About these new worlds...

[vampiresupremacy]

Here's my 2 gil.

I don't want new servers; screw your new servers. Unless one of those new servers is a new lobby server I don't want it. What I want is increased capacity for the server I'm on NOW. Ten more NA/EU servers (which I still think is the dumbest thing ever to make those two continents share servers and one country gets its own servers) won't make a difference considering I can't even make connections to the lobby server and it refuses to load the NA/EU server list. Server capacity needs an increase, not new servers. Whatever they do adding new ones won't put a dent in the thousands of players still trying to access the same servers, because I sure as hell am not moving.

I understand your point. I totally agree that the current servers need to be upgraded in capacity and stability. However, those new servers are needed immediately. It is essential for NA/EU to have new servers because of the exact point you made. It was absolutely ridiculous of Square Enix to limit NA/EU servers to about the same amount as Japan, which is a much smaller country. I don't mind NA/EU sharing servers but it is not rocket science to see the difference in population between Japan and the rest of the world.

[Nova_Dresden]

I understand your point. I totally agree that the current servers need to be upgraded in capacity and stability. However, those new servers are needed immediately. It is essential for NA/EU to have new servers because of the exact point you made. It was absolutely ridiculous of Square Enix to limit NA/EU servers to about the same amount as Japan, which is a much smaller country. I don't mind NA/EU sharing servers but it is not rocket science to see the difference in population between Japan and the rest of the world.

Even still, capacity should take priority. You can't even play on Japanese servers anymore because they're filling up with players who can't play their characters on NA/EU. Once those new ones are on they'll just fill up like the JP servers and you fall back to the same issue we're having now: every server has a max capacity of 5000 players and there are WAY more than 5000 players trying to get on each server at the same time.

[Matrinka]

My only thought about the new worlds: what are they going to name them?

[Taelor]

May I make the following suggestions:
1) Close character creation on all NEW worlds.
2) Offer FREE transfers for the first week to Free Companies ONLY.
3) Second week of new worlds, offer FREE transfers for ALL characters.
4) Third week..open new worlds to all.
5) Add an AFK kicker that would log afk players out after 30 min. AFK.

Also, since this would take an additional 2 weeks, I suggest adding 30 days free time as compensation.

Having the new world open to all initially would not resolve the overcrowding problem, I think that this suggestion would.

I am ok with #1. #5 should occur now. I despise #2.

All transfer should be free, that shouldn't even be up for debate.

I doubt they are going to read this and take it seriously, so get off your soap box.

[kevindargie]

They should definitely increase the capacity of the current servers, adding new servers is just completely stupid.. not only are you not fixing anything, but 1017 will still exist for all of our servers because those who have created characters will spam to get in just like usual. The fact that the max amount of people able to log in is less than what they cut the character creation off at is ridiculous. They FINALLY just cut our server off.. yet all fucking week we've been getting nonstop 1017 hours and hours starting at 10am EST.. yet they don't realize it's worse on weekends... are they retarded?

[cbwriter]

so you the op wants to further hamper the ability for those that have not at all been able to create a character yet on the current servers because they are locked has the balls to suggest to lock the new servers as well. Strange!

The reasoning behind this is to get people to transfer OFF the current full servers onto the new ones. Just creating new worlds without first trying to lessen the population of the current worlds just spreads the problems to those new worlds without lessening the current situation. Most Free Companies are probably filled with folks that want to play together and would move to new worlds as a group. If 20 FCs of 10 move off one server. that's 200 emptied connections at one time. They also probably play on their main either exclusively or have alts that would probably move with the FC.

Since you haven't been able to create characters on current servers, being locked out of new servers for 2 weeks wouldn't FURTHER hamper your inability to create characters. As FC's move out those servers should empty enough to slowly allow SE to resume character creation on those servers. And, as I suggested, all servers would be unlocked after allowing all those that wanted to transfer to transfer.

In order to relieve overcrowding, you DO need to provide empty spots for those that want to move to move to.

[edgefu]

NA and EU have their own server we only share the list. Servers are clearly marked EU or NA but not both. We can access those or even the Japan servers so seems to me we share all severs.

[Fengor]

Even still, capacity should take priority. You can't even play on Japanese servers anymore because they're filling up with players who can't play their characters on NA/EU. Once those new ones are on they'll just fill up like the JP servers and you fall back to the same issue we're having now: every server has a max capacity of 5000 players and there are WAY more than 5000 players trying to get on each server at the same time.

This got me a little interested in the math behind this debacle, so I pulled up the most recent letter. I'd also like to point out that this is not aimed at you, Nova, I'm just spitballing numbers here.

