What happens when "early access" is "cancelled" by server fail?

I don't know about you guys, but like... I'm not counting on early access being... accessible. Indeed I don't see the first week (or more) of Endwalker being reliably available, serverwise. Veterans who sat out the content lull will likely return to find the space they left behind occupied by a WoW exodus exacerbated by its own momentum and a global chip supply crisis making "just buy more servers" complicated, as they've told us themselves. And that's before we consider that FFXIV is top dog now, making it a DDOS attack magnet.

While it's easy to argue "they got this," and attribute the two week delay to magically assuring that the great server calamity doesn't happen, let's pretend, for the sake of discussion, that the devs are just as human as the rest of us, and Endwalker is just not reliably accessible for at least the entire duration of early access.

I for one have switch games at the ready, and am expecting to use them for a forced FFXIV vacation, so this won't put me out much, but how does Squeenix traditionally handle this from a PR standpoint? I can tell you that if the FFXIV community is anything like the WoW community (and there is a LOT of overlap now), there will be cries for some kind of compensation. Does that traditionally manifest some response from the devs? How much of those preorders including early access is likely to be leveraged by the community and responded to by the devs in kind?

I'm legitimately curious because I do think Endwalker is unfortunately walking into a woodchipper at launch for the aforementioned reasons, and I've never been here at an expansion's transition moment before.

EDIT the day of (first) compensation:

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Originally Posted by Omedon

Well apparently the answer to my initial question was: We get a free week. That's classy!

Though, to be honest, my lingering concern is that there is no fix for the current situation aside from "a lot of people just lose interest." I honestly can't think of how anyone fixes this, in a timely fashion, with all the money in the existing world as we know it with its chip shortages and such.

Maybe this won't be the last free week given out, I don't know, but I'm glad they see this as something in their arsenal.

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People will adapt, just like with Stormblood.

I mean I'm expecting some hiccups, maybe even crashes, but such is the way of mmo launches.
(Expect periodic server restarts as people cheese the auto-logout)

That being said, XIV's launches have been steadily improving with each expansion despite the game's growth. So it probably won't be too bad after the initial surge. (ShB was miraculously smooth iirc. )

The servers go down, they come back up after an emergency maintenance. That usually doesn't happen until official launch though. Either way, pretty straight forward. There will be no compensation other than bringing the servers back to working order. So...there you go. That's what will happen at some point.

I expect even longer queue times just to get in the server than ShB release. I also expect emergency maintenance and probably at least 1 DDoS during early access. This was how it was with the other expansions, so I've always expected the same will happen with EW.

It isn't SE being ready you need to worry about. It's potential DDOS.

the wow refugees will take to the forums and social media and cry like they always do, i will tap into my unlimited reserve of patience and wait it out just like i did with stormblood, the only thing i plan to do during the early access anyways is check out the new jobs. i dont plan to tackle the story for a good week or so after release so the starting zones can empty out

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Originally Posted by ryouma17

the only thing i plan to do during the early access anyways is check out the new jobs

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That's what I usually do, too. This expansion it will be Reaper during EA. And maybe Sage through Shadowbringers beast tribe quests.

I'm also a bit worried tbh, I don't remember having a queue ever except at the beginning of an expansion. Yet, we have a queue for at least a year now, this suggests we're already at capacity. And yesterday for some reason the server got nuked twice.

Unless SE plan to have some serious scaling for launch day, it'll be a shit show.

The servers have been getting hit hard recently by what I assume to be DDOS attacks.

Even last night I got kicked out and when I tried to go back in the queue was in the Thousands so I assume that means the whole server went down.

People just can't let others have fun I suppose. :(

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/d4/b2...ba12e43f62.jpg

Eeh, i imagine lots of roughness happening and that's it. While i want to get the story done, i can mostly spend time checking out the new areas, levelling the 2 new jobs etc. if it gets real bad on progressing.
If i can't even connect, patience i'll just play\do something else while the problem goes away

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Originally Posted by Raven2014

I'm also a bit worried tbh, I don't remember having a queue ever except at the beginning of an expansion. Yet, we have a queue for at least a year now, this suggests we're already at capacity. And yesterday for some reason the server got nuked twice.

Unless SE plan to have some serious scaling for launch day, it'll be a shit show.

