You gross 200 Million in subscriptions a month why are your servers junk?

All these countless threads whining about the servers only prove than most of the game's player base doesn't understand how servers work. More money doesn't mean they are able to get more servers in their data centers.

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Originally Posted by spf1200

All these countless threads whining about the servers only prove than most of the game's player base doesn't understand how servers work. More money doesn't mean they are able to get more servers in their data centers.

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/sarcasm It's almost as if there's a problem.

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Originally Posted by spf1200

All these countless threads whining about the servers only prove than most of the game's player base doesn't understand how servers work. More money doesn't mean they are able to get more servers in their data centers.

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Are you . . . quite certain you know how money works?

You're going to run out of cash before they run out of rack space.

How the login queues work on a server with a stable population: You go to log in. You are number 29 in queue. You wait a minute. You are logged in.

How the login queues work on a server with a large population that is paranoid about login queues: You go to log in. You are 1,029 in queue. There are 6,000 people already on the server, of which 2000+ are using the crafting cheat to stay logged inn past the 30 minute auto disconnect. The other 4000 are playing. Occasionally one disconnects and a spot opens up. The queue crawls.

SE handled this at 4.0 launch by implementing a 24 hour mass logout because the same thing happened on Balmung server. Their servers get unstable beyond 5000-7000 active connections per world. Upgraded hardware won't fix it; it's a core problem at the database level, I suspect.

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Originally Posted by Catwho

How the login queues work on a server with a stable population: You go to log in. You are number 29 in queue. You wait a minute. You are logged in.

How the login queues work on a server with a large population that is paranoid about login queues: You go to log in. You are 1,029 in queue. There are 6,000 people already on the server, of which 2000+ are using the crafting cheat to stay logged inn past the 30 minute auto disconnect. The other 4000 are playing. Occasionally one disconnects and a spot opens up. The queue crawls.

SE handled this at 4.0 launch by implementing a 24 hour mass logout because the same thing happened on Balmung server. Their servers get unstable beyond 5000-7000 active connections per world. Upgraded hardware won't fix it; it's a core problem at the database level, I suspect.

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Please explain, in one sentence or less:
1) Why would it be database?
2) Why aren't databases horizontally scalable?
3) If database performance isn't contingent upon hardware, what makes it work? Is it magic?

hey dude that knows about servers, Im a software consultant and have worked on companies that use big data, remember that is not only how many data can pass on to "servers", the write/read data from and to the database also has its limits, thats why we dont have infinite inventory slots, each data transfer counts, no matter how fast the server transfer is, the data can only be handled so much. That is why they are opening new servers and data is balanced on them.

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Originally Posted by Adrestia

Please explain, in one sentence or less:
1) Why would it be database?
2) Why aren't databases horizontally scalable?
3) If database performance isn't contingent upon hardware, what makes it work? Is it magic?

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The following is speculation based on my limited technical understanding of SE's infrastructure.

1) They are using the old 1.0 RDBMS system instead of a proper modern NoSQL solution.
2) See point #1 - RDBMS that has been forced to emulated NoSQL by living in RAM in real time isn't as scalable as proper NoSQL solutions with sharding and such.
3) Hardware always has a point of diminishing returns, and they upgraded the servers twice before already - when the NA data center moved from Montreal, and again when Stormblood came out.

(I work in software development but I'm just the UX / business analyst. I do know that our old Oracle SQL database chokes out at around 10,000 active threads and we are nowhere near as intensive as an MMO.)

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Originally Posted by Catwho

The following is speculation based on my limited technical understanding of SE's infrastructure.

1) They are using the old 1.0 RDBMS system instead of a proper modern NoSQL solution.
2) See point #1 - RDBMS that has been forced to emulated NoSQL by living in RAM in real time isn't as scalable as proper NoSQL solutions with sharding and such.
3) Hardware always has a point of diminishing returns, and they upgraded the servers twice before already - when the NA data center moved from Montreal, and again when Stormblood came out.

(I work in software development but I'm just the UX / business analyst. I do know that our old Oracle SQL database chokes out at around 10,000 active threads and we are nowhere near as intensive as an MMO.)

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I'd probably argue that they're better off with SQL than NoSQL, given how they're likely to use their data. This isn't big data that needs to be passed through an aggregation pipeline. Relational tables should actually be more performant for what a game needs.

