Limiting sales to fix stability issues - a move in the right direction.

As I've been highly critical of the way this launch has been handled, and the communication involved, I think it's only fair that I give praise where it's due... the latest decision to suspend Digital Edition sales as a measure to slow down the influx of people in order to fix your servers is a sound one, and actually demonstrates some degree of commitment to those of us that bought and are encountering problems. It's a tardy decision, but it's certainly a step in the right direction to show you're actually sorry and out to fix things.

The key now is whether you'll actually hold yourself up to that "constant updates" schedule you set as an expectation. And honest to God, you NEED to unify all these damn websites into ONE, easy-to-use portal. Even the Mog Station isn't good enough. If you notice, lack of clarity is causing you tons of trouble.

I disagree. I almost quit the game last night, not because I dislike it (I love it, in fact), but because my girlfriend couldn't purchase it on launch day. We all know how that works. If she don't get to play, neither do I. Thankfully you can still purchase the digital download on Amazon.

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Originally Posted by Cojack

If you didnt make you char on open beta together your still not gonna be able to play together . source my wife make a char on server with me since they all are locked

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Nah, I don't mind rerolling on another server with her. Her not even getting to buy the game at all would have been a huge issue though.

This probably wouldn't/couldn't have happened if they only delivered a certain number of copies to gamestop/game stores period. basically if you didnt preorder you weren't getting it launch week <.< after a month or so they could have announced the digital download after the servers an everything were 100%. They made the game so available everyone hopped on XD

I just hope I can buy this next week after the server upgrade. Has there been a scenario so far where the consumer has not been punished for trying to play this game (in NA/EU)? I realize it's launch week, yada yada, but every single thing is a struggle.
Phase 4 errors
Registering EA code
- Registering the other EA code
EA errors and logins
Launch errors and logins
Confusing SE communication
MogStation errors
etc.

Now we can't even buy the game when we finally get good news, 1 day after launch. I held off due to the way EA was handled, but I do want to play if the game is going to stabilize/actually work. The wait continues.

At least they're doing what they can.

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Originally Posted by Edenholt

At least they're doing what they can.

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With as toxic as this forum has been I don't think it matters to some of these kids.

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Originally Posted by Artuir

With as toxic as this forum has been I don't think it matters to some of these kids.

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Anyone with a complaint is a toddler, got it. Maybe the forums would be less toxic if the name calling was left out?

Disagreed, it's horrible business practice and it severely alienates new and potential customers.

Appeasing existing customers is important, but they have already done that by limiting logins and character creation, without telling new people "well I'm not selling this to you!"

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Originally Posted by Bluezero

I just hope I can buy this next week after the server upgrade. Has there been a scenario so far where the consumer has not been punished for trying to play this game (in NA/EU)? I realize it's launch week, yada yada, but every single thing is a struggle.
Phase 4 errors
Registering EA code
- Registering the other EA code
EA errors and logins
Launch errors and logins
Confusing SE communication
MogStation errors
etc.

Now we can't even buy the game when we finally get good news, 1 day after launch. I held off due to the way EA was handled, but I do want to play if the game is going to stabilize/actually work. The wait continues.

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I do think you can still get the physical copy, just digital downloads gives too many people the opportunity to buy/sign up/log in.

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Originally Posted by Wolfie

Disagreed, it's horrible business practice and it severely alienates new and potential customers.

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Of course it's not ideal, but they are dealing with limited resources and unexpected, overwhelming sales. I think it's a good, temporary measure. From the numbers SE mentioned, it seems like they already optimized to increased concurrent connection capacity by 20% but even that wasn't enough.

It's like the decision to limit logins to prevent in-game problems, server crashing and/or character data corruption. SE doesn't want to prevent customers from playing but they chose to for obvious reasons. (Ideally the game would have had a better queuing mechanism, but maybe we're exceeding even its capacity.)

imho, this wouldnt be needed if they'd just put in an afk logoff script.

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Originally Posted by Wolfie

Disagreed, it's horrible business practice and it severely alienates new and potential customers.

Appeasing existing customers is important, but they have already done that by limiting logins and character creation, without telling new people "well I'm not selling this to you!"

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I have to disagree, as this is a catch 22 imo. Limiting logins and creation does not help anyone and limiting avenue of sales does nothing for new players either. From the forums, no one is appeased either. Metacritic shows the same. Although I don't understand the logic behind all of the zeros either. A decent queue system and temporary AFK timer would alleviate the idiotic 'workaround' that players have started with leaving characters logged in. If anything, it should have been the first thing to go when the server caps were reached, instead of cutting back on the servers. Ultimately, it would have happened regardless. At this point in time, they are damned if they did, damned if they didn't.


I just think it's funny how people expect this grand architecture of server farms and data centers, when the first game flopped. SE most likely played it safe like many companies do and kept the server resources low to make sure before committing a large sum of money to the game. Running data centers is not exactly cheap. One does not simply add servers. You have other concerns such as cooling, ensuring there is suitable backup power, ensuring you have enough power in general, and make sure there is sufficient staff to babysit these servers. I think it is hilarious that people believe you can just flip a switch and viola! SE cast Omegaserver for 9999.....

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Originally Posted by Lady

imho, this wouldnt be needed if they'd just put in an afk logoff script.

