The login issues and you: Why most posts here are uninformed and pointless

Hello all. I am here today to not to defend any company or entity, or to agree or disagree with any of the complaints that are currently the number one topic in the tech support forums.

First a disclaimer: I have no problems with any counter points or posts to my opinion or knowledge of the current login problems, but at least base it with factual information or evidence. My post is to educate every consumer who has bought FF XIV on the what's and the how's of this issue, and how you can resolve it and how Square Enix is trying to resolve it. Let's try and be logical and civil with our discussion, and maybe, just maybe, everyone here will start using these forums as intended: To self help others with technical issues such as graphical problems, bugs, glitches, etc. It's my goal to provide the information and solutions to the number one current problem so that we can all move on to enjoying our purchase, playing our game, and generally not yelling at one another for having a different opinion or standard as a consumer.

So let's start with the problem: A large number of users cannot log into the game world to play the game they paid for. Understandably, a lot of these users are upset and frustrated at this. Some a lot more so then others. Some users are defending the login issues, which in turn enrages others even more, and then the defenders defend even harder. It's a cycle that is typical of any sort of large scale issue or problem, regardless of what the product, service, or issue is. So, why is there such a huge gap between understanding and anger at this situation? Well it mostly comes down to knowledge and prior experiences. I am going to try and show both sides that they are equally right.

So let's start with the basic. You have paid X amount of your money to a business to get a service/product. Naturally, you expect the service/product to work as advertised. That's everyone. Currently, it's not working for everyone correctly and as advertised. This is indeed an issue, as such, as the consumer who paid for said service/product you have many options at your disposal to deal with this issue. Before we look at these options, let's look at the types of consumers who have this issue and see if we can break all of us down into categories. I will say this now: Whatever group you think you are in or I defined you in, is not good, or bad.

1. This group here are highly upset, to the point of blaming seller of the product and service and demanding compensation. It matters not if you are informed how or why the issue is happening, this group just wants what they paid for. Nothing wrong with that.

2. This group are highly upset, they also blame the seller of the product/service. However, they are not demanding compensation just yet. They are just venting their frustration because of the issue. Again, it matters not if they know how or why the issue is happening, they also just want to be able to use what they paid for. Again, nothing at all wrong with this.

3. This group, while upset, shows sympathy or understanding to the problem and even the company they purchased the product from. Again, nothing wrong with this.

4. The fourth group isn't even upset. Maybe they expected this issue. Maybe not. Maybe they think they understand the business's view point. Maybe they understand completely what is causing the issue, why the issue happened, and are not not laying blame on anyone. Nothing wrong with this.

Then we have consumers who do not fall into any of the other groups. Upset or not upset, they just want to argue or vent against the other groups. They may or may not actually care about the issue, they mostly just want to argue or counter argue against others just for the sake of it, with no intention of wanting a solution. Known mostly as "trolls", this group intends to lay blame on anyone they think they can upset. It matters not if they blame group 1, 2, 3, or 4. They will not back down or understand the viewpoint of anyone else. This is the only group where the intention isn't to find a fix for the problem or understand it, etc. This group just wants to insult or blame the other groups. Sadly, this group are usually the most vocal. They can appear completely unintelligent, or super smart. This is the group that bogs down the forums, accomplishes nothing, will find the next biggest issue even once the current one is solved, and you cannot reason, debate, with them. Luckily, they disappear rather quickly, move onto to other things to argue against, and typically can be ignored when you are prepared with the proper knowledge.

So my goal here is to educate the first four groups on how best they can accomplish what they want without upsetting or alienating the other three. This in turn will not only make you a more prepared consumer in the future, but it also get's rid of a lot of those pesky trolls who are just here to annoy everyone.

Back to the problem at hand. The product/service we have purchased are having issues and a lot of us cannot use it properly. So I am going to try and explain what is wrong, since this is the tech forums, and offer solutions to each group. I am going to try and be very basic here.

Anyone who has worked in their life knows that a business's purpose is to make a profit. Not to make money, because you can make money as a business but still have no profit. Without profit, you can no longer afford to make more products, pay your employee's, etc. So right off the bat, let's get this point out of the way: Square Enix had no intention of this problem happening. It does nothing but hurt their business and lose money.

Some people would say "but they already have my money, why do they care! They've already made a profit from me!" This is actually not true at this point of the product Square Enix is selling. While nearly all video games make their money from the actual selling of the product, major MMO's do not. Typically, the cost of a major MMO can range from anywhere from 50-75 million dollars, which the current leader, Star Wars The Old Republic, cost around 200 million dollars.

That 60 dollars also isn't what Square Enix actually get's when you purchase a game. Now, I am only going to use a disc based copies as an example, but let's say you bought FF from Gamestop or Best Buy.

20% of that goes to the console maker (around 12 bucks) (which is why for a while PC games stayed at around 50 dollars. The increase to 60 dollars on PC games has more to do with the increase cost of development then anything else).

20% of the 60 goes to the retailer, also around 12 bucks.

15% goes to marketing, around 9 bucks. (This can be higher or lower depending. Publishers usually spend more on marketing then actual development costs.)

Around 15% goes to the developer, again 9 bucks. (In this case, since the game was developed by the publishers in house development team you could technically add that onto the publishers income. However, that 9 bucks has already been spent. The publisher front the money to make the game to the developer. Major developers get better deals. Say you are a developer and your last game raked in around 85% on Metacritic, then the publisher might offer an incentive or bonus for they game getting an average of 85% on Metacritic. Yes believe it or not, developers use metacritic to gain extra money to develop their game, and it also can determine how much the publisher and other third party backers are willing to offer to the development cost.)

