Important Announcement Regarding the Recent Events in Japan (03/12/2011)

[Don Katsu]

To the SQUARE ENIX community:

As you know, Japan has been hit with a terrible disaster this week. We have received and greatly appreciate all the kind words of concern from our fans and players.

As a result of the earthquake, we temporarily may have to shut down the servers hosting FINAL FANTASY XI and FINAL FANTASY XIV.

We are now analyzing the situation and studying very hard what we can do to fulfill our social responsibilities under the unusual circumstances, and to mitigate the inconvenience to our players. According to our best estimate at this point, we will temporarily have to shut down the servers shortly. We will give you as much advance notice as possible under the rapidly changing circumstances. If the servers are shut down, we will try to provide updates in the Information section of our Official Website below.

FINAL FANTASY XIV , The Lodestone: http://lodestone.finalfantasyxiv.com/
FINAL FANTASY XI Official Website: http://www.playonline.com/

We sincerely apologize and appreciate your understanding.

Sincerely,
SQUARE ENIX

http://lodestone.finalfantasyxiv.com...25f31e04aa8529

[Olo401]

One of my sources in Japan says that "temporarily may" means it's definitely happening. With two nuclear power plants offline in the country everyone is being requested to conserve electricity usage, and you know how JPs are with that groupthink thing..

[Don Katsu]

First they say:

"we temporarily may have to shut down the servers hosting FINAL FANTASY XI and FINAL FANTASY XIV."

Then they say

"According to our best estimate at this point, we will temporarily have to shut down the servers shortly"

Whatever they need to do, they have to do it. One of their plants had a nuclear explosion and the cooling system failed. Over 50000 people were evacuated.

I am glad to hear they are doing ok, this is a very unfortunate situation in Japan.

[Raen Ryong]

omg no I'll pass my degree SE I hate you

[Corrderio]

Update: Servers are going down at 2 AM PST

-------- System Message --------
Due to the earthquake that occurred in the north east coastal regions of Japan on March 10, 2011,
the power companies in Japan have encouraged everyone to cooperate by conserving as much energy
as possible as it is feared there will not be enough energy available. Based on the current situation,
we have decided to temporarily suspend the FINAL FANTASY XIV game service starting from March 13, 2011 at 2:00 a.m. (PST) / at 10:00 (GMT).
Please be sure to log out of FINAL FANTASY XIV before March 13, 2011 at 2:00 a.m. (PST) / at 10:00 (GMT).
See the Information section for more details.

[Shazaam]

On the bright side, FFXIV devs now have now finished the animations for the Flood and Quake AM spells.


(kidding, of course). I hope that damage is contained as well as it can be. Prayers to Japan.

[yuzu]

I'm surprised they are offering April for free given the circumstances

It's not like it can be helped.

[Gokulo]

Long time lurker
Just wanted to say that on the JP POL homepage, it does note that the month of April will be free for all members.
More information will be posted later it notes and the server outage is approximately one week.
For those of you who can read Japanese can go there to see for yourself.
I don't have the post count to post links.

That's referring to the XI though, not XIV, so wrong board They also posted that on English sites now too.

[yuzu]

I noticed it after I posted but when I tried to delete my post, I realize I don't have that option :< Sorry!

[Sephiroth]

The amount of retards shitting up that thread about the servers going down is crazy. I think I'll just avoid the Lodestone forums until everything is back because I doubt their staff are checking them for ideas and feedback right now, they have more important things to do.

I heard on the news not long ago that Japan may have to use controlled power cuts across the country all through March and April due to the power situation. I wonder what this means for FFXIV and XI. The best course of action would be to move the servers to another country for now but I don't know how viable that would be due to being under different laws.

[Kurokikaze]

Yeah man, I'm gonna avoid that place until these guys bring the game back up and start posting again. Seems rather pointless at the moment.

I can't believe people are complaining about them bringing down the servers... I mean really, people are trying to find their families and survive over there but nooooo "WE CANT PLAY OMG".

[kisada]

i hope someone in SE has enough of a mean streak to ban the retards complaining about not being able to play a shitty game.

[Zoner]

I think I'll just avoid the Lodestone forums until everything is back because I doubt their staff are checking them for ideas and feedback right now, they have more important things to do.

As hard as the new dev team been working I hope they can at least get a small break in. If I were them I'd be like this:

[Alkar]

I doubt they'll get a break. SE won't stop their projects they'll just move somewhere else and so will other big companies. This mess won't get fixed anytime soon so they need a plan to "survive" as a company.
Moving to London or Cali is their best option for the time being.
If anything they'll be working more now to sort things out.

[Xyzor]

Prayers to the families in Japan.

[Corrderio]

The amount of retards shitting up that thread about the servers going down is crazy. I think I'll just avoid the Lodestone forums until everything is back because I doubt their staff are checking them for ideas and feedback right now, they have more important things to do.

I heard on the news not long ago that Japan may have to use controlled power cuts across the country all through March and April due to the power situation. I wonder what this means for FFXIV and XI. The best course of action would be to move the servers to another country for now but I don't know how viable that would be due to being under different laws.

You should have seen it when it just went down, forgot the tards name but he was crying about threads being down and made 2 posts "I'm mad SE doesn't have backups".

It would be nice, however considering how much it'd cost them to hire people to maintain a server (or multiple?) I don't really blame them for not having backups, you can't predict shit like this.

EDIT: Looks like things are going back to normal: People bitching about jumping of all things.

[Kaylia]

I wonder how much it will cost them to close the server. They are probably going to see a big drop in subscription in both games if it last more than a few days.

[Kurokikaze]

Well... They're probably saving money by turning off the XIV servers since we don't pay for the game. XI on the other hand. :/

[Kaylia]

Keeping the server up probably doesn't cost that much. Relocating them might though.


But yeah, if it last 3-4 weeks, I suspect that many players are going to look somewhere else and might not come back at all. Everytime I quit mmo before, it's because my drive to play died after spending a few weeks away from the game (another mmo, single player gane..etc). I'm sure it's the same for many players.

[Cichy]

There will still be demand for a good MMO. I thought Rift going to entertain me but I'm already almost feed up with it, I know tons of ppl who will get back to 14 if they still go through with fixes.