Square Enix Turns Off Final Fantasy Servers
- Categories: Games, News
- Date: Mar 14, 2011 07:51 JST
- Tags: Earthquakes, Final Fantasy, Internet, Marketing, MMORPG, Otaku, Square Enix, Tokyo
Square Enix has announced that it will be turning off the servers for Final Fantasy XI and XIV for “at least a week” in order to save power at the expense of paying customers.
Due to the continuous earthquakes occurring in the eastern regions of Japan since Mar. 11, 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 power supply.
Based on the current situation, we have decided to shut down the game servers temporarily, and therefore to suspend services of FINAL FANTASY XIV, FINAL FANTASY XI, and PlayOnline temporarily.
The services will be temporarily suspended for at least a week starting on Mar. 13, 2011 3:00 (PDT). We will provide an update regarding the reinstatement of the service as additional information becomes available.
In connection with the temporary suspension of services, players will not be billed for any PlayOnline service throughout the April billing cycle. Additional information regarding this matter will also be posted as it becomes available.
We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause, and thank you for your understanding of this unusual situations.
[Date & Time]
A week starting from Mar. 13, 2011 3:00 (PDT)[Affected Service]
– FINAL FANTASY XIV
– FINAL FANTASY XI
– PlayOnline
Although the outage is scheduled to last a week, the power cuts are due to continue for months; Tepco has asked for business cooperation in turning off such superfluous fixtures as neon signage, but has so far not suggested anyone inconvenience customers or cripple their own business.
Data centres in any case would normally have their own backup generators, and so should be unaffected even by cuts.
In light of the fact that central Tokyo is exempt from the power cuts and will in all probability not see any change in the operation of all its energy guzzling pachinko parlours, cavernous shopping centres, amusement facilities and so on, the decision to inconvenience customers the world over with a week long server outage of machines with limited power requirements has a definite ring of Square Enix quality about it.
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Square Enix should write a book on how not to do an MMORPG - they're pretty much mastered the art of cocking it up royally.
In S-E's defense. When Final Fantasy XI was released on the PC MMO's that featured cross-platform play (PC/PS2) was unheard of. Then they released the PS2 version ( along with an expansion pack and major updates ), this alone sparked something in me to just try it, and as a supporter of SquareSoft for many years I actually continued to play and enjoy FFXI for about 3 years. Every few months though, they either degraded something completely or made something better while hurting something else. I believe they tried to evolve into something more "WoW-like" which in the end hurt them, and the originality of the game diminished with time.
Meh no big lose there those games suck.. glad i stop playing them.. Best MMORPG right now is Rift the game is just fantastic
pppffttt.
MMORPG is always cliche, u lame.
Nope rift is awesome and atm no MMORPG comes even close to it so stop hatin lol
Huh? Even Rift devs know they didn't really bring anything revolutionary to the market, the game is WoW with different graphics and public quests.
Not even that, as WoW implemented that same thing with Cataclysm except without the need to join a group or anything - kill a quest boss with someone else not in your group and both receive credit/the item needed with nothing else needed.
So it's a shittier WoW. How wonderful.
so 5 people can't play it anymore, no big deal
well I understand it and if no one can play it, it's not a big problem, I think.
You're calling a data center "machines with limited power requirements"? Doesn't that statement kinda fall apart when you make a lot of those machines run and handle all the data that people subject them to?
The power draw is tiny compared to a larger shop or small factory, for example.
A small factory perhaps, but I find hit hard to believe a shop would approach the 300KW or so it probably takes to run the servers (vague ballpark figure, but the order of magnitude at least is probably right). Plus, it has to start somewhere. If the shops and Pachinko parlors also do a few small things to drop their power consumption by, say, 20%, it could pretty easily make the difference between brownouts/blackouts and everything continuing to work just fine.
They do have generators, I'm sure, but generators generally aren't designed as a long-term solution. They're meant to last the few hours to couple of days it takes to restore utility power. Running them long term is quite expensive and would consume fuel that's probably more urgently needed elsewhere in the country.
I'm rather impressed by this. Yeah, it buys them good PR, but losing a whole month of subscription fees means it's far from a cost savings for them.
Servers consume roughly the same (or less as they have no superfluous parts like monitors) as desktop PCs, so a few hundred watts each is reasonable.
It's not clear how many go into running these games as each world is likely a cluster of many smaller servers, but it seems extremely unlikely they would need a 1000 or more as you suggest.
The reason I suggest this is misguided is because it is comparatively ineffective at achieving its stated goal (particularly in light of what, after a brief shopping trip in Tokyo today, I can assure you are fairly negligible efforts to save power), and because it damages their business and inconveniences their customers at great cost not only to themselves, but also to their shareholders and the wider Japanese economy of which they are a part.
The same goes for metal gear online.
Oh c'mon. Do FF14's servers really use more power than a microwave or a washing machine on hot? It's worth more in good will and publicity than to leave them up. Well played sirs.
With the energy of those servers you could run something more pressing like equipment for medical treatment in hospitals, you know...
And just because it's not GigaWatts doesn't mean it's a bad thing to save that energy nonetheless.
You can't say "Oh a washing machine isn't using too much energy so I'll just leave it running 24/7, and everyone else can do so too."
If more companies save energy they can spare, it adds up to a lot of energy that can save lives in the situation Japan is in right now!
Yep everyone needs to do their part. I also read somewhere there Nexon Japan is also shutting down their servers for a while to help with the power problem. A little bit from a bunch of people can add up to quite a bit.
Servers use a considerable amount of electricity, if they could put it to use powering a hospital or shelter it is worth it. Now if only I could find out whether my friends in my LS are fine or not, some lived east of tokyo...