And then the Publisher, in this case Square Enix, 30% is around the average, or 18 dollars.

So that 60 dollar game you paid for made Square Enix 18 bucks.

So how much has Square Enix made off Final Fantasy XIV at the moment? Well...nothing. Let's be nice and say that the total cost of making FFXIV was 50 million dollars. Let's say that includes everything, develop, marketing, and distrbution. Now, let's say so far it sold 1.5 million copies.

18 dollars x 1.5 million = 27 million dollars.

Let's also remember that on PC this game cost 29.99, not 60 dollars. Also to be fair, this game was sold digitally on both PC and PS3, which has a much much higher profit margin for publishers and developers (which is why consoles and PC games are pushing digital sales)

Still, the math speaks for itself. The game hasn't made any profit yet. And we didn't even take into account the fact that since this is an MMO, there is a constant cost on the game. Servers, Continuous Development Cost, Game Master Employees, Forum GM employees, Customer Support Employees. Website costs, etc. etc.

The game probably won't become profitable until around 4-6 monthes AFTER the publishers starts getting the monthly pay to play fees. And even then, most of that is sucked back into future development cost, server cost, and all the other things I mentioned in the last paragraph.

Now, with this in mind, the business, in this case, Square Enix, has to come to an estimate on how many servers they need, how much concurrent users the servers can hold, etc. They base this on beta user numbers, pre-sale numbers, market hype, etc. And now we come full circle. Square Enix was simply did not estimate correctly just how popular the game was going to be. This in turn cause our biggest issue: login issues and server capacity issues.

Now, they can't just flip a switch and fix this. I won't get into the details on this, but they cannot simply bring down the servers and add more capacity, and they can't simply add more servers at the flick of a switch either. However what they can do is basically everything they could:

1. They stopped selling their game digitally until they can add more room. They can't of course stop Gamestop from selling a hard copy that the retailer has already purchased, but they can control their own digital sales. This is a business willing to sacrifice more profit for the sake of their consumer base.

2. They are offering a quick solution. Within a week of launch, they are going to add more servers and data centers. That is pretty fast, all things considered. Other games that have had this issue at launch, like Diablo 3 and World of Warcraft, had login issues for weeks before they were able to properly balance and get the servers right. So they are spending more money to fix the problem that while it is their fault, even if it was because of unexpected demand.

3. They are giving away exactly the amount of free time (7 days) that the customers may have lost because of this issue. So while you couldn't play correctly on August 27th until tomorrow, they are giving you those 7 days for free. (You get them added to your account at the end of tonights scheduled maintenance).

4. All of this information is being presented on the main FF website and on the login screen of the game itself.

So now that you know the problems, the why's, and how's, here are my solutions for the different groups.

Group 1. Square Enix is giving you compensation for your loss of play time. However, if you still are not satisfied, you can still get a full refund on your purchase. Now that you know this, you have no need to make any more posts regarding this issue. You know it is getting resolved, you are being compensated for it, and even if still left unsatisfied, you can get a full refund. You lose nothing, the problem is being solved, not need to make any posts about it, in the technical forums at least.

Group 2. You wasn't at the point of demanding compensation, but you are upset. Now that you know you are getting compensation, and have options for even a full refund, and now that you know the problem is getting fixed tonight, you have no reason to post about this in the Tech Support forums.

Group 3 and 4, you weren't really upset, or you understood the situation from the business standpoint, or you are being patient. Again, with the issue being solved tonight, you have no reason to post in the Tech support forums about this particular issue.

And that's that. If you see someone that is making a new post about this issue, do what the forum is designed for: Tell them the problem is solved, and give them their options.

If you see our other group we talked about, well there is nothing you can do about that. Ignore and move on. No need to debate or argue with them. You now know the issue is fixed, no more technical support is needed on the matter, and you know every consumer has their options on what to do.

Now if you want to go debate and argue about this in say, the general forums. By all means, go for it. But this forum is for tech support. The login issues from a tech support standpoint are being fixed tonight, and that's all you need to relay to anyone new.

Now, if this issue persists after tonight's downtime, or if a new technical bug or error comes up, then post away. As it stands now, we know everything we need to so we don't have to make new posts in this particular forum.

Thank you for staying and if you read all of this, that's pretty amazing. I hope you all soon have a wonderful time playing this game. ;)

however, 5 million copies sold, by the math you used in this point and only 230,000 players can play at any given point, SE stated. So, is their fix going to allow for the rest of that 4.75 million to get a chance to play the game? I hope so.

Thank you, very well written.

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Originally Posted by Arawn

however, 5 million copies sold, by the math you used in this point and only 230,000 players can play at any given point, SE stated. So, is their fix going to allow for the rest of that 4.75 million to get a chance to play the game? I hope so.

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They reported an extreme increase of sales right before launch.

Bravo! *applauds*

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Originally Posted by Arawn

however, 5 million copies sold, by the math you used in this point and only 230,000 players can play at any given point, SE stated. So, is their fix going to allow for the rest of that 4.75 million to get a chance to play the game? I hope so.

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you honestly think theres even a slim chance that 4.75 million people will be playing the game at the same time?
Thats more people than wow has actual subscribers

not to mention that 5 million people didnt buy the game

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Originally Posted by Arawn

however, 5 million copies sold, by the math you used in this point and only 230,000 players can play at any given point, SE stated. So, is their fix going to allow for the rest of that 4.75 million to get a chance to play the game? I hope so.

