Expanding Server Capacity Clarification

Can you please tell us your working to raise the 5000 concurrent player limit, from the sounds of the latest post it seems your just making new worlds and not increasing the limit each world can handle. Can we get words on what your plans on. I have friends still unable to join me and I hate to have to coordinate all of them onto a new world if you are not addressing the 5k a server limit. (which already I think is pretty low)

I was wondering the same thing... Are they going to transfer people off of the existing worlds to help alleviate the load? I can't imagine that going over well. It sounds to me that adding new worlds won't help with the already busy ones that have login restrictions... They need to add a load balancer and more horse power to the already existing servers, as well...

Yea they say that the new tech will make it easier to login, just need to find out their reasoning, is it because of more concurrent connections able, or shifting more people to other worlds with transfers? This is actually nagging me to death.

Yoshi's letter was a nice gesture, but I didn't find it was as reassuring as it should have been. Why didn't he mention anything about increasing capacity of existing servers? I just get the feeling that even after these changes, people are still going to be dealing with 1017 during peak hours, and it's not going to be pretty at all.

I just hope I can transfer to Excalibur where all my old ls mates hang about, i also wish I could cross server friend req from the new loadstone instead of just following

Yea I have one friend who won't play or register his game cause he wants to play with me on leviathan, since he was unable to do it during EA it seems like he is just never gona be able to game with me :(

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Originally Posted by Azmaria

Can you please tell us your working to raise the 5000 concurrent player limit, from the sounds of the latest post it seems your just making new worlds and not increasing the limit each world can handle. Can we get words on what your plans on. I have friends still unable to join me and I hate to have to coordinate all of them onto a new world if you are not addressing the 5k a server limit. (which already I think is pretty low)

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From what they've been saying it seems like a hard limit. So odds are they'll have to offer people transfers to ease the limit.

5000 really isn't very low. You can see tons of people in every area as it is now. remember 5000 simultaneously means tens of thousands of characters active on the server in total.

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Originally Posted by Alhanelem

From what they've been saying it seems like a hard limit. So odds are they'll have to offer people transfers to ease the limit.

5000 really isn't very low. You can see tons of people in every area as it is now. remember 5000 simultaneously means tens of thousands of characters active on the server in total.

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Please explain to me how that works, I would imagine 5000 concurrent connections meant total players connected to the server, mind just enlightening me on the tech side of what that statement means to what you say?

yes, its the number of people simultaneously connected to the servers. Exactly how many depends on how much bandwidth is required on each connection and the amount of CPU power needed to process the data being transferred. The limit can only be increased, for practical purposes, by optimizing code to require less CPU usage, and/or reducing the size of data transferred. However, they've very likely spent a huge amount of time doing just that. There's only so far optimization can take you.

While I too would love an increase in capacity, such a thing is not a simple thing. They spent a good portion of the alpha optimizing their current architecture for concurrent users. I suspect that 5,000 is pretty much pushing the envelope of their capacities without extreme measures (such as expanding server clusters per world and rewritting whatever mechanics handle the load balancing to handle the larger cluster) which is the work of weeks, if not months. The more physical servers house a single outward facing facade, the more complex the operation and maintenance of the clusters.

In other news, while I haven't personally done the leg work on this, snooping around the internet for a bit showed a general belief that P2P MMOs tend to sit around 4,000-7,000 concurrent users per server. That puts FFXIV comfortably on the lower end of the middle; not great, but I personally consider it acceptable.

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Originally Posted by Alhanelem

yes, its the number of people simultaneously connected to the servers. Exactly how many depends on how much bandwidth is required on each connection and the amount of CPU power needed to process the data being transferred. The limit can only be increased, for practical purposes, by optimizing code to require less CPU usage, and/or reducing the size of data transferred. However, they've very likely spent a huge amount of time doing just that. There's only so far optimization can take you.

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Strictly speaking, that isn't true. There are a few tricks you can pull to maximize your bandwidth. For instance, FFXIV polls position every 0.3 seconds. By staggering the position polling, they could offset each server to maximize the bandwidth usage. In principle, you're right, for a single physical location, there is a hard limit on how much bandwidth you can physically get. But for corporations, that physical limit is much higher than what SE is using right now.

I was about to post the same thread, if they don't offer server transfers as part of this expansion, then it will all be for nothing since the current servers are already over capacity, they over subscribed too far it's seems, and no one will log out because they are afraid they won't be able to get back on when they want too. Hopefully once people realize that if everyone just logs on when they actually want to play the problems won't be as severe as they are now.

