Eggs for Breakfast, FFXI for bed.

The time for the March maintenance has been announced and woah is it long. My guess is that it is largely because of the server mergers which will probably require a huge amount of copied data to the new servers. The down time is going to be from 11AM to 11PM EST, and that is the longest planned downtime I have ever seen for FFXI. One of two things is going to happen. Either SE planned for the fact that this is going to take a long time, and the servers are going to be up way early, or SE has way underestimated how long this is going to take and we wont see FFXI until Tuesday sometime.

Here is the official announcement:

At the following time, we will be performing FINAL FANTASY XI maintenance on all worlds to accompany the version update and implementation of a World Merge. Along with this maintenance, we will also be performing maintenance on the FINAL FANTASY XI Linkshell Community beta version.

During this period, both FINAL FANTASY XI and the FINAL FANTASY XI Linkshell Community beta version will be unavailable.

Thank you for your patience and understanding in this matter.

* This maintenance will be accompanied by a version update. After maintenance is complete, the update will automatically begin after you press the "Play" button. After that, please follow the instructions on the screen.

* You may receive errors such as "POL-1160" or "POL-0010" during the download process due to heavy server traffic. If you are unable to access the update, we ask that you please wait a while and then try again.

Thank you for your cooperation and understanding in making this a smooth version update.

* During this maintenance, a World Merge will be implemented.

Source World Destination World

Fairy -> Sylph
Kujata -> Valefor
Remora -> Leviathan
Midgardsormr -> Quetzarcoatl
Hades -> Cerberus
Seraph -> Bismarck
Garuda -> Lakshmi
Pandemonium -> Asura

We ask that all players on any source world retrieve all items stored in the Delivery Box or Auction House.

For more details regarding the World Merge, please refer to "Announcing the World Merge" in the Information section.

* the World Transfer Service, which is currently suspended, will reinstate service after the completion of registration server maintenance, which is scheduled to take place following the FINAL FANTASY XI maintenance. For more details, please refer to "Registration Server Maintenance (Mar. 22)."

* The schedule for the reinstatement of the Character Reactivation Service, which is currently suspended, will be announced at another time.

* Update details will be available on Mar. 22, 2010.

[Date & Time]
Mar. 22, 2010 from 8:00 to 20:00 (PDT)
* Maintenance completion time may be subject to change.

[Affected Services]
FINAL FANTASY XI