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Your assumption that just because 5 million copies were sold that 5 million people are playing is poor. There is a number of those that are registered to the same account because they are linking the PS3/PC together to use both systems. At that point, how many active subscriptions are there really? I am well aware this doesn't cover the X amount of people above the 230k mark that can't get in, but it significantly lowers the amount of total people trying to get in since you can't log into both systems using the same service account.

While I've got major issues with your margin breakdown estimates, I'll table those for a day when I've got the time to do the research to back up what I have to say on that topic.

Here's my problem with the whole situation, lack of planning. In order for this situation to occur, not only did SE have to plan on only a small fraction of the players they ended up with, they had to go with a server solution that was all but non-scalable, completely full racks with no room for quick expansion. One duty finder for the whole game? Ouch, but if it wasn't built maximizing a single set of hardware, the use of expansion hardware and virtual machines could have created the solution we're hoping works right after tonite.

Lack of planning for the player base is simply inexcusable. The modern tracking methods that weren't available on UO, EQ, and WoW's vanilla launch are common now. Digital sales are reported if not instantly, nightly. And most of the games sold in boxes are reported in nightly figures as well, even when they're not tied directly to an install code. So, at the very least on a day by day basis SE had the numbers they needed to know that the launch wasn't going to work the way it was planned. They moved forward anyway.

Lots of people are angry on both sides. Arguably, if they sold 5 million copies they probably have MILLIONS of people who've never been past the character creation screens. Those millions have a legitimate reason for their anger. If you've only been in game once or twice because of the 1017 errors, you've got legitimate reasons for your anger too. And you've got people who've been in game quite a bit with anger about duty finder not working right, or FATE's being too crowded or their friends can't log in because of all the AFK players who won't log out in fear of never getting back in, all with varying degrees of legitimacy for their anger.

But consider this, we all have the SAME reason to be angry with SE, 1 week. One week was all it took to procure the necessary hardware, image drives, fix the duty finder and be ready to implement for tonite's maintenance. This could have all been done with a 1 week delay in launch and all the anger could have been avoided. THAT just plain pisses me off. If I'd known my EA would be worthless, I would have waited a few weeks, maybe that's what SE wanted to avoid, anyone waiting. If they'd delayed EA along with launch I'd still have gotten it, but honestly the way they handled it is just pitiful. The communication they've shared would have gotten customer service managers at companies I've worked for and with fired. And the blatant and obvious disparity in how the JP v NA/EU server issues have been handled...wow. I don't even know what to say about that. They obviously haven't noticed that while they may be a Japanese company, most of their income comes from outside Japan.

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Originally Posted by Arawn

however, 5 million copies sold, by the math you used in this point and only 230,000 players can play at any given point, SE stated. So, is their fix going to allow for the rest of that 4.75 million to get a chance to play the game? I hope so.

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5 Million?
Really, where is this data coming from?

Best post I've seen in weeks! Bravo!

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Originally Posted by Arawn

however, 5 million copies sold, by the math you used in this point and only 230,000 players can play at any given point, SE stated. So, is their fix going to allow for the rest of that 4.75 million to get a chance to play the game? I hope so.

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Everything I posted about the numbers were just things I grabbed out of mid air. Now, the average cost of making an MMO is exactly what I posted. Still, 5 million copies, that is 90 million (again, this is assuming every copy made the company 18 dollars. With the PC version being 30, they made way less then that per copy. Probably around 9 dollars, which would give them only 45 million income. If I had to guess, I would suspect this game cost around 75-100 million to develop.)

Now, not sure I have seen the 230,000 only figure, would love a link to that. Even so, this downtime is over 10 hours. I would say they are adding not only more servers, but I know they mentioned they are raising the player concurrent login numbers (basically, how many people can be logged in at one time without there being a que or the world is full.)

I expect that Square is not just going to add servers. In fact I am positive, because that alone wouldn't fix the problem, and also it's the reason they couldn't do this right away this past Tuesday. They are not only going to increase the amount of servers, but the amount of capacity each server can hold. I also assume, because it's just logical when expanding servers, that less worlds will be on a single server. When you log in to see worlds, like say, yours is Siren. Siren isn't the only world on that server. There could be 3-5 other worlds on there. Like say the group was Siren, Cactuar, Balmung. These three worlds run on the single server. Those are the three worlds the duty finder will pull from.

What SE will do will not just add servers, but lower the world amount. So instead of say, five worlds, it would be just Balmung and Siren. This means a larger amount of concurrent users can player on Balmung and Siren, but the duty finder can only pull from those two worlds now. With the increase of the amount of players on each server, it should even out on the duty finder. Even though it's pulling from less servers, it has more people now to pull from.

This would be why, and I didn't go into detail, MMOs can't just flick a switch and add more servers. They need to add more capacity per server, move world groups around. lower or raise them. Add more world groups. Tune the duty finder to the new layout. Make sure the data login servers are connecting properly to the new layout and capacity. Add more data centers for login auth if needed. Then test it all and make sure it works before reopening the service.

Hence the large downtime tonight. And all this had to be planned, and worked out with whatever company they are running their servers through. They had to rent more space, buy more equipment, add more cooling, etc. All this cannot be done in a day. It's impressive they have worked so fast to get all this bought and planned in a week. Not they have all staff working to upgrade, install, test etc. During downtime.

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Originally Posted by Hoveurt

They reported an extreme increase of sales right before launch.

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indeed if u played the beta u qouldent had bought it till las minuite too
all these issues we have had the last 2 weeks were issues that were in the beta but never solved after the beta team protested the game servers where not rdy..
SE must have seen the petition we had to push release back and extend beta because they did the same they have done for 2 weeks and say here is an extra 3 hours of beta time we fixxed the issue .. but it never got fixed.
and in regards to buddy saying the mis calculated .. they should have had back up servers good to go and back up extra worlds gtg if other mmo launches haven't told them anything

wouldent it be standard protocal affter so man failed launches?