It's not going to power a shelter, it's just going to notionally prevent more rolling blackouts in areas otherwise completely unaffected by the quake.
It makes no sense to start cutting lucrative and power efficient international services when a single pachinko parlour in central Tokyo uses more power than all their servers combined, and most assuredly will not be interrupting service.
Have you ever seen a datacentre, especially one designed to host remote real-time game content rather than just static file access? Designed for tens of thousands of concurrent connections? That's a hell of a lot of power just for the servers themselves (high density blade setups can hit 30kW per RACK), not to mention cooling, ancillary systems, etc. Shutting off two international MMO hosting centres could easily power a hospital.
to help conserve energy in japan right now, I think a few percentage of the world can go a week without 1 of many mmorpgs
I 100% support SE's decision... the servers have been kind of empty after the earthquake anyways
hopefully we can play together again, to those in japan who weren't able to log in past couple of days, ganbare
And you know this, how? Quite hard to believe from someone so biased such as yourself.
Artefact, I disagree, it makes a lot of sense.
Just because others are not willing to save energy doesn't mean SE doesn't need to either.
With your reasoning I could say "Supermarkets use more energy than my whole house can, so it's okay for me to let all my lights burn 24/7, it's not much compared to a supermarket anyways"
This energy from SE can save lives. And the pachinko palours could do so too. Even if they don't, SE did their part.
Everyone has to do their part, and if someone doesn't, doesn't mean I can turn a blind eye too.
@Artefact's entire comment containing the following "It's not going to power a shelter..."
It's going to help that power company and ultimately help Japan. One week without the aforementioned services in light of 2 natural disasters and nuclear meltdown threat is honourable and surely a big help. May the pachinko parlors follow suit as well.
I think they looked at what used the most power in their properties (the computers and servers, surely, among other things) and shut down as many of those and other power hungry devices as possible. And thats just one company.
If many companies follow suit, as the aforementioned power companies are hoping, it will be a great help.
The Square Enix quality here seems to be benevolence and the lack of ignorance they would have if they kept them up in light of the request and the obvious disaster happening around them and regrettably to some of their own properties and employees.
There's a crisis in Japan.
But isn't this obvious Artefact? Are you maybe one of few disgruntled players?
"We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause, and thank you for your understanding of this unusual situations."
Have a heart.
Datacenters use a lot of power - it's not just the computers, but the air filtration and the cooling for them as well. Gameservers tend to be more hungry than webpsite servers as well, due to all the extra processing that needs to be done (and the need to keep it low latency).
Under normal circumstances, they could just move over to the generators and run 'off the grid', but with all the damage to the roads and refineries there's concern about possible fuel shortages, as well as the grid.
Konami have pulled Metal Gear Online offline as well, and you can bet your arse more will be following. Wouldn't suprise me if Dreamworld for the pokemon games goes offline as well.
Jesus, is it really that a bad move by Square Enix? There is a perfectly legitimate reason for them doing this: there was a fucking earthquake. This is more like an excuse for people to bitch and whine about the game. Ok, we get that it was a bad game, no need to keep complaining about it.
we need to keep complaining
agreed. cuz it's a bad game
I guess there is no fun kicking a dead cow.
and not a single fuck was given
My sentiments exactly.
So what this news for ? Hasn't the players subsided ?
Here you go XD
http://fumaga.com/i/and-not-a-single-fuck-was-given-that-day-cat.jpg
Yep, I'm amazed they even had any players left. It's quite amazing how a company which once spewed out great games such as FF3 (6) and Chrono Trigger can only spew out bullshit and enrage customers now.
I thought they were finally giving up on the XIV iteration.
Bad, misleading title.
Ya I thought so too ^^"
They might as well not even turn them back on.
I hope they make the decision during the downtime to keep them offline.
They're probably going to say that the ff xiv servers were destroyed in the earthquake or something like that
Lets hope it gets shutdown forever now!
inb4 SE: "After a week of keeping the FFXIV servers shutdown, we have been able to thoroughly review the current status of the game and weigh in how long it will take to bring it up to an acceptable level. After a short deliberation, we have decided to leave the servers off permanently.
Please look forward to our next MMORPG, FFXV. Customers that have previously purchased FFXIV will have the privilege of purchasing FFXV at 10% off if purchased within the first week of release!"
-SE
If anything, that last paragraph is the one we will NEVER see.
SE lost too much cash just to make FFXIV. Them giving away discounts would just eat into their revenue and totally kill themselves as a company.
They lost too much on it because they fucked up hardcore, and therefor we need more incentive to buy there stuff. IE, discounts.
Same here, wouldn't be surprised though
It's on purpose to grab your attention. It's done all the time.
Of course, it might just end up giving the game's remaining population time to find something better to play.
Like Rift
There's absolutely no way this will be used as an excuse to shut down the servers. THAT is wishful thinking. They will keep trying to salvage the game, and probably after a year or so will succeed in doing so, even if they have to move to a F2P model.
They still get the PS3 release to count on a new wave of players and the mandatory game critic reviews, so they're going to at least try fixing and porting the game before giving up.
I suspect they're gonna use the situation as an excuse to quietly kill FF14 while minimizing bad PR.
You say it as a bad thing....
I mean, thats good, right?
"Data centres in any case would normally have their own backup generators, and so should be unaffected even by cuts."
Don't you know gas is limited by just 20 liters per person now?
Stop dreaming!
He's saying they could run the servers 24/7, but he's not suggesting that they do it only with generator power.
They are going to use this time to say FF14 is canceled
Then 2 weeks later - FF16 Online! Which is FF14 with a few bug fixes
They're probably going to say that "for some reason, the ff 14 servers will not work anymore" or some bullshit excuse like that later.