Final Fantasy XIV players use PHP script to save strangers’ crops during server outages

Final Fantasy XIV MMORPG's community found a way to save their virtual farms in case of sudden server downtime. Community-driven solution matters, since crop death usually requires to restart your agricultural endeavours (which is quite time-consuming). Players can now use a custom PHP script that waters crops on behalf of other players if they're offline or have a problem to login.

Community-driven PHP script waters crops for offline players during server downtime

In Final Fantasy XIV you can have your own virtual farm. If Square Enix has a scheduled maintenance or server outage, player's characters are disabled to interact with the world. If left unattended, any crops for offline characters will die, which means that your agricultural endeavours will go to waste.

PHP script automates crop watering. It's basically targeting specific crops' instances on game server. Script runs outside of the game client and basically gives you possibilities that can only be accessed when you're logged in the game. (This way you bypass standard login and try to preserve your assets in the game.)

It's a very interesting initiative from community. Players of Final Fantasy XIV are actually cooperating with each other and using external tools to help some strangers preserve their progress in case of technical issue. This solution is great as players themselves figure out how to work around game mechanics in order to reduce the effect of server instability.

Source: DEXERTO