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Originally Posted by Matty86

5 Million?
Really, where is this data coming from?

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I'd ignore them.. I believe they would be one of those "trolls" that the original poster was talking about.

tl:dr

Yawn.

You know why I don't like threads like this which try to stop people from complaining/getting mad about a big problem? Because it encourages the repeat of the same mistakes. Do you know what happens when enough people get pissed off about a mistake? Those responsible for the mistake get punished, and the mistake doesn't usually happen again.

SE has *no excuse* for making such a stupid planning mistake. They had all the data they needed (being their 3rd FF mmo) for server capacity requirements and all the time in the world to test it during development.

Whoever decided to limit the server capacities to this degree has cost SE a lot of money and made the launch of their new MMO a joke. Those responsible for this should be fired without question, because the same thing would be done in any other industry.

So stop telling people to calm down over something they have plenty of right to be pissed over.

The OP's post while well thought out and written also correct in my opinion has only done one thing... Added another thread in which to debate about the issue in.

Lots of good information here and plenty of informed opinions. Although I can't verify half that mess I can say on general principal I agree with most of it. Which ever side of the fence your on you have to see that this sort of discussion is healthy and good for the market. Will it enact change on a grand scale in the corporate level? Probably not, but it does educate consumers and in some cases force consumers to educate themselves. Education is key, and when conveyed professionally and intelligently this sort of dialogue helps people.

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Originally Posted by MJFERN

While I've got major issues with your margin breakdown estimates, I'll table those for a day when I've got the time to do the research to back up what I have to say on that topic.

Here's my problem with the whole situation, lack of planning. In order for this situation to occur, not only did SE have to plan on only a small fraction of the players they ended up with, they had to go with a server solution that was all but non-scalable, completely full racks with no room for quick expansion. One duty finder for the whole game? Ouch, but if it wasn't built maximizing a single set of hardware, the use of expansion hardware and virtual machines could have created the solution we're hoping works right after tonite.

Lack of planning for the player base is simply inexcusable. The modern tracking methods that weren't available on UO, EQ, and WoW's vanilla launch are common now. Digital sales are reported if not instantly, nightly. And most of the games sold in boxes are reported in nightly figures as well, even when they're not tied directly to an install code. So, at the very least on a day by day basis SE had the numbers they needed to know that the launch wasn't going to work the way it was planned. They moved forward anyway.

Lots of people are angry on both sides. Arguably, if they sold 5 million copies they probably have MILLIONS of people who've never been past the character creation screens. Those millions have a legitimate reason for their anger. If you've only been in game once or twice because of the 1017 errors, you've got legitimate reasons for your anger too. And you've got people who've been in game quite a bit with anger about duty finder not working right, or FATE's being too crowded or their friends can't log in because of all the AFK players who won't log out in fear of never getting back in, all with varying degrees of legitimacy for their anger.

But consider this, we all have the SAME reason to be angry with SE, 1 week. One week was all it took to procure the necessary hardware, image drives, fix the duty finder and be ready to implement for tonite's maintenance. This could have all been done with a 1 week delay in launch and all the anger could have been avoided. THAT just plain pisses me off. If I'd known my EA would be worthless, I would have waited a few weeks, maybe that's what SE wanted to avoid, anyone waiting. If they'd delayed EA along with launch I'd still have gotten it, but honestly the way they handled it is just pitiful. The communication they've shared would have gotten customer service managers at companies I've worked for and with fired. And the blatant and obvious disparity in how the JP v NA/EU server issues have been handled...wow. I don't even know what to say about that. They obviously haven't noticed that while they may be a Japanese company, most of their income comes from outside Japan.

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While you have solid points, I only have an issue with a few.

1. These problems did not arise in the open beta. Meaning that Square was on the right track.
2. These problems arose in EA. Now, you may say, they should have known their numbers. They did. But I didn't pre order my copy till open access was well... open. They had no number for me. No data. I did not particpate in the beta. I work in the game retail world. Pre-order numbers were very low, until EA. And then, at my store at least, we had to stop pre ordered because they went over what we had already got in shipment. See, games like this ship about a week before release. I know I had copies of this game in my backroom the Wednesday before launch. At this point, SE did not have the data for the extreme spike that EA brought.

I also now that when it did finally release, every store in my area sold hard copy wise. Including the Wal marts and best buys. This game literally blew up by word of month during the weekend of EA. At this point, they can't just push release back by a week. This would cause more problems.

So we went from open beta, no problems, to ea, one week later, blowing up the servers. This was unexpected not only on SE end, but retailers end as well.

I would also point out that Diablo III, another game with modern tracking, had the same issues. Guild Wars 2, another game with modern tracking, had the same issues. And those two games had the expectations MONTHS in advance. FF 14 blew up within a week.

/Respect

A well written post. This 'message' was exactly what we needed. Yes, I had my share of frustrations but I've cooled down since.
I guess that, in a couple of weeks/months, we've all forgotten about this login issue and will already be discussing more pressing matters.

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Originally Posted by ZombieLover84

While you have solid points, I only have an issue with a few.

1. These problems did not arise in the open beta. Meaning that Square was on the right track.
2. These problems arose in EA. Now, you may say, they should have known their numbers. They did. But I didn't pre order my copy till open access was well... open. They had no number for me. No data. I did not particpate in the beta. I work in the game retail world. Pre-order numbers were very low, until EA. And then, at my store at least, we had to stop pre ordered because they went over what we had already got in shipment. See, games like this ship about a week before release. I know I had copies of this game in my backroom the Wednesday before launch. At this point, SE did not have the data for the extreme spike that EA brought.

