The Fortnite community has been eagerly looking forward to this moment, and finally, Epic Games has made public the official schedule that everyone had been waiting for. The fantastic event opens on November 1st, 11 am ET, followed by a five-hour downtime. Later on that day at 5 pm ET, the new season will kick off, which is the confirmation everyone has been waiting for, and the hype is for sure very high.
What is the plan? The event will be taking place on the morning of November 1st. Gamers logging in that day will witness the most fantastic in-game event that Epic has planned for them—Homer Simpson and a donut, or something really cool like that—and then the servers will be taken offline for maintenance. The downtime is expected to be around five hours, which is standard for a seasonal change, but it usually seems like an eternity when all you can do is wait and refresh the launcher. And then, at 5 PM ET, the new season goes live. The schedule is really tight and players in different time zones will have to adjust their sleeping hours correspondingly.
Like always, the community’s response was a mixture of emotions. Some players thanked the company and were content with the timing while others expressed their dissatisfaction. One player who goes by the name, Sheeplina, was really happy when she said, “LETS GOOOO, there will be a new season waiting for me when I get out of school”. That is the ideal situation, isn’t it? For the kids to finish school and step into a new different Fortnite world. However, there are many players who do not agree with the timing at all and have expressed their dissatisfaction. Another player, who goes by the name rebirth_77, has no choice but to say, “I’m gonna be getting ready for work at that time 😔”. It’s a bad feeling when everybody else is having fun and you are just buried under real-life commitments. The battle is real.
The issue of time zone conversions does not stop there. Players from opposite sides of the earth were, as usual, trying to figure out the impact on them. _Mako14_ was one of the first to ask, “a que hora sería en Argentina?”. Luckily, the very helpful AI Grok was right there with the user providing the information that the event would be at 12:00 ART and the launch at 18:00. What about the times in France? Grok was again quick to respond saying the event would be at 17h (5pm) and the season would be up at 23h (11pm). For the UK, the event starts at 4 PM and the season launch is at 10 PM which made one of the users, Cal_085, joke that it would be a perfect “Saturday night” with the boys.
There was also confusion surrounding the very update. “So is the 5 pm ET (9 pm UK) meant to be when the servers come up or when the update starts?” was the question Glitch_Jayden16 who had just joined the conversation, was asking. This is a frequently raised question and the dilemma to be solved is: will the user be able to start the download of the massive update at that time or will the user only be able to log in and play? More or less, the general opinion seemed to be that the users would be able to get back online at that hour but with Fortnite, you really never know till the event is actually over. There is always a chance of unexpected delays or problems with the servers.
Honestly, a five-hour downtime seems like a long time but it also suggests that this is a major update. A user, kurgmoment, expressed the thought that “This is a totally new map, they indeed take longer”. New map? That’s a big deal. If the hearsay is true and we are getting an entirely new map that looks like Springfield then the downtime is indeed extremely justified. It also explains why the event is of such importance—it is most probably the narrative send-off for the current island before the new Simpsons-themed land takes over.
The timing wasn’t the only reason for the hype. Some players were even looking forward to the upcoming new content and being very specific about it was their way of showing it. D1r3sr4ge had an extremely important and somewhat hilarious remark: “Why does hope look hot as a Simpson”. This is just one of the stellar lore analysis that the Fortnite community is legendary for. In addition, another user, punsreggcelent, was just grateful that “we finally got a real teaser so we don’t have to look at that fuckass homee photo anymore”. Preach. The while that Epic allows us to speculate and share about the new features and characters is really a fertile ground for the ingredients of the creative process in the battle royale genre.
What does the November 1st plan look like for PlayStation and Xbox players?