There's actually really good multi-master replication and performance clustering out there today. Not knowing whose DBMS they're using, I couldn't exactly specify a vendor/solution, but you might be interested in taking a look at something like Percona. Their clusters actually do feel kind of like magic. Now there are definite price concerns if they're using, say, Microsoft SQL Server. The MS approach is basically that if you want access to anything good, you pay through the nose, and it becomes hard to ever back down from it to the cheaper licenses. However, it's out there, and SE is a very profitable company. Businesses don't need customers defending their right to profits. They do that part, and we decide when it's time to provide more value for our dollar.

SQL is also incredibly CPU- and memory-bound, and I will purchase and eat a moogle hat if they're running the kind of hardware you bankroll when you actually care. That said, it's possible to write *very* bad SQL that will cause performance concerns to grow at a scale that no hardware can keep up with. Thankfully, that's code, and it can be rewritten. If I thought it would help (I don't; these are different skillsets), I'd sacrifice a dungeon for a backend performance increase. But the only thing that can and should be sacrificed is SE's operating income. This won't happen as long as their fans continue loudly defending the indefensible, however. They have no incentive to provide a better product if people are paying the same for this one.

You're not "just" a BA! We'd kill for another where I work right now. Or two. Personally I'd take 10.

How many crappy expansions launches do they need to do before upgrading their garbage servers? Is this an indie company??

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Originally Posted by ChewieFlakes

How many crappy expansions launches do they need to do before upgrading their garbage servers? Is this an indie company??

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What issues? No crashes beyond a single ddos attack on Friday. No login queues for us here, no real bugs that I've run into. All in all it's the smoothest launch yet, and probably the smoothest one I've ever seen.

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Originally Posted by Adrestia

Thankfully, that's code, and it can be rewritten.

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Agreed, and this is where SE's $$$$ would actually make a difference - rewriting the database to fix whatever performance problems it has is a project better outsourced to a third party. SE has a bad tendency to pick the lowest bidder and get burned by doing this (see 1.0 and also their first stab at the FFVII Remake) - so they are probably wary of going this route. But getting a team of database experts to throw a few months at it outside of the core project for a few million dollars would let the main dev team focus on their game patches without wasting a year trying to learn how to improve the database in-house.

My office actually is in the process of doing this ourselves - we figured it was cheaper to buy a month of an expert's time to help us transition to Java 11 (we were still on 7... ugh) and also PostGres rather than waste six months of our own time to attempt it on our own and end up doing it badly.

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Originally Posted by Valkyrie_Lenneth

What issues? No crashes beyond a single ddos attack on Friday. No login queues for us here, no real bugs that I've run into. All in all it's the smoothest launch yet, and probably the smoothest one I've ever seen.

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I've had to deal with 2000+ login queues this weekend, I actually fell asleep waiting for one of the queue. To avoid the queues, I've been trying to play consecutively for as long as possible and this has also been exhausting me. This is not entirely an ideal way to experience new content.

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Originally Posted by Hero188

Seriously, I'm having to wait a literal hour before I can log into the game.

For a company with 17 million players at 12-14 dollars a month you would think your servers would be i don't know...

somewhere in the realm of good, this happens every single patch and every single launch your servers are always less then what you need...

You need 4 servers per EVERY single world in every single data center and 4 more servers running V-motion so that failing servers can be hot swapped without down time in addition to the 4 that run each world mirrored for a total of 4 mirrored servers and 4 fail over servers.

'Our servers are reaching capacity" is not an excuse for a company that grosses 200 million. If you cant run the traffic, buy more servers. Literally that simple.

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You play on a high traffic server. World visit until things die down. .....complaining when there are obvious solutions man

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Originally Posted by Ayer2015

You play on a high traffic server. World visit until things die down. .....complaining when there are obvious solutions man

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Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't you need to wait in the queue before you can even access the World Visit option?

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Originally Posted by Valkyrie_Lenneth

What issues? No crashes beyond a single ddos attack on Friday. No login queues for us here, no real bugs that I've run into. All in all it's the smoothest launch yet, and probably the smoothest one I've ever seen.

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It can barely get to the evening time before there is a 2,000+ queue to log in??? And with plenty of 90k error code disconnects you have to sit through that every time or go play a different game. Not to mention the lag and issues with registration codes and mog station items. Glad you have experienced an issue free bubble though. Perks of being on a dead server I guess.