I also now that when it did finally release, every store in my area sold hard copy wise. Including the Wal marts and best buys. This game literally blew up by word of month during the weekend of EA. At this point, they can't just push release back by a week. This would cause more problems.

So we went from open beta, no problems, to ea, one week later, blowing up the servers. This was unexpected not only on SE end, but retailers end as well.

I would also point out that Diablo III, another game with modern tracking, had the same issues. Guild Wars 2, another game with modern tracking, had the same issues. And those two games had the expectations MONTHS in advance. FF 14 blew up within a week.

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The duty finder, the main cause for every error that was in world, which in effect caused SE to limit populations was a KNOWN FAULT in beta. So population problems aside, they knew in beta with those limited numbers of players that it was an issue.

That aside, the game was crashing within hours of launch. They didn't have that many people go out and buy it and install it first thing that morning. The game exploded from digital downloads. Not to mention that the downloads and the CD copies still needed last minute updates. So those players weren't live right off the bat.

If you want to say it was the EA population, fine, but remember EA population had to be registered and receive a code to get in. They knew the numbers. Even if it wasn't until EA, they should have pulled the launch by a week to fix the problem.

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Originally Posted by BlueStar62

You know why I don't like threads like this which try to stop people from complaining/getting mad about a big problem? Because it encourages the repeat of the same mistakes. Do you know what happens when enough people get pissed off about a mistake? Those responsible for the mistake get punished, and the mistake doesn't usually happen again.

SE has *no excuse* for making such a stupid planning mistake. They had all the data they needed (being their 3rd FF mmo) for server capacity requirements and all the time in the world to test it during development.

Whoever decided to limit the server capacities to this degree has cost SE a lot of money and made the launch of their new MMO a joke. Those responsible for this should be fired without question, because the same thing would be done in any other industry.

So stop telling people to calm down over something they have plenty of right to be pissed over.

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I said you have a right to be upset. However, I would like you to provide me this information that SE had all the data they needed to provide a perfect server launch. Any server based game is based on estimates, market data, etc. That data can be wrong, even with the best tracking in the world. Look at Diablo III. A company that handles the biggest MMO in history, underestimated the server capacity requirements needed for it even with preorder records beta testing for over a year.

It's an estimate, and estimates and be wrong. And you always under estimate. Over estimating is wasteful and cost's business's money. If a product is overstocked, then it was expected to sale better then it did, and now it's costing the company money because it's sitting on the shelf.

http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m2...2o7zo1_500.gif

Gw2 didn't have this issue, not even close, GW2 had some sever crash the first 2 days, fixed in.... 20/30 minutes? Then you could play for hours whitout any issues. And GW2 had (and still have) 2x the concurrent user online.
Diablo III sold 10x what this game will ever sold, still it wasn't unplayble for 10 days... yes Diablo III release was bad, 1 of the worst release ever, but NOT as bad as FFXIV ARR.

Bravo! I like your attitude.

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Originally Posted by MJFERN

The duty finder, the main cause for every error that was in world, which in effect caused SE to limit populations was a KNOWN FAULT in beta. So population problems aside, they knew in beta with those limited numbers of players that it was an issue.

That aside, the game was crashing within hours of launch. They didn't have that many people go out and buy it and install it first thing that morning. The game exploded from digital downloads. Not to mention that the downloads and the CD copies still needed last minute updates. So those players weren't live right off the bat.

If you want to say it was the EA population, fine, but remember EA population had to be registered and receive a code to get in. They knew the numbers. Even if it wasn't until EA, they should have pulled the launch by a week to fix the problem.

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That is not accurate. While you did have to be registered and get a code, I didn't register until 2 hours after EA started. So again, they didn't know my numbers.

And while they knew the pre-sell numbers for digital sales before EA, those numbers increased at an unexpected rate during EA, which is why the duty finder crashed so quickly. Most of the people I currently play with did not preorder this game, hard copy or otherwise, until EA. The point where data tracking didn't mean anything anymore because they couldn't change anything at that point. I myself and around 10 real life friends all registered our preorders the first day of EA. We all did not beta test. I personally don't like beta testing. The majority of MMO players do not beta test. We got on EA because 1. We knew we could cancel if we didn't like it and 2. We knew we were going to be able to keep everything when we moved over to launch if we decided to buy the game. All 10 of us did.

Now imagine how many more people in the world did the same thing we did.

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Originally Posted by ZombieLover84

I said you have a right to be upset. However, I would like you to provide me this information that SE had all the data they needed to provide a perfect server launch.

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Are you serious? You don't think that SE would have enough data on this matter after managing MMO games for years?

I have not known a MMO based company, especially one with as much MMO development experience as SE, to ever underestimate server capacity to this degree. Sure new MMOs have load bearing problems and maybe laggy servers at the start, but this is absurd. Do you have any idea just how far off the mark SE was with this? There is a difference between being slightly off in your estimates, and being miles off. SE screwed up big time.

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Originally Posted by Matty86

Gw2 didn't have this issue, not even close, GW2 had some sever crash the first 2 days, fixed in.... 20/30 minutes? Then you could play for hours whitout any issues. And GW2 had (and still have) 2x the concurrent user online.
Diablo III sold 10x what this game will ever sold, still it wasn't unplayble for 10 days... yes Diablo III release was bad, 1 of the worst release ever, but NOT as bad as FFXIV ARR.

