To all the people who are complaining about login queues

A trip back to memory lane. Lets do the time warp. Letter from the Producer, LVIII (08/27/2014)

"The team and I believe that the true challenge for an MMO begins with its first year of updates, and we took this to heart as we poured our souls into the game’s development. From a player’s perspective, I’m sure there have been quite a few shortcomings in the game thus far, but we’ve continued to work at breakneck pace, and everyone on the team can hardly believe that it’s already been a year.

The operations and marketing teams have also been doing a phenomenal job organizing events over the past year, giving us an opportunity to meet face to face with players, and now they’re preparing for the upcoming fan festival. They’ve been working with such zeal, you’d think the game hasn’t yet been released. With numerous trips across Japan and the world, I’ve also been fairly busy promoting the game as I continue to live and breathe FINAL FANTASY XIV."

"I still remember the start of service in August, and the unforeseen server congestion and login issues that followed. We not only had to restrict character creation and logins, but we even suspended digital sales. While thrilled with the game’s incredible reception, again, I sincerely apologize for the terrible inconvenience this caused."


I haven't been around on purpose after every expansion launch but have been around long enough to say this isn't a new problem. I hear all the reasons why from semiconductors, influx of players, covid, all of the above. This all feels like deja' vu every time. It seems like it always comes down to the same principle- "We didn't know this many people wanted to play our game"
Always followed by a sincere apology. They even said themselves this is the most $$ expansion too date but the checkbook our their end didn't open far enough in the preparation side. All the hype but the fumble at the goal line. I am sure it will get better but you can't get people hyped to that level and deliver like this. I think that part might be the most upsetting.

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Originally Posted by Puremallace

Noone is complaining about the queues. We are not stupid the problem is the disconnects occurring during those queues which I have seen happen since like 2007.

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Game wasn't out in 2007. You must be confusing this with Blizzards hit game World of Warcraft. I heard there is a new patch on the PTR you may want to try.

When Yoshi P said take a break and play other games did he mean now*. Honestly if the errors didnt exist it wouldnt be so bad everyone came into endwalker expecting ques especially anyone who's played mmos in the past. What i dont understand is all the white knighting going on. People can and should be unhappy about the situation and voice that even thou some go to the extreme. I get you love the game but remember it is that. Sometimes gaming companies need that especially these days i feel like gaming companies get away with murder. Ff has some of the best devs so not dissing. I myself cannot play during the weekdays due to work. I neck bearded last weekend to get as much time in as i could. I just bought a few other games to play until this is fixed. It did aggravate me that they recruited b4 lauch. Offering story skips and job boosts while new world and wow was going through their craziness was a bad decision. The new players were definitely felt duty groups have been wild when i could play. Noone should have to adjust their life to play thats just absurd. Any thats my voice on it. Wish everyone well and maybe we'll see each other in Eorzea sometime lol

it's already been a week , the early access is over and it's worse now ... i want to use a fantasia and will have to wait double the queues, like almost 12 hours to play !

Just let the baby ragers baby rage.

They'll either not care/remember a month everything's cleared up, or they'll leave here soon, shortening the queues for the rest of us.

Just let them wear themselves out

While anyone can have some understanding for issues faced by SE in regards to expanding their server hardware, there comes a point where it's just an unacceptable amount of delay. The global chip shortage is not a sufficient excuse when other companies are managing to overcome similar issues. We are not talking about server farms of the scale Amazon or Google employ, only enough capacity for a few thousand more users. This is not a dev problem, it's a management problem and they deserve to be criticised for this. At least their PR response is a fair shake better than some other companies I can mention.

But what is possibly more frustrating than how unprepared SE is, is why some fanboys feel the need to white knight for a large gaming company. It does nothing but obfuscate the legitimate feedback of users, trying to put a positive spin on not being able to play a game they pay for for weeks as if everyones life is easily rearranged on a whim. True fans hold their favorite companies to account, not just hand wave it away because you happen to be fine with queues that last many hours, or have the luxury of just playing it at other times.

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Originally Posted by Boreasos

While anyone can have some understanding for issues faced by SE in regards to expanding their server hardware, there comes a point where it's just an unacceptable amount of delay. The global chip shortage is not a sufficient excuse when other companies are managing to overcome similar issues. We are not talking about server farms of the scale Amazon or Google employ, only enough capacity for a few thousand more users. This is not a dev problem, it's a management problem and they deserve to be criticised for this. At least their PR response is a fair shake better than some other companies I can mention.

But what is possibly more frustrating than how unprepared SE is, is why some fanboys feel the need to white knight for a large gaming company. It does nothing but obfuscate the legitimate feedback of users, trying to put a positive spin on not being able to play a game they pay for for weeks as if everyones life is easily rearranged on a whim. True fans hold their favorite companies to account, not just hand wave it away because you happen to be fine with queues that last many hours, or have the luxury of just playing it at other times.

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I will say this: I am not white-knighting in any sense. The main purpose of the thread was so that people who are distraught about login queues can understand since it's more apparent they don't read the news Yoshida sends out half the time. Also, I'm not sure if this is management's fault if Yoshida even managed to get that request for funding to buy semiconductors at double market price. Since Heavensward, we were curious about how well XIV was funded, and we got to see it once Stormblood came around, and even more when we actually got Shadowbringers with the gigantic Ad Buy.

If you didn't check the OP, I put the monetary amounts per sub and did the math to show how much they're losing per sub(which adds up to A LOT of revenue depending on how things hold up with the servers + how long it'll take to normalize the login queues). Think about that venture to try and appease the player base compared to just making money; pretty sure if it were a management problem we wouldn't even be getting that 7 days of free time even if Yoshida is highly respected by the CEO.

And sure, for those who think "It'S nOt FrEe!!!" like in the other thread, refunding days like this to the community is a revenue loss. Majority of FFXIV's revenue comes from Subscriptions and Mog Station. Subs I would believe amount to at least a large chunk of that revenue, whereas Mog Station revenue I want to think is smaller than the revenue made from Subs(as much as people do buy things on there for emotes, mounts, etc). While this issue is still developing, I want to see how far this will extend. Remember, it's .50 cents a day they refund.

This can still be very frustrating for some people, like me. I work so much, 12-15hrs a day, then im my own time im asked to do this and that for family. When i have time for FF, not only am i waiting hrs to get in witch leaves me with very little time to play but if i fall asleep when im in then i have to wait all over again. I pay for this and in 1 weeks i think iv played less than 24 hrs, it is unfair im my opinion.

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Originally Posted by IdowhatIwant

Game wasn't out in 2007. You must be confusing this with Blizzards hit game World of Warcraft. I heard there is a new patch on the PTR you may want to try.

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...The point being made to that was that in general companies have learned in general that they should prep better for expansions and that errors that kick people from queues like this are much less common these days.

Personally I have seen worse launches in several MMOs and while frustrated I'm still very much enjoying the expansion, either way people are complaining about the servers, let's not, true or not, being from other MMOs makes -any- relevance to the conversation.

For me it is the errors that are really frustrating. Long queues are not that big a deal and can be worked around. As it is now I am playing for 30-45 minutes before work during the week and planning to put in the big hours on the weekend when I can log in early morning and just keep playing. Week after next I will have a long break from work so I will be able to play to my hearts content. Until then, well, I am getting other things done in the evenings after work.