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The queues were just forced login queues, they aren't real server queues.

You can tell because they tick almost immediately and log you in.


Its just lobby server management is all. It was in patch notes when they implemented it.

Heavensward was a nightmare, too. Logging in was impossible, and if you did manage to get logged in, you got kicked. But I think I remember finally being able to play later that night... it just took a few hours more than I would've liked. But days of server issues? Nah, I don't think so, unless I'm remembering wrong.

Like everyone else said, you kinda just have to roll with it. Get comfy, hang out in the forums, have something else to do in the meantime in case your EW plans end up falling through. I don't expect things to be perfect, either, given what we're dealing with now with the server Calamities. BUT, most likely we will be inconvenienced for about half a day, give or take.

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Originally Posted by KittyKet

Heavensward was a nightmare, too. Logging in was impossible, and if you did manage to get logged in, you got kicked. But I think I remember finally being able to play later that night... it just took a few hours more than I would've liked. But days of server issues? Nah, I don't think so, unless I'm remembering wrong.

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I was able to play pretty well during EA. After official launch the servers went to hell in a handbasket. It actually took up until the following major patch or so for me to finally stop lagging. lol

If the server is that bad, I'll just go play something else and come back. But Shadowbringers EA was pretty smooth, so I'm not expecting any major trouble.

I think there's zero evidence that we need to worry too much about this. Shadowbringers launch was fine, and at the time they were dealing with an influx of new players back then as well. I guess nobody remembers that anymore, or they weren't playing at the time. People were really hyped for Shadowbringers too.

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Originally Posted by Katie_Kitty

Shadowbringers launch was fine, and at the time they were dealing with an influx of new players back then as well.

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theres a difference between a small influx of new players and having half of wows playerbase jumpship overnight, thankfully most of the wow refugees have all moved on to other games so it shouldnt be too bad

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Originally Posted by Vahlnir

I was able to play pretty well during EA. After official launch the servers went to hell in a handbasket. It actually took up until the following major patch or so for me to finally stop lagging. lol

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Yeah, the nightmare was during official launch. Good times, good times.

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Originally Posted by ryouma17

thankfully most of the wow refugees have all moved on to other games

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Um... until Endwalker, perhaps?

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Originally Posted by Katie_Kitty

I think there's zero evidence that we need to worry too much about this. Shadowbringers launch was fine, and at the time they were dealing with an influx of new players back then as well. I guess nobody remembers that anymore, or they weren't playing at the time. People were really hyped for Shadowbringers too.

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Also don't forget that SE rents out servers to help stabilize any launch issues; this is why we got multiple instances of the same zone in Stormblood so we don't hit the area population cap so easily, and even then it was flooded because of Ixion Campers. Getting Locked out of the Lochs was a thing.

Come Shadowbringers, things were smooth and they fixed their issues from before. The other thing is that they did a major ad buy campaign for Shadowbringers because it was going to be this big hit - and it did hit big. Endwalker's going to be the same thing since I bet they've got a larger budget thanks to Yoshida's leadership and Creative Business Unit III's work.

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Originally Posted by ryouma17

theres a difference between a small influx of new players and having half of wows playerbase jumpship overnight, thankfully most of the wow refugees have all moved on to other games so it shouldnt be too bad

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Plot twist: They are probably still here and/or have been here all along like myself. WoW player here, by the way.

Oh also, if something catastrophic WERE to happen, where we missed the EA or a laaarge chunk of it, it's not unheard of for SE to add a couple days of gametime to everyone's sub for the trouble.

Early access won't be cancelled by server fail, but it's possible the servers could crash or need a lot of emergency patches in the first week. This has happened previously but between the crashes and other problems, you will still be able to play.

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Originally Posted by Omedon

I don't know about you guys, but like... I'm not counting on early access being... accessible. Indeed I don't see the first week (or more) of Endwalker being reliably available, serverwise. Veterans who sat out the content lull will likely return to find the space they left behind occupied by a WoW exodus exacerbated by its own momentum and a global chip supply crisis making "just buy more servers" complicated, as they've told us themselves. And that's before we consider that FFXIV is top dog now, making it a DDOS attack magnet.