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Yes GW2 did have this issue. It crashed the first two days and they stopped digital sales, just like FF 14 has. And it wasn't fixed in 20-30 minutes. They fixed the login issues rather quickly, but at the sacrifice of taking The trade post down for over a week.

http://www.inquisitr.com/312183/guil...tivity-issues/

And guess what, it happened about 4 hours after headstart....just like FF 14.

You just said Diablo 3 was unplayable for ten days...but said this game was worse....when it's only 7 days old.....How is your math that bad.

Beta 4 was a train wreck in motion. One thing after another went wrong. That alone, should have been reason enough to delay this game a week or two and have it done properly. Namely, because of how important it is to not fail again.

Personally, I would have been much happier had it been delayed 2 weeks, and launched properly. What's done is done however. I was never very angry or vocal myself, as I've been through a few harsh game launches. However, I can't blame those who were. The arguments are most certainly valid, that the more we tolerate these failures, the more acceptable they become.

I just get the impression that SE launched the "bare essentials" in place, when good practice is to over shoot expectations to be well prepared for potentially high adoption. When SE themselves claim along the lines of "Another mistake like FF XIV could be the end of SE", I just expected this to be taken "far" more delicately and with "far" more care and preparation. All in all, my fingers are crossed for a smooth movement forward with this maintenance. I truly hope everyone can play without worry after this.

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Originally Posted by BlueStar62

Are you serious? You don't think that SE would have enough data on this matter after managing MMO games for years?

I have not known a MMO based company, especially one with as much MMO development experience as SE, to ever underestimate server capacity to this degree. Sure new MMOs have load bearing problems and maybe laggy servers at the start, but do they stop selling games and disable character creation all together? Do you have any idea just how far off the mark SE was with this? There is a difference between being slightly off in your estimates, and being miles off. SE screwed up big time.

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A larger MMO company, with way more experience then SE, halted digital sales.

http://www.nowgamer.com/news/1565854...e_updated.html

While Arenanet developed Guild Wars 1 and 2, NCsoft published. And NCsoft is one of the largest MMO publishers in the world.

Sim City, another game that requires always online, also stopped digital sales. How long has EA and Sim City been around?

Umm... shouldn't this have gone under General?

Oh.. but wait... most of us can't post in General because of some stupid restrictions they have there.

Just saying... seems a bit odd to make comments about all the unqualified posts in technical, when the post itself may not belong in Technical either.

As for the "why we were having issues", it wasn't an issue with capacity per world server as much as it was capacity to the back end servers that manage instanced content. The world servers can handle substantially more then they are currently allowing. It's the back end servers responsible for instanced content and such that were getting overloaded because they were assigned to service multiple worlds at once, and that estimation for capacity is what was off. SE had to come up with a quick fix for that issue, as it was adversely affecting a lot of popular content (not to mention it is required for main story progression and eventually job quest lines as well).

So, basically, they had multiple approaches they could have taken, some more involved than others. They appeared to have just taken the easier way out (in terms of coding and such). They could have restricted access to content somehow, until they could get more hardware to support it (which is a large part of what they are doing--more servers on the back end and restructuring how many worlds rely on them at once) but that would have been a more complex operation and possibly require more server downtime to implement then they liked. Choking down the gateway/queues to allow fewer people in was likely just an easier task to accomplish in the short term.

So, they aren't necessarily needing to add more capacity per world just to support us as much as they are needing to add more capacity for the subsystems that support these worlds so they can actually handle at least the originally projected capacity. Granted, they need to beef up the hardware for future expansion and such... more worlds (and more support servers to service them) for more new players and such, but the real issue is more with the topography of the servers and how too many world servers were relying on too few support servers for specific content.

Who knows... with any luck, this new back end layout may have very well extended supportable capacity per world without any tweaking to the worlds, but it's nice to know they are going to ramp up the worlds anyway. They won't know just how successful it can be until they see how the new topography holds up under stress though. Once all that is reworked and seems balanced, they may find they can start letting more people back into each world until they reach the limits of the new structure, and retweak again. We just won't know until they get it all back up and fling the gates wide open again.

One thing for sure... I don't expect the growing pains to end anytime soon. But, if nothing else, it sure will be nice to get some relief in the short term.

people are mad they cant play but as soon as they can play you wont hear a word from them. hopefully tomorrow

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Originally Posted by ZombieLover84

Yes GW2 did have this issue. It crashed the first two days and they stopped digital sales, just like FF 14 has. And it wasn't fixed in 20-30 minutes. They fixed the login issues rather quickly, but at the sacrifice of taking The trade post down for over a week.

http://www.inquisitr.com/312183/guil...tivity-issues/

And guess what, it happened about 4 hours after headstart....just like FF 14.

You just said Diablo 3 was unplayable for ten days...but said this game was worse....when it's only 7 days old.....How is your math that bad.

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This game is out from 10 days 24/08, 04/09.
I said: "Diablo III sold 10x what this game will ever sold, still it wasn't unplayble for 10 days" Diablo III had problems for days/a week, but not this long, also I was there at the release of GW2 and Diablo, I don't need an article, GW2 release was flawless, you could log in any time, any day and play, some server crash happened, but you could log back in minutes.
Again, GW2 have 2x the concurrent users of FF.
This is not how MMO releases are, this is the worst release I ever seen.

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Originally Posted by ZombieLover84

While you have solid points, I only have an issue with a few.

1. These problems did not arise in the open beta. Meaning that Square was on the right track.
2. These problems arose in EA. Now, you may say, they should have known their numbers. They did. But I didn't pre order my copy till open access was well... open. They had no number for me. No data. I did not particpate in the beta. I work in the game retail world. Pre-order numbers were very low, until EA. And then, at my store at least, we had to stop pre ordered because they went over what we had already got in shipment. See, games like this ship about a week before release. I know I had copies of this game in my backroom the Wednesday before launch. At this point, SE did not have the data for the extreme spike that EA brought.