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It would still be needed most likely. Since you can have 2000 characters standing and doing nothing and cause a population cap to stop logins, but have those same 2000 people all active causes stress on the servers too. Assuming the pop cap was 2000 of course. Think of it like a spider web. It can hold 10 mosquitos max but it can hold them well enough. But, throw 10 flies (pissed off flies) instead and the web will fall apart. (Baby daddy long legs....)

Hey, whatever helps. At this point, anything short of a tremendous increase in server capacity isn't going to appease the masses, nor is it going to bolster business. I'd rather them take a step backwards in order to head in a better direction than continue to see them rush headlong down the wrong direction. So, you know, this is indeed something to point at.

You're right. They're a little late to the riot, but at least there's some actual tangible proof that they've showed up now.

For every little brat who whinges and whines, threatens cancellation, predicts game failure and every other piece of passive aggressive crap that posts on the forum, remember for each one of you there are a thousand people calmly and patiently waiting to take your place. The game is successful if it weren't people wouldn't be squatting in the game 24/7 trying to maintain a connection, it's godly beautiful and there is so much to do I don't know quite where to start and now word of mouth has kicked in and everyone wants to play. I say Squeenix has a runaway success on their hands.

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Originally Posted by Scamperoo

For every little brat who whinges and whines, threatens cancellation, predicts game failure and every other piece of passive aggressive crap that posts on the forum, remember for each one of you there are a thousand people calmly and patiently waiting to take your place. The game is successful if it weren't people wouldn't be squatting in the game 24/7 trying to maintain a connection, it's godly beautiful and there is so much to do I don't know quite where to start and now word of mouth has kicked in and everyone wants to play. I say Squeenix has a runaway success on their hands.

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While I don't agree with the harshness of the first part, I feel you're pretty spot on here.

(also... your Lala is the most adorable thing ever. Seriously.)

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Originally Posted by Scamperoo

For every little brat who whinges and whines, threatens cancellation, predicts game failure and every other piece of passive aggressive crap that posts on the forum, remember for each one of you there are a thousand people calmly and patiently waiting to take your place. The game is successful if it weren't people wouldn't be squatting in the game 24/7 trying to maintain a connection, it's godly beautiful and there is so much to do I don't know quite where to start and now word of mouth has kicked in and everyone wants to play. I say Squeenix has a runaway success on their hands.

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I Agree they did a good job on this 2.0 :) that said hopefully they fix the issues sooner than later. Dissatisfaction can be just as contagious as enthusiasm no matter how great a game is.

Unfortunately, this gating is their only solution to the instance server problems that arise from the various instance based world quests. This was a problem as early as CLOSED beta 3, and only got worse with the open beta.

There is no excuse for them to have not been prepared afterwords.

I think this is a very good idea, They are focusing on the customers they presently have and on fixing the issues that are currently hindering peoples ability to play instead of being greedy and continuing to sell copy's of the game to make money.

I have no issues with this decision and if all goes well they should be able to take off this restriction early next week when they complete the fixes they are speaking of.

Apologists will swing any situation to their advantage.

I love this game, i want to play, but serious why wasn't SE prepared for this? They broke records on the open beta, they had almost 1million beta applicants last I heard. They sold out of CE's. How in the world did having this many players catch them off guard?

I'm not going to quit over this, but I am left scratching my head....

If you didnt make you char on open beta together your still not gonna be able to play together . source my wife make a char on server with me since they all are locked

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Originally Posted by Amenian

I disagree. I almost quit the game last night, not because I dislike it (I love it, in fact), but because my girlfriend couldn't purchase it on launch day. We all know how that works. If she don't get to play, neither do I. Thankfully you can still purchase the digital download on Amazon.

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Most mmos sell out of CEs before launch. Most mmos have server issues because of a large influx of players. SE is not the first company to close digital sales for a few days after lauch, Guild Wars 2 team did it, Blizzard with Diablo 3 did it (and its not even a mmo).

This is a correct move.

This helps deal with the people pissed off now, and the ones that have to wait to buy it get to come in with it stable and working. I'm almost a little jealous as they get to avoid the frustrations of the EA and early launch days.

I bought ffxiv garland goggles £20, ffxiv 1.0 CE £33, ffxiv 2.0 CE upgrade £15, 2.0 CE £42. And I've paid every month they charged for in xiv. I don't enjoy getting told I can't log in to play when I am one of the people that invested in this game and own multiple copies of it. Legacy servers should not get login restrictions at all

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Originally Posted by TonyUK

. Legacy servers should not get login restrictions at all

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I don't think you thought that through very clearly. If it dosent have any restriction then everyone who cant log in on other servers would log in there. Soon there would be so much lag you couldn't move and the server would eventually crash. Simply put nobody would end up being able to play on such a server at all.

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Originally Posted by Xyronic

Most mmos sell out of CEs before launch. Most mmos have server issues because of a large influx of players. SE is not the first company to close digital sales for a few days after lauch, Guild Wars 2 team did it, Blizzard with Diablo 3 did it (and its not even a mmo).

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Can't speak for any Blizzard game, but I played GW2 at release and I can say that, comparatively speaking, both FF and GW2 had terrible launch issues. People just tend to pull the "this is the worst launch ever!" to each and every single game launch.

It sucks to not being able to login? Of course it does, but at least when you're in game you don't suffer with lag and constant crashes or being sent back to queue. I at least hadn't any issue since Monday. So I believe it's the same for many.

All the upset threads, all the rage, they're kinda of boring and repeatitive. They're the very same, sometimes word by word, as in other games. Sad that the Devs still get affected by those.