Is Physical Space the real problem?

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08-27-2013, 12:49 AM
Alavastre

Is Physical Space the real problem?

I was talking to a friend, who is also an Electrical Engineer, and we were wondering why more servers were not open, and how we exactly got to the place are with FFXIV. Both of us were 1.0 quiters as well, even we have our breaking point.

With that said, there is always a software issue, but this appears to be a hardware issue. Basically, too many people trying to use too few servers. I understand that you don't want to do what WAR did, 12 to 42 servers in two weeks, and then start collapsing your servers until there are just 2. People leave when you merge servers, I get that.

But, is the real problem that they do not have the hardware for more servers or the space?

I was surprised that the open beta was only a weekend. I wonder if SE just got caught with their pants around their ankles. Basically, they got hit hard in P4 and honestly didn't have enough time to change course. There is a lot that goes into data centers, it's a science all on it's own. Wouldn't SE rather have a few too many servers than to lock out a huge part of thier gaming population?

Each person not playing is a risk. The risk SE takes is not getting these peoples sub money. And possibly their friends, and their friends ect. In MMO's it's a cascading problem. I have 13 people wanting to play this game, but if you divide us, not let us on, then it will only take a few fed up people to take that group of 13 to 3.

Anyone that knows more about the data server side care to chime in? I do mainly infrastructure and building stuff. Just because I'm an EE doesn't mean I know everything or anything about data centers. Just my little disclaimer.

TLDR;
It appears to be a server hardware problem.
SE possibly doesn't have the space to put in new hardware to open up new servers.
Yes, no, maybe?
08-27-2013, 12:50 AM
silverdrakes

Quote:

Originally Posted by Alavastre

I was talking to a friend, who is also an Electrical Engineer, and we were wondering why more servers were not open, and how we exactly got to the place are with FFXIV. Both of us were 1.0 quiters as well, even we have our breaking point.

With that said, there is always a software issue, but this appears to be a hardware issue. Basically, too many people trying to use too few servers. I understand that you don't want to do what WAR did, 12 to 42 servers in two weeks, and then start collapsing your servers until there are just 2. People leave when you merge servers, I get that.

But, is the real problem that they do not have the hardware for more servers or the space?

I was surprised that the open beta was only a weekend. I wonder if SE just got caught with their pants around their ankles. Basically, they got hit hard in P4 and honestly didn't have enough time to change course. There is a lot that goes into data centers, it's a science all on it's own. Wouldn't SE rather have a few too many servers than to lock out a huge part of thier gaming population?

Each person not playing is a risk. The risk SE takes is not getting these peoples sub money. And possibly their friends, and their friends ect. In MMO's it's a cascading problem. I have 13 people wanting to play this game, but if you divide us, not let us on, then it will only take a few fed up people to take that group of 13 to 3.

Anyone that knows more about the data server side care to chime in? I do mainly infrastructure and building stuff. Just because I'm an EE doesn't mean I know everything or anything about data centers. Just my little disclaimer.

TLDR;
It appears to be a server hardware problem.
SE possibly doesn't have the space to put in new hardware to open up new servers.
Yes, no, maybe?

nah the servers are fine but as alot of people know SE did not expect so many people... so they need to buy more servers.. which can take a few days..
08-31-2013, 10:54 AM
Ed_N_Ants

Quote:

Originally Posted by Alavastre

I was talking to a friend, who is also an Electrical Engineer, and we were wondering why more servers were not open, and how we exactly got to the place are with FFXIV. Both of us were 1.0 quiters as well, even we have our breaking point.

With that said, there is always a software issue, but this appears to be a hardware issue. Basically, too many people trying to use too few servers. I understand that you don't want to do what WAR did, 12 to 42 servers in two weeks, and then start collapsing your servers until there are just 2. People leave when you merge servers, I get that.

But, is the real problem that they do not have the hardware for more servers or the space?

I was surprised that the open beta was only a weekend. I wonder if SE just got caught with their pants around their ankles. Basically, they got hit hard in P4 and honestly didn't have enough time to change course. There is a lot that goes into data centers, it's a science all on it's own. Wouldn't SE rather have a few too many servers than to lock out a huge part of thier gaming population?

Each person not playing is a risk. The risk SE takes is not getting these peoples sub money. And possibly their friends, and their friends ect. In MMO's it's a cascading problem. I have 13 people wanting to play this game, but if you divide us, not let us on, then it will only take a few fed up people to take that group of 13 to 3.

Anyone that knows more about the data server side care to chime in? I do mainly infrastructure and building stuff. Just because I'm an EE doesn't mean I know everything or anything about data centers. Just my little disclaimer.

TLDR;
It appears to be a server hardware problem.
SE possibly doesn't have the space to put in new hardware to open up new servers.
Yes, no, maybe?

Servers can handle so many people and SE got a high demand of people... They can let more people onto the servers but they don't want to overload them... They are actually watching the servers when people are on them and see how much strain they are taking so that they don't overload them which would cause a crash and no one would get on... They are in the process of opening more servers but this takes time because they have to upload the code and coincide it with the other servers its not as simple as buying a battery and putting it in a device...
08-31-2013, 11:00 AM
Brises

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...72#post1111872
08-31-2013, 11:03 AM
Riavan

More servers won't help me play my character, making a queue and kicking afkers will.
08-31-2013, 11:08 AM
Grupp

I've worked in data centers for most of my career and I'm an avid gamer. I can say that it doesn't appear to be a server problem or a network capacity problem since the lag is so low. That leads me to believe it's simply a metric problem. Or to be more accurate a philosophy. What I think is going on is Square Enix is keeping the numbers of players per server low in order to keep playing quality high. the servers are being slightly UNDER utilized intentionally By SE. For what reason I have no idea. But I have about 20 years experience giving me this hunch.
08-31-2013, 11:31 AM
CigSamurai

Quote:

Originally Posted by Grupp

I've worked in data centers for most of my career and I'm an avid gamer. I can say that it doesn't appear to be a server problem or a network capacity problem since the lag is so low. That leads me to believe it's simply a metric problem. Or to be more accurate a philosophy. What I think is going on is Square Enix is keeping the numbers of players per server low in order to keep playing quality high. the servers are being slightly UNDER utilized intentionally By SE. For what reason I have no idea. But I have about 20 years experience giving me this hunch.

I completely agree Grupp. I also have and currently work in a data center, one in which we handle way more than 5000 concurrent connections at one time without any issues... In many ways, this was quite simply poor planning and a terrible authentication/queue management architecture.

This could have been resolved with not only player queues, but also the basic concept of proper load balancing and using appliances to handle the authentication process ie (netscalers, F5, etc, etc.) On top of which they could have easily setup a zoned master server environment.

With the appliance handling the login portions and handing off the queue work to the master servers to find the server with the lowest load... problem solved. This is not a new process at all and in fact is done time and time again. In case they would like to brush up Exit games has a great doc about this:

http://doc.exitgames.com/photon-server/LoadBalancing/