Am I being realistic?

[Takusai]

Which is simply bad project management. There are many professional load testing tools that you can purchase to simulate, in real time, hundreds, thousands and even millions of users performing specific actions on your application. Want to see what it looks like when 50000 users simultaneously try to log into your server? Want to see how your game reacts when 500,000 users try to jump into a queue at the same time? They make tools for testing those very things, like HP Load Runner for instance. Just bad project management here if they're discovering infrastructure issues this late in the game.

I concur with the poor project management scenarios. They might have thought about this potential scenario as well. The Project Management team possibly concluded the likelihood of high volume was highly improbable. It is doubtful we would know the decision made. It is for the theorists to deduce and speculate. We are the players just have to deal with the pain.

[VeriferVenti]

The problem arose because SE did not take a realistic assessment of their server requirements prior to Early Access.

First, early access is only granted to individuals who pre-ordered the game and legacy customers, so SE had a count of the number of people that their servers would have to support for this weekend.
Second, this is an issue that plagued customers during the open beta last weekend, and for it to continue after the beta testing demonstrates that SE did not take the initiative to resolve the issue. Little as I know about servers, I know that it does not take a week to acquire more servers, especially for a company with SE's resources.
Third, SE has not provided adequate communication to users regarding the issues or the steps that are being taken to resolve them. They do not need to release a detailed deployment schedule, but there should be more information available than "We are working on it. Sorry about that.", sent at two hour intervals.
Fourth, the methods through which they have attempted to resolve this by removing the queue results in placing the burden of accessing the game on the user, instead of on the company.
Fifth, the Japanese servers are up and running, and this is creating the impression of discrimination on the part of SE. This was only compounded when one of the Japanese servers, Mandragora, went down, and was restored within an hour. On the other hand, the NA/EU servers have been down for the majority of the day.

As for people complaining, I don't see any reason why people can't vent their frustration at SE in here. To be honest, I doubt anyone from SE is even reading this, so why not let people get this off of their chest?

In the end though, I find myself asking, "Is it realistic for me to expect a company to treat me with respect?" and I just don't want to come to the conclusion that the answer is "no."

[Alesalrok]

I think the lack of communication is the most disappointing thing in all this we all expected there to be issues but not even having a queue so you might eventually get on when there's a free spot for you.

[Takusai]

As for people complaining, I don't see any reason why people can't vent their frustration at SE in here. To be honest, I doubt anyone from SE is even reading this, so why not let people get this off of their chest?

I wouldn't discount that so much. They might not read every one post. I am fairly confident they are reading posts whenever they can. Forums are actually a good way to gauge what is going on in the game. Believe it or not, forum posts are usually the first notification before any server alarm goes off. We are just as important as the program codes that are designed to notify engineers of a problem.

[SuperDevin]

The problem arose because SE did not take a realistic assessment of their server requirements prior to Early Access.

First, early access is only granted to individuals who pre-ordered the game and legacy customers, so SE had a count of the number of people that their servers would have to support for this weekend.
Second, this is an issue that plagued customers during the open beta last weekend, and for it to continue after the beta testing demonstrates that SE did not take the initiative to resolve the issue. Little as I know about servers, I know that it does not take a week to acquire more servers, especially for a company with SE's resources.
Third, SE has not provided adequate communication to users regarding the issues or the steps that are being taken to resolve them. They do not need to release a detailed deployment schedule, but there should be more information available than "We are working on it. Sorry about that.", sent at two hour intervals.
Fourth, the methods through which they have attempted to resolve this by removing the queue results in placing the burden of accessing the game on the user, instead of on the company.
Fifth, the Japanese servers are up and running, and this is creating the impression of discrimination on the part of SE. This was only compounded when one of the Japanese servers, Mandragora, went down, and was restored within an hour. On the other hand, the NA/EU servers have been down for the majority of the day.

As for people complaining, I don't see any reason why people can't vent their frustration at SE in here. To be honest, I doubt anyone from SE is even reading this, so why not let people get this off of their chest?

In the end though, I find myself asking, "Is it realistic for me to expect a company to treat me with respect?" and I just don't want to come to the conclusion that the answer is "no."

Its hard to count numbers when they keep changing. I can still preorder the game at Amazon and other places and get a code.

[Sabyn]

Before you flame others in a thread about the server issues please think about that question. I don't think most of you realize how servers work and what is going on. Basically SE has WAY more players than they expected for EA and probably launch too. They probably didn't find this out until you did. You can't know how many people are going to log on until they actually LOG ON. Then once you see "oh crap we need way more servers plus their are issues with current ones" you have to get more servers which takes time.

SE wants to make money so they are going to work as fast as possible to fix things so that people actually play. That being said having a large player base is a good thing. The more people that play the more content we will get. So basically just wait it out for a few days and hopefully things will turn around. If they don't then rage on. Till then please stop flaming. It doesn't help. Letting SE know there are issues does help. Whining does not.

While I admire your attempt at trying to diffuse a lot of people's anger concerning the connectivity issues, I have to completely disagree with your explanation. Pre-order sales for FFXIV started several months ago (I bought mine in early June, more than 2 months in advance). SE would've had those sales figures several weeks ago. In fact, the only sales figures they wouldn't have had were the people that have been pre-ordering since Beta Test: Phase 4, since that ended roughly a week ago. So, they had a rough estimate of how many people were getting early access. Then, they could've added another, let's say, 20 to 50K to that number, and prepped the login servers, account servers, and game servers to handle that estimated figure. In doing so, it would have avoided this calamity with logging onto the game world.

But, because SE made the same mistake that Blizzard did, Cryptic, NCSoft, Perfect World, and so many other MMO developers, we're all sitting here, arguing and yelling at one another, and generally devolving into Barrens Chat. And all because SE failed to overprepare for launch. 'Nuff said.

[Myrik]

Before you flame others in a thread about the server issues please think about that question. I don't think most of you realize how servers work and what is going on. Basically SE has WAY more players than they expected for EA and probably launch too. They probably didn't find this out until you did. You can't know how many people are going to log on until they actually LOG ON. Then once you see "oh crap we need way more servers plus their are issues with current ones" you have to get more servers which takes time.

SE wants to make money so they are going to work as fast as possible to fix things so that people actually play. That being said having a large player base is a good thing. The more people that play the more content we will get. So basically just wait it out for a few days and hopefully things will turn around. If they don't then rage on. Till then please stop flaming. It doesn't help. Letting SE know there are issues does help. Whining does not.

how is it more than expected? they sold us the god damn early access... they knew to the exact number how many people there would be.......

[SuperDevin]

how is it more than expected? they sold us the god damn early access... they knew to the exact number how many people there would be.......

I can instantly add more. Its called Amazon. You can preorder at any time. Plus just because you preorder it doesn't mean your gunna log in during early access.

[MJFERN]

Its hard to count numbers when they keep changing. I can still preorder the game at Amazon and other places and get a code.

That the number is likely changing every hour, or even minute is mostly irrelevant. The codes have to be redeemed. SE is the only place to redeem the code. So they know from minute to minute exactly how many people have purchased the game and are entitled to EA.

[SuperDevin]

That the number is likely changing every hour, or even minute is mostly irrelevant. The codes have to be redeemed. SE is the only place to redeem the code. So they know from minute to minute exactly how many people have purchased the game and are entitled to EA.

Yes but an influx in code redemptions does not mean I have more servers. If you tell me that you sent out a a party notification on FB and you thought 50 people were showing up and then 100 people call you saying they are on their way it doesn't make your house bigger instantly. And the code redemption is almost infinite, it can generate as many codes as it need to.