I also now that when it did finally release, every store in my area sold hard copy wise. Including the Wal marts and best buys. This game literally blew up by word of month during the weekend of EA. At this point, they can't just push release back by a week. This would cause more problems.

So we went from open beta, no problems, to ea, one week later, blowing up the servers. This was unexpected not only on SE end, but retailers end as well.

I would also point out that Diablo III, another game with modern tracking, had the same issues. Guild Wars 2, another game with modern tracking, had the same issues. And those two games had the expectations MONTHS in advance. FF 14 blew up within a week.

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Ummm... what beta were you in?

Instance/Duty servers crashed on SATURDAY in Beta4... and we've suffered from their inablilty to handle their projected load ever since.

ALL of this stems from them not having enough capacity on the BACK END servers to support each world. We were able to run around our worlds just fine, so long as we didn't trigger any instanced content. This was all discovered within at least the first 36 hours of Beta4 (may have been less, I didn't get locked out until late Saturday night, but some got locke don Friday I think).

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Originally Posted by Matty86

5 Million?
Really, where is this data coming from?

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There is an article saying over 750,000 copies of FFXIV have been sold to date, but that includes 1.0 (sold in 2010) which seems to be a little over half that number. SE said they were experiencing 300,000 to 350,000 concurrent log ins, while they were prepared to handle about 250,000. Hopefully, they offer free transfers to the new servers for those that want to move, so we can have more room on the crowded servers. Otherwise, our servers will still be full and they will merely be directing new characters to the new servers.

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Originally Posted by Bindy

There is an article saying over 750,000 copies of FFXIV have been sold to date, but that includes 1.0 (sold in 2010) which seems to be a little over half that number. SE said they were experiencing 300,000 to 350,000 concurrent log ins, while they were prepared to handle about 250,000. Hopefully, they offer free transfers to the new servers for those that want to move, so we can have more room on the crowded servers. Otherwise, our servers will still be full and they will merely be directing new characters to the new servers.

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Yeah I know about the 750k copy sold counting also 1.0, so it's like 400k counting only ffxiv arr, and that's really far from the 5 milion :D
Still they manage to achieve the worst release in mmo history.

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Originally Posted by ZombieLover84

A larger MMO company, with way more experience then SE, halted digital sales.

http://www.nowgamer.com/news/1565854...e_updated.html

While Arenanet developed Guild Wars 1 and 2, NCsoft published. And NCsoft is one of the largest MMO publishers in the world.

Sim City, another game that requires always online, also stopped digital sales. How long has EA and Sim City been around?

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GW2 PLANNED to stop their sales ahead of time, giving fair warning and notice, and that was after they had a sizable amount of players. And they ONLY stopped selling digital copies for a brief period, which meant you could still buy retail versions and play just fine! SE has stopped ALL game sales, ALL character creation, and has shitty lagged out servers that even those WITH the game can't even play on. Don't even try to compare this fiasco to GW2.

And Sim City was a joke, one that FF seems to share.

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Originally Posted by ZombieLover84

That is not accurate. While you did have to be registered and get a code, I didn't register until 2 hours after EA started. So again, they didn't know my numbers.

And while they knew the pre-sell numbers for digital sales before EA, those numbers increased at an unexpected rate during EA, which is why the duty finder crashed so quickly. Most of the people I currently play with did not preorder this game, hard copy or otherwise, until EA. The point where data tracking didn't mean anything anymore because they couldn't change anything at that point. I myself and around 10 real life friends all registered our preorders the first day of EA. We all did not beta test. I personally don't like beta testing. The majority of MMO players do not beta test. We got on EA because 1. We knew we could cancel if we didn't like it and 2. We knew we were going to be able to keep everything when we moved over to launch if we decided to buy the game. All 10 of us did.

Now imagine how many more people in the world did the same thing we did.

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Missed the point. It all blew up during beta4 testing. And someone mentioned in other threads they had stability issues in earlier betas too--it all adds up to them having evidence of a problem well before launch.

Also... as for them getting advanced notice, they've launched multiple online games now, not just XI, XIV 1.0- and ARR, but games that ran on phones, Wakfu, .... this is by NO means their first rodeo.

And a boat load of people were pre-ordering a month in advance.... Beta keys were applied for, approved, and issued BY SQUARE ENIX---so they knew EXACTLY how many were going to be in Beta4, and should have had sufficient evidence as to what to expect at early access. And the datacenters were STILL underpowered during EACH instance.

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Originally Posted by BlueStar62

You know why I don't like threads like this which try to stop people from complaining/getting mad about a big problem? Because it encourages the repeat of the same mistakes. Do you know what happens when enough people get pissed off about a mistake? Those responsible for the mistake get punished, and the mistake doesn't usually happen again.

SE has *no excuse* for making such a stupid planning mistake. They had all the data they needed (being their 3rd FF mmo) for server capacity requirements and all the time in the world to test it during development.

Whoever decided to limit the server capacities to this degree has cost SE a lot of money and made the launch of their new MMO a joke. Those responsible for this should be fired without question, because the same thing would be done in any other industry.

So stop telling people to calm down over something they have plenty of right to be pissed over.

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If only you were right... but your wrong. First of all SE could not have accurate numbers for this launch. That's near impossible. Here's why.

1. This is a relaunch of a FAILED mmo. Not many people give things second chances. Plus this is already WAY more popular then FFXI or FFXIV 1.0 ever was.