While it's easy to argue "they got this," and attribute the two week delay to magically assuring that the great server calamity doesn't happen, let's pretend, for the sake of discussion, that the devs are just as human as the rest of us, and Endwalker is just not reliably accessible for at least the entire duration of early access.

I for one have switch games at the ready, and am expecting to use them for a forced FFXIV vacation, so this won't put me out much, but how does Squeenix traditionally handle this from a PR standpoint? I can tell you that if the FFXIV community is anything like the WoW community (and there is a LOT of overlap now), there will be cries for some kind of compensation. Does that traditionally manifest some response from the devs? How much of those preorders including early access is likely to be leveraged by the community and responded to by the devs in kind?

I'm legitimately curious because I do think Endwalker is unfortunately walking into a woodchipper at launch for the aforementioned reasons, and I've never been here at an expansion's transition moment before.

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It isn't the final days and the end of the world if it didn't include the servers as well.

I'm not particularly concerned. They learned from the Stormblood debacle, and Shadowbringers had a nearly flawless launch. Any problems will come from DDOS, IMO.

I've got multiple Early Access launches under my belt now, including Stormblood, and I'm not too worried. Will we have hot fixes? You betcha? Could we have times the game is inaccessible? Definitely. And the game has been a DDOS magnet for every expansion launch. But that's a chance we take doing Early Access. We've still ended up with plenty of time to do things in the game, even with things like Raubahn Savage and Pippin EX. I'm on vacation and I've got my backup console game ready for any downtime.

I played through the early access of all three expansions. There were some queues but I managed to get in and play the game every day. There's no reason to expect that the game is gonna be down for a week. We're not talking about World of Warcraft.

You get nothing. They will wait till its over and the yes man will line up to say it is the players fault. Half the posts are already blaming DDOS and we haven't even got the expansion. They waited when they created the problem in Stormblood. Might get a nothing apology that the rest of the player base will beat you with on how much they care.



It is like anything else that is questionable about the game. They have a free pass and if you don't like it best to move on.

Part of me is actually considering leveling Reaper and wait with the story until it's more stable.
It's a MMO so it's gonna be wonky.

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Originally Posted by KittyKet

Yeah, the nightmare was during official launch. Good times, good times.

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Yoooo I've kept hearing about the nightmare that was 1.0's launch.
WTF you guys had it rough back then.

My favorite little horror story was def how players were getting trapped in the adventurer’s guild in Uldah because the doors opening was handled server side instead of client side, and due to massive server lag the doors wouldn’t open.

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Originally Posted by Kolsykol

Part of me is actually considering leveling Reaper and wait with the story until it's more stable.
It's a MMO so it's gonna be wonky.

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Honestly if there's a way to have a more stable experience by hesitating on the story, I'm trying the new summoner ASAP! I have every non-main job at 71 ready for TRUSTAPOLOOZA with a fully powered armory bonus in the 70's!

I mean, it is what it is. I'm sure SE is doing everything they can to make sure things work out well but it's an online game with a massive and eager fan base. Even if everything on the game side works perfectly, and there's no guarantee that will be the case, there is going to be severe stress on the technical side of things. It's better to expect things to, at best, not work perfectly.

The only thing worth being concerned about is the instance server clogging, depending on when/where they put the first instanced content in the story. Past couple expansion, seems like that's been the only major bottleneck.

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Originally Posted by Kranel_San

It isn't the final days and the end of the world if it didn't include the servers as well.

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Yoko Taro's ultimate plan.

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Originally Posted by Hasrat

The only thing worth being concerned about is the instance server clogging, depending on when/where they put the first instanced content in the story. Past couple expansion, seems like that's been the only major bottleneck.

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They largely avoided that with Shadowbringers. There are some instanced battles but they weren't implemented at the very start of the expansion like that one was in Stormblood. That helped alleviate things a ton.

On the subject of downtime replacing early access, I honestly don't care. I bought the expac to have the expac... early access would be kind of cool, I guess, but it doesn't diminish the value of the purchase if I don't get to play a week early. If I have to wait or cannot connect, so be it. My days of living and breathing a video game are long gone. I have other things to do in my life, should my favorite video game not be accessible for some length of time.

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Originally Posted by Omedon

if the FFXIV community is anything like the WoW community

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There are only people. Not 'these people' and 'those people' and people that play other MMOs and people that do this and that and so forth. Just individual people.

