy: Server is now shutting down.


Christy: Server will be down for 30 minutes
*5 minutes later*
Christy: Server is now shutting down.
*1 week later*
Christy: Server up, had to delete all characters and everything.
*2 days later after everyone was up for 48 hours levelling*
Christy: Sorry, must delete everything again. Server going down
*server down, 2 days later*
Christy: Servers up!
*1 day later*
Christy: Sorry, we must go down again.
*server down, half a week later*
Christy: Back up, all deleted again.





I'm serious. She actually deleted all the NPCs.

That does mean 1 major thing, Square-Enix won't have any corrupted backup. Im willing to bet 50-1 "montreal-NJ"

GO HABS GO!!!!!!

-Yanick

Edited, Fri Jan 23 01:53:25 2004 by Lad

well damn damn
question have you guys ever wished for better foresight instead of hindsight? I woke up early this morning ... just cuz i woke up since i was off work i started playin and my buddy calls right hey man wanna go out and play later or play now and go out later.... (we PLay FF XI together) and I was like sure lets get some taco bell and see what new **** i can put in my PC from best buy for my next paycheck... LOw and behold I come back and an hour later SYS message.... not a good couple of days for lil miss Lokina... well poo and I don't have ne fun x box games

P.S. this is really hurtin my Power lvlin parties i'm soo good at constructing.

Ok I need to clarify my last question, as it even has me confused now :)

What i was trying to point out with last question is, if there are so many problems cropping up perhaps it is time to consider establishing new servers stateside for NA players. Wouldn't be a "You must go to these servers" but rather a "If you would like to hop to a newly established server a la World Pass Then here's a freebie opportunity for you to do so with new servers that are very likely fewer hops from your current ISP."

If that makes any sense. If it doesn't make sense, put it in a top hat, place hat on table, hit hat repeatedly with a big big hammer, then pull out and see what is left. If that doesn't make sense, rinse and repeat. Seriously though, some of my questions are a bit misguided because they are voiced in anger and frustration (not to mention some sleep deprivation). However, I do think that I'm neither in the minority on the frustration nor am I alone in wanting some sort of explanation.

After taking some time to think over this issue, I have two big suggestions for making some sort of gesture towards the users.

1. Free day of use. I was serious about this suggestion, once things have been hammered out, be kind for our patience, or lack thereof, and add an extra day to this billing period. You would be surprised how much a little gesture like this goes towards making unhappy people happy.

2. Have more SCHEDULED maintanence. I barely ever hear of scheduled maintanence anymore, perhaps there is not enough scheduled maintanence. Many MMORPGs go down once a week or once a day for a specified period of time for scheduled maintanence. I wouldn't mind this as I would know of it ahead of time, and apparently more maintanence is needed than will be admitted. Maybe make it like 4 hours once a week or an hour once a day.

Uh, no you misunderstand. I did not want to know what they were doing, but what's going on. Not whats going on with this maintanence but why all this EMERGENCY maintanence is necessary. The essence of the word emergency is it is unplanned. I think I have a right to know what's going on if, for instance, they are having hack attacks on the servers and our user info is becoming comprimised. (such as credit card info and user names and passwords, a la Ragnarok Online) No I do not want to know specifics of each maintanence as I would have nowhere near the enjoyment when listening to descriptions of routers and hard drives that I could get from leveling my Ninja or questing.



Ok not to put on my rude and crude hat but No *%&! Sherlock. I'm not what you would call a computer ****** so I know what they mean by this statement. The underlying message this statement would tell us is that equipment is going bad. Hey Square, dont use Western Digital Harddrives in your servers next time, I'd go with Seagate instead :P

Kidding aside, read the post I put out right after your post for more coherent info concerning my...ah...well...concerns. Ok sentences starting to look funny suppose its time for some well needed sleep. In closing I don't think my views are misguided, just some of my sentences. I blame it on a mixture of caffeine and sleepiness, and the frustration of a very bad week for Square. Not that I'm about to cancel my account, the voices in my head told me that's not an option.

Did they just release an expansion pack that I missed out on or something? Last time I saw this many updates was the last expansion on UO... *sigh* It's always on the nights that I've stolen my computer back from my boyfriend, too. Cursed. I'm cursed.