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Originally Posted by ChewieFlakes

It can barely get to the evening time before there is a 2,000+ queue to log in??? And with plenty of 90k error code disconnects you have to sit through that every time or go play a different game. Not to mention the lag and issues with registration codes and mog station items. Glad you have experienced an issue free bubble though. Perks of being on a dead server I guess.

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Well, its only dead because everyone said it was going to be dead and panic left to aether and primal. Would have been fine otherwise most likely.

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Originally Posted by Linadae

What are you talking about? I'm on Balmung. You know, Balmung? The server that has been over populated since day ONE of ARR that is STILL over crowded. You know what my highest queue was (that wasn't ddos'd enhanced)? 27. That's right. 27 person long queue...on BALMUNG. Do you know why? Because when Crystal was added everyone and their uncles on the other Crystal servers decided to move to Aether and Primal. Perhaps if they'd stayed our queues would be longer and yours shorter but no the word from Aether was "RPer's are BAD PLAYERS! Come to Aether if you want to be able to do raids and dungeons because the new expansion will be dead on arrival on Crystal!"

And they listened, and they transferred. Well...guess what? We're still getting dungeons done. Pretty quickly and easily because RPers actually are just as good as everyone else. We have to be because it's the ONLY way we'll get the gear we want for roleplay. Now we just get the added benefit of low queues because everyone else has a phobia of us.

Want your experience to be better? Transfer. Because as I said before, NO company would add extra servers as long as they have half a dozen servers still mostly empty. They will just encourage you to move on your own. Keep it up and you might find yourself on the wrong end of a server split and shoved into Crystal against your will.

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I guess you could say that...

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They played themselves

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Technical limitations?

I could have 999billion euros, but no amount of money will get me 100GB/s internet in Hull.

On today's episode of entitled first world problems..

the day world server problem is solved is probably the day i finally can download stuff with 5gb/s internet speed

it took them 6 years to fix the default audio device in the Windows client.
And that was a minor issue.
Now interpolate that to a server problem

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Originally Posted by ChewieFlakes

How many crappy expansions launches do they need to do before upgrading their garbage servers? Is this an indie company??

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I think this has been said more times then anyone can count. When they moved the datacenter to California they got better Servers as well. Even a server with good hardware can have issues if the software its running is a train wreck.

I think a lot of it has to do with how much better Japanese internet is than North American options, and Australian. You don't NEED good netcode there. It's definitely no excuse though, just a reason for the way it is.

They are probably still buying physical servers instead of VMs that can be scaled up or out with a few clicks. Also there are about 1 million active characters, as counted in LuckyBancho's census, not players.

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Originally Posted by Seoulstar

On today's episode of entitled first world problems..

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But in shadowbringers, we are solving first world problems...

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Originally Posted by BunnyChain

They are probably still buying physical servers instead of VMs that can be scaled up or out with a few clicks. Also there are about 1 million active characters, as counted in LuckyBancho's census, not players.

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We already have some of their scaling in game to accommodate for the influx of excessive character data - that's what the instanced zones are in the expansion. Do you think those zones are going to be permanent? Nope, they're additional instanced areas (likely spun off VMs) that will be shut down once they are no longer needed. I've already seen it happen where I had a choice of two instances instead of 3, because demand for those zones wasn't that high. We also saw the same thing in Eureka - whenever a zone reached cap, a new instance would spawn and the old one would become temporarily locked.

What we call a "world server" is actually a server cluster already.

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Originally Posted by Catwho

...lots of good info on modern technologies and suggestions...

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That all sound like nice fixes but still remember that it is still quite an investment not only on $$ but on internal ways of work, trust on giving code access to third parties, risks, tests etc, and to solve an issue that only affects the product performance ~1 week every 2~ years, I dont know where you work, and kudos for te companies you work for to have the resource, guts and knowledge to use said technologies, I have worked for companies more reserved on adopting new stuff (specially due licensing, support, and time needed to do migrations)

what would be a quick bandaid that they could implement to aliviate a little queue times? like the in game zone instances have an option to auto world visit to a less populated server, wont fix everything but it could balace it a little with player compromise option, to wait for your home server queue or log on other to save some minutes.

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Originally Posted by Valkyrie_Lenneth

What issues? No crashes beyond a single ddos attack on Friday. No login queues for us here, no real bugs that I've run into. All in all it's the smoothest launch yet, and probably the smoothest one I've ever seen.