Anything anyone wants you to infer by using the words, "the WoW community..." (or, "the [whatever] community"; pick your favorite #label) and then going on to list some action, demeanor, behavior, likes, dislikes, etc., is nonsense.

All kinds of individual people play both, and all other, games. There literally isn't a single behavior you could list that represents the entire community of this game, that game, or any other group of people. When you get a million people in a group, you have one of every type of human in there, and no two are alike.

(Just like IRL... but we all knew that already, right?)

As an aside, I was an extremely active WoW player for a very long time, and quite active on their forums, therefore if we must, I was quite definitely part of the "WoW community".

Also, I am like the anti-"WoW player" (anti- in the sense of a polar opposite, not anti- in the sense of being opposed to something.) I don't complain if deadlines are missed, never gave a crap about downtime / maintenance whether it was scheduled or unexpected, never ranted about gear or drop rates, could not have cared less how others wanted to play their characters or gear themselves up, never ran nor touted DPS meters, and I never ran into the legendary "toxic WoW community". That's right, never a single person on an ignore list... and the arguments I had with random people over some twelve or thirteen years - I could count those on one hand.

I surrounded myself with good people, family and friends, hundreds of people I met in WoW... and we all behaved nothing like the infamous "WoW community". We couldn't have possibly been the only ones. The "toxic WoW community" label does all of us a disservice, and IMVHO we far outnumber the negative folk who play WoW - it's just that their barks are quite loud, and people like myself having a good time don't really need to bark at all.

People only report on their negative experiences, others pick up on that and then have confirmation bias when they interact with the people around them. Those folks report only their bad experiences, and then it's like mass hysteria, and there you are: The big, bad WoW community. Comprised primarily of neutral or positive people and a small, toxic, vocal minority.

Again, just like in real life.

/shrug

Generally every launch period has been rocky due to server issues, either from DDoS or just sheer crowd hype, though ShB was amazingly smooth in comparison to them all at least here on Crystal. Unless something breaks very very badly the devs won't compensate lost time in Early Access or even in the regular launch period.

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Originally Posted by Omedon

...but how does Squeenix traditionally handle this from a PR standpoint? I can tell you that if the FFXIV community is anything like the WoW community (and there is a LOT of overlap now), there will be cries for some kind of compensation. Does that traditionally manifest some response from the devs?

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Can you not? Seriously. You can easily do a thread search and see the numerous topics involving compensation for lost time due to maintenances or hot-patches and it's not a WoW thing, it's a human thing. If there is downtime due to server problems you can guarantee there will be a thread complaining about it just like there is any other time it happens whether or not it's during an expansion.

Not sure why they're calling Dec 3rd Early Access. Outside of financial reason I don't know anyone saying "I'm just gonna wait to buy EW". If you've made it this far into FFXIV you ain't waiting for reviews lol but I digress. People will adapt like always. Naturally the forums will go up in flames and servers will buckle under the strain of players trying to enter. I expect this Expansion will be the worst one yet with it's new found popularity in the MMO space and the ending to the main plot.

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Originally Posted by TitusAldin

Not sure why their calling Dec 3rd Early Access. Outside of financial reason I don't know anyone saying "I'm just gonna wait to buy EW". If you've made it this far into FFXIV you ain't waiting for reviews lol but I digress. People will adapt like always. Naturally the forums will go up in flames and servers will buckle under the strain of players trying to enter. I expect this Expansion will be the worst one yet with it's new found popularity in the MMO space and the ending to the main plot.

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Because all video games by any company anywhere always get their official release on a Tuesday. But SE want to drop Endwalker on a weekend. That's the only reason early access exists. Yes, it's silly, but it is the actual reason.

You will note that official launch is the following Tuesday.

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Originally Posted by Floortank

Because all video games by any company anywhere always get their official release on a Tuesday. But SE want to drop Endwalker on a weekend. That's the only reason early access exists. Yes, it's silly, but it is the actual reason.

You will note that official launch is the following Tuesday.

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People also like being able to play a game earlier. Pre-order bonuses help as well. I think it mostly just comes to SE wanting to secure that sweet pre-order cash. Timing EA on a weekend is also a smart business decision since that's when a lot of people get to play the most. Basically, SE likes money. That's why EA exists.