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But for corporations, that physical limit is much higher than what SE is using right now.

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You don't really know how much bandwidth is available at their datacenters, nor do you know what kind of CPUs they are using, how much CPU usage their processes require, and how much of that one person's connection accounts for.

You know it pays to do research rigth?

Part 1:

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[NA]Regarding Congestion in Japan Data Center Worlds (Aug. 27)
Thank you very much for playing FINAL FANTASY XIV: A Realm Reborn.

Currently, an extremely high number of players are enjoying the game. Should the number of players continue to increase at the current pace, there is the possibility that our expectations and server capacity will be greatly surpassed. Therefore, in order to maintain a stable gameplay environment, we are implementing login and character creation restrictions.

In order to be able to welcome a drastically greater number of players, we are starting as early as this week with preparations to increase our facilities, to be ready by early next week. Until that time, we will be continuing to implement these restrictions as required, and we ask for your understanding and patience.

We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience, and once again thank you for your understanding and cooperation in this matter.

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And so you dont freak out about oh jp only ohh part 2

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[NA] Regarding Preparations to Increase the Capacity of our Data Centers (Aug. 27)
Thank you very much for playing FINAL FANTASY XIV: A Realm Reborn.

We would like to make a clarification regarding our previous announcement “Regarding Congestion in Japan Data Center Worlds (Aug. 27)” in which we stated that we are preparing to increase the capacity of our data centers.

The first half of the announcement regarding login and character creation restrictions was directed towards our players who would be playing during peak hours in Japan data center Worlds.

However, the second half of the announcement regarding increasing the capacity of our data centers was meant to also encompass North American and European data center Worlds and not just be limited to Japan data center Worlds.

We deeply apologize for causing concern amongst the North American and European community due to our lack of clarity. Capacity will be increased for data centers in all regions.

Once again, thank you for your understanding and cooperation to help us welcome more players to the game.

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Source: http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...57#post1083457

Also, people need to stop speaking out of their butts about clusters and load balancers, you clearly don't understand how they work in a Network. I do, I've built and maintain several, and I won't begin to speculate about their infrastructure. I love how everyone that can Google thinks they are an IT expert.

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Originally Posted by Alhanelem

You don't really know how much bandwidth is available at their datacenters, nor do you know what kind of CPUs they are using, how much CPU usage their processes require, and how much of that one person's connection accounts for.

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Of course, but since we're discussing optimization, I am working under the assumption that they are doing "the best that can be done". I know how many packets my game is sending (it's printed in game after all), so I can formulate a rough estimate of the bandwidth utilized by ~5,000 users. Worst case scenario, they are pumping it all through a single connection, still puts it somewhere around 256Mb/s (~2Kb/s up/down * 5,000 * 25 servers). Assuming (again, I know, damn all of these assumptions), they're using OC-12 lines, which is the standard for mid-range corporate usage, they have 2488.32 Mb/s available. Now, generally speaking, those servers probably handle other, not-obvious traffic, but I'd say that is not a terrible estimate of their current position, bitrate wise.

If we're talking about CPU usage, that's just a matter of load balancing and distributing subprocesses to sub-servers in the cluster. Such a thing is not trivial, but it is also not impossible. It would take a few months, but it's not a solid wall, just a steep incline.

Now, please remember, I'm not saying that taking advantage of that extra space is easy, only that it exists. In fact, I originally made the exact opposite point. Adding more servers is the more efficient solution to the current problem. Adding more concurrent users is prohibitively difficult in the short term.

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Originally Posted by Roaman

You know it pays to do research rigth?

Part 1:

And so you dont freak out about oh jp only ohh part 2


Source: http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...57#post1083457

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If you would have actually read the OP instead of just proceeding with your condescending link you would realize that your linked post does not answer the questions that are asked. Are they going to add more worlds to allow more service, this does not seem to fix the issue of the already maxed out worlds, or are they adding more servers, AND increasing the cap of players per server. The language to find the answers seems vague and can swing either way, hence asking for Clarification.

I have a guild full of Legacy players on a Legacy server I am trying to help coordinate. At the same time I have friends who bought the game recently, but they can't even make characters on my server due to the lockout. What am I expected to do here, SE? Am I supposed to make characters on their server to help them out, and then pray that you lift the character creation restriction on my original server and allow server transfers? We don't even know if SE is going to charge for first/early transfer.

If my friends are forced to play on a random server for weeks, then pay $15+ to transfer to my server just to play with me, thats not going to go over well for many people. This is tearing things apart.