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https://i.imgur.com/kH5Wef1.jpg

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Originally Posted by Edax

https://i.imgur.com/kH5Wef1.jpg

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http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...s-%28Jul.-1%29

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Core control is aware of the problem

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Herber Jefferson Jr. 1978

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I was 3652 and my buddy was 3947 tonight around the same time.

Yep that's a DDoS. 90006'd while I was entertaining college kids from summer anime club. Ah well.

3131 in queue here

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Originally Posted by TaranTatsuuchi

But in shadowbringers, we are solving first world problems...

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Aw, you beat me to it...

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Originally Posted by Catwho

Yep that's a DDoS. 90006'd while I was entertaining college kids from summer anime club. Ah well.

3131 in queue here

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i wonder if this is NA server problem only. i play in tonberry and the highest queue i get is 284 and that is the queue when i login to SHB opening hour.

now, around 20-50 is the highest i get, and tonberry is one of the cramped server with frequent char creation lockdown.

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Originally Posted by gumas

i wonder if this is NA server problem only. i play in tonberry and the highest queue i get is 284 and that is the queue when i login to SHB opening hour.

now, around 20-50 is the highest i get, and tonberry is one of the cramped server with frequent char creation lockdown.

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This particular issue happened cuz of ISP issues in NA.

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Originally Posted by Hero188

Seriously, I'm having to wait a literal hour before I can log into the game.

For a company with 17 million players at 12-14 dollars a month you would think your servers would be i don't know...

somewhere in the realm of good, this happens every single patch and every single launch your servers are always less then what you need...

You need 4 servers per EVERY single world in every single data center and 4 more servers running V-motion so that failing servers can be hot swapped without down time in addition to the 4 that run each world mirrored for a total of 4 mirrored servers and 4 fail over servers.

'Our servers are reaching capacity" is not an excuse for a company that grosses 200 million. If you cant run the traffic, buy more servers. Literally that simple.

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This has been an over all smooth launch. Only twice was I kicked do to attacks. I'm on one of the high pop servers and have yet had to wait over 10 minutes to log in. I'm positive you're greatly exaggerating the time you have to wait.

You're talking about 1st day of launch...it's like this for every single major mmo that has ever existed (even wow, and Diablo 3) because massive surge of ppl that log in and play at same time - it lasts a few days, then it's back to normal - should they get state of the art, multipel servers, just for 1 week/expansion?
I logged into game on early access, 2min, then i spent entire EA, with no issues whatsoever, so to me, it's been the best launch in the history of FFXIV, and any other mmo i played. Then again i played for nearly 40hrs with a few power naps, then after normal sleep, i log in during morning, with 200 ppl in queue, and it took a few min to get in again, and that's how it's been since 28th; even last night at 7pm ish, after restarting modem/ps4, i logged in again with 250ppl in queue, and few min login (on omega, which i think is a congested world, at least it used to be)

You posted this on 2nd, i assume your problem is fixed now?

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Originally Posted by gumas

i wonder if this is NA server problem only. i play in tonberry and the highest queue i get is 284 and that is the queue when i login to SHB opening hour.

now, around 20-50 is the highest i get, and tonberry is one of the cramped server with frequent char creation lockdown.

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It’s a NA specific issue, yes. They DDoS the ISP relays when patches, especially expansions, happen. Well actually, the DDoS’d the actual servers originally but S-E put in some failsafes.

im on spriggan and i had absolutly no problem,the worse i got was 20 queue,in 10sec it was over.

Welcome to the 1st-2nd week of a new expansion. It should be normal in a month again.

Ya know, I have barely any experience with other MMOs, but you would think SE, the small indie dev would have some kind of DDoS prevention. You would think they had some kind of way to gauge servers so that people who paid for the game, bought the subscription, and pre-ordered the game wouldn't have to wait in +2 hour queues.

I don't care if the game is built on a game that was a flaming trash pile. Old shortcomings can only be used as an excuse for so long, and I would think 3 damn expansions in is a pretty damn long time.

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Originally Posted by gumas

i wonder if this is NA server problem only. i play in tonberry and the highest queue i get is 284 and that is the queue when i login to SHB opening hour.

now, around 20-50 is the highest i get, and tonberry is one of the cramped server with frequent char creation lockdown.

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Nah, when I logged into Tonberry right as servers went up for ShB, the queue was at 1700+. Now at most I get 250ish, but it's very fast to log in.