How was Square-Enix unprepared for this? (not a rant)

Even if they were aware that there would be problems like this, there is a financial calculation to make. How many more people will log on and create characters this week vs. any other week in the game's life if it runs for a decade? Twice as many? Three times as many? They could spend a lot of money on extra hardware that will only be needed for one week and then never again, or they can focus on planning for the long haul, knowing that the first week is going to be rough. I'm not saying that's right or wrong but that's the way it is.

Honestly, there are 2 main issues as far as I'm concerned.

1. The fact that sometimes when I try logging in I get put into a queue and other times it just gives me the world is full error and I get thrown back to the start screen.
2. There is currently NO AFK TIMEOUT.

I truly wouldn't be upset if I tried to log in and instead of being thrown back to the start screen where I have do click start, choose my character, then click login again...I was just put into a queue and could just leave it waiting in queue while I did something else. Honestly...even if that queue was 1000's of people and I could just let it sit in queue and then go play a game of League of Legends or something, I'd be happy because I'd know that I was eventually going to get in.

Being able to be AFK forever and never get DC'd from the server is the main problem in my opinion. Personally, I would just try and wake up super early in the morning (about 5:45am MST was when I did this morning) and then log myself into the game when there isn't very many people online. Because SE failed to put an AFK logout timer in, my character can happly sit staring at a wall for the next 8-12 hours while I am busy going to work/college. Then when I get home and have time to play, my character is already logged into the game, so I don't have to worry about the high server load.

It was routine yesterday to hear people in public chat commenting about how they were AFK for the last 7-12 hours and are just now starting to play. What bothered me the most is that I had friends that were doing this during the Early Access fiasco and are now 5-6 levels above me with their main and already have their secondary class leveled to 15. I am so far behind now because they were actually able to play during Early Access and I was not.

GG SE

It's the same reason Diablo 3, something that isn't even an MMO and not only that but ran by Blizzard who runs WoW, had launch issues. There's just some things you can't prepare for no matter how much you want to.

They didn't think that many people would bother with 2.0 after the failure of 1.0.

I agree that they obviously weren't prepared for the influx of people coming to the game.

The thing that bothers me about the login queue is just the fact that it seems that they already have the feature in place. I have been placed in a queue when trying to log in. I just don't understand why sometimes I get put in the queue, and other times it just gives me the error...especially when the highest position I've ever been in when put into the queue was in the 80's. If they made it so that the queue worked all the time, I think you'd have a lot less angry people blowing up the forums.

The no afk logout thing is either a huge oversight or just downright irresponsible as far as I'm concerned for them not having that in place. I'm pretty sure even MMO's going as far back EQ1, DAOC, and Ultima Online had them.

They were unaware of how badly gamers wanted to play a good mmo, estimated a total amount and bought servers accordingly. Now unfortunatly they need better servers.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Itvar

Anyone who has ever been through an MMO launch should know you never, ever take time off in the first week of a launch. Consider it a lesson learned. Same goes for expansion launches.

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This^^^^^^^^

IMHO, one reason they were so unprepared for early access was that they waited until 2 days before launch to allow registering EA codes. If they opened that registration a couple of weeks in advance, they probably would have had a better understanding of how many players to expect. Another reason is the level cap on phase 4. If they didn't have the cap, I think more legacy players would have played.