2. Digital sales are in instantaneous. Meaning prior to launch or early access or in early access people could STILL BUY THE GAME. (Many people wait till the last minute, read reviews and see what people say about the beta and then buy)

3. They gave all of their 1.0 users free access to the game without having to sign up for anything or let SE know.

4. Because the beta is free you generally have far more users that will try it out then actually buy it. Look at iOS apps. The free versions are usually more popular because their FREE. That being said free to play MMO's are all the rage right now so most would expect a paid MMO to not fare as well.

5. Servers take time to set up and prepare. If I set my servers up last month for EXPECTED sales then something changes and my sales are higher I can't get the new servers running in 10 minutes. Shit takes time.

6. If I am in charge of server capacity I am not in charge of sales estimates. Two different departments. If I can save the company money and have just enough servers then I will probably get a bonus. Especially on a game with low sale expectations. Being the guy who has the company buy way more machines (which cost millions) then needed is not a good thing and would likely get you fired.

7. Presale numbers are estimates not actual numbers.

8. SE development group for this game in is Japan not the USA. MMO's are not big in Japan at all (Most of the JP servers were fine until US/EU people started playing on them.) And its hard to gauge the hype for a title a world away. Maybe SE USA should have communicated better I'll give you that.

9. SE has been having a hard time with sale lately. Tomb Raider under sold. FFXIII and XIII-2 both under sold. RE6 under sold (Capcom not SE but still a JP IP). See a pattern here?

Lastly this is a good thing. Yeah you can't play whenever you want for the first week, so what? MMO's many last years if not a decade. Ones with a strong player base last longer. The more money SE gets the for this title the better SE will be. 1.0 broke SE, this could fix it. You will be able to play soon. Think of this as a rain delay. ^_^

Not to sound negative, but I have a couple of problems with the OP's post.

Firstly, you shouldn't take it upon yourself to "educate" anyone else, to criticize anyone else as being uninformed, and stating people should have facts to support their opinions, when you yourself have no knowledge as to what causes people to form the opinions they do, and have stated yourself that you've pulled numbers out of thin air. As well-intentioned as you may be, this can, and likely will, be seen as arrogant and insulting to many of the people you're addressing.

Secondly, while it is true that SE is currently in the red with this game financially, especially considering its been stated that they've used no third-party investor revenue and have paid for the game completely independently, the developer of a game typically gets more than just 20% of the box price. Retailers also commonly make less than 5% of the box price on new games, which is why most of the gaming specialty stores have failed, and why GameStop NEEDS used game sales to stay in business unless they branch out into other non-video game products.

No I'm not just making these numbers up. I've worked in media retail in the past, and have also learned a bit about the financial side of the industry in college. However, I also don't care enough about this issue to bother with finding/citing sources myself. If you're so inclined, however, I welcome you to do the research yourself if you so choose. By all means please post it here if you do.

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Originally Posted by SuperDevin

If only you were right... but your wrong. First of all SE could not have accurate numbers for this launch. That's near impossible. Here's why.

1. This is a relaunch of a FAILED mmo. Not many people give things second chances. Plus this is already WAY more popular then FFXI or FFXIV 1.0 ever was.

2. Digital sales are in instantaneous. Meaning prior to launch or early access or in early access people could STILL BUY THE GAME. (Many people wait till the last minute, read reviews and see what people say about the beta and then buy)

3. They gave all of their 1.0 users free access to the game without having to sign up for anything or let SE know.

4. Because the beta is free you generally have far more users that will try it out then actually buy it. Look at iOS apps. The free versions are usually more popular because their FREE. That being said free to play MMO's are all the rage right now so most would expect a paid MMO to not fare as well.

5. Servers take time to set up and prepare. If I set my servers up last month for EXPECTED sales then something changes and my sales are higher I can't get the new servers running in 10 minutes. Shit takes time.

6. If I am in charge of server capacity I am not in charge of sales estimates. Two different departments. If I can save the company money and have just enough servers then I will probably get a bonus. Especially on a game with low sale expectations. Being the guy who has the company buy way more machines (which cost millions) then needed is not a good thing and would likely get you fired.

7. Presale numbers are estimates not actual numbers.

8. SE development group for this game in is Japan not the USA. MMO's are not big in Japan at all (Most of the JP servers were fine until US/EU people started playing on them.) And its hard to gauge the hype for a title a world away. Maybe SE USA should have communicated better I'll give you that.

9. SE has been having a hard time with sale lately. Tomb Raider under sold. FFXIII and XIII-2 both under sold. RE6 under sold (Capcom not SE but still a JP IP). See a pattern here?

Lastly this is a good thing. Yeah you can't play whenever you want for the first week, so what? MMO's many last years if not a decade. Ones with a strong player base last longer. The more money SE gets the for this title the better SE will be. 1.0 broke SE, this could fix it. You will be able to play soon. Think of this as a rain delay. ^_^

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All of the debate over questionable numbers is rendered almost moot when you look at what happened in Beta4, and then later in EA.

They've established their capacity at 5k per world. The number bounced around was 150k people initially in Beta4. At 5k cap per server, that would fill 30 servers, and about half of them were locked out from new character creation... so we were pretty much on the mark there with that number.---and we KILLED the servers by Saturday night. They g ave us a 3 hour extension, when many didn't get access again until the last minute, in the middle of the night for most of the world. It basically rendered Beta4 virtually pointless after Saturday night.

How many servers did they put up and carry into EA? How many servers did we wind up with in the end that were locked from new account creation (ie, hit/exceeded 5k cap)?

Wait for that to sink in folks.......