10hr Maintenance... I Got This!

It's just cheaper, that's the take away.

Cutting costs. To make it cheaper to run.

We are back online!?!?

Nothing.

The major issue is latency or code.

If the problem was hardware, we would be seeing mostly crashes.

Dont forget that, despite being old, the infrastructure was designed to support a lot more players than currently, so its not like the clients were impacted by the servers anyway

Hardware does have a shelf life. Server hardware generally lasts longer, but it doesnt last 22 years. For those still playing this game, the fact they're replacing the hardware, even if its to VM's, is a good thing. They could have said "hardware is way past EoL, time to sunset FFXI", but they didnt.

I think FFXI despite being way past its glory, certainly is more profitable than a huge amount of MMOs that you discuss in the new games sucks

The day Eirynil decides to give up on FFXI is the day it will die!

Can you imagine being that person? Oof.

I mean, SE gave modern FFXIV a permanent login queue because batching logins that way "reduces stress on the login servers" or something to that effect. Like, they figured out a temporary workaround and just... stopped there. It's wild.

...and that's XIV, with it's much larger staff and budget. Fujito and XI probably only get to borrow whichever XIV intern makes the worst coffee, or something like that.

they replaced the hardware years ago and I think even went virtual. They're probably migrating hosts. I can't recall exactly when they did their big migration but it's been a few years.

It's believed (from what I've read) they do that intentionally for optics on ff14, having a queue on 14 makes people happy because it implies popularity and the developers know that.

You see this very often as a counter by players, if someone implies the game is losing players or an expansion sold poorly.