After taking the servers down for both Final Fantasy XI and XIV as a power conservation measure on March 13, Square Enix announced today that it'll reopen the MMO worlds this Friday. To keep power use down even with the servers running (the servers account for about 11 percent of the power use in the company's Tokyo office), Square Enix has "shut down our air conditioning system (8.8%) and enacted other power conservation measures, such as reducing lighting in our offices, to achieve over 10% in energy usage reductions."
You can think of those poor staffers stuck in an air-conditioning-less office with giant, heat-spewing computers while you play the games for free. Yes, Square still plans not to collect any monthly fees for April.