On the night following the announcement of our plans to temporarily limit sales of the download version, A Realm Reborn recorded upwards of 218,000 concurrent connections. This is in spite of the fact that the peak login times for separate regions around the world arrive at differing intervals. We estimate that without time zone differences, the total number of concurrent connections would number anywhere from 300,000 to 350,000.

I then pulled up the server list and counted out 50 servers in total between the two data centers (25 NA/EU servers with 4 being legacy and 6 being EU designated; 25 for JP with 4 legacy as well) the number was more even from what I'd heard, but perhaps the new servers are being listed prematurely; we're concerned with the current max player capacity in total not the discrepancy between JP and NA.

Each server has a max capacity of 5k connections (players), simple math tells us they currently can support a max of 250k players. As Yoshi has said, the number of people trying to play is around 50k-100k more than that. Supposedly, these numbers could not be predicted.

According to Gamasutra, as of November 4, 2010, FF14 1.0 had sold 640k copies; 120k in Japan, 210k in North America, and 230,000 in Europe. Now if you're following along at home you'll notice that not only is that total number more than double their current capacity, but NA and EU combined clock in at 440k, much higher than Yoshi's ballpark estimate of concurrent connections from earlier this week.

Now while I admire Yoshi's conservative business decision in estimating that they most certainly wouldn't see the numbers they saw at the game's initial launch after it turned out to be such a steaming turd. It shows that he understands the game needs to be nursed back to health if it has any hope of surviving. However, I think he may have been too conservative in estimating that the game would only see at maximum 39% of its player base returning.

Now keep in mind that's 39% of its original install base, and we'd be fools to think that Yoshi based his estimate on only legacy players returning. Further, he also stated in that letter that the number of characters which can be created on a server far exceeds the max connections it can handle.

So what's the point of all this, or the tl;dr as I'm sure some of you were skimming for. The point is that I don't have enough data to continue making conjectures and assumptions with basic math, but hopefully reading all of that forced you (yes you, you very angry and frustrated person reading my post.) to breath long enough for some of your rage to subside.

[Nova_Dresden]

NA and EU have their own server we only share the list. Servers are clearly marked EU or NA but not both. We can access those or even the Japan servers so seems to me we share all severs.

They still segregated out the Japanese servers to their own datacenter in Japan. The NA/EU servers share a datacenter in what I assume would be England (server time is GMT) so you still have two continents trying to connect to servers in one location and that's the choke point. The individual servers may be marked NA or EU, but there are too few of them compared to JP and both of them share the same lobby server and datacenter because they're stored in the same location. They should have divided the servers similar to WoW where Asia, Oceanic, and NA are all separate if for no other reason than that alone.

<Snip>

So what's the point of all this, or the tl;dr as I'm sure some of you were skimming for. The point is that I don't have enough data to continue making conjectures and assumptions with basic math, but hopefully reading all of that forced you (yes you, you very angry and frustrated person reading my post.) to breath long enough for some of your rage to subside.

Still not working on the rage thing. I spent 3 straight hours clicking the same few buttons and getting 1017'd. Sometimes I had to completely close out because it wouldn't load the server list and keep fully logging in (with that stupid authenticator) trying to get the server list to load. After 3 hours of carpal tunnel pain and clicking I finally got on and did what anyone would do: I walked away from my computer to get some rest after all of that. They sold way more than they could handle and that's usually the fault of the digital download era. You can account for 150K physical copies, but digital downloads are a lot harder to track through multiple vendors. They just went into idiot mode and chose to limit logins and servers based on a number MUCH lower than what they actually got and it's backfiring, horribly, and causing them to start a backslide from what little ground they were making. 1.0 was complete crap, and this one is shaping up much better with a few issues (I'm looking at you 50-man fate alliances spamming flash and every AoE under the sun in a mass blitzkrieg of death giving me ~50+ exp in any fate I join because I can't hit anything before it dies) but it's failing in the most basic part of the entire equation. If we can't log on we can't play, and if we can't play we get pissed the hell off. I took the week off of work and it's beginning to look like I should have just worked my normal week because I'd probably still have the same playtime.

[Tsumujikaze]

I agree somehow, but I'd change a few things to make sure new players will not leave:

May I make the following suggestions:
1) Close character creation on all NEW worlds. [I don't agree fully. I'd say give the new players a chance to enter a few of the new worlds (50% or so) and the other 50% for transfers]
2) Offer FREE transfers for the first week to Free Companies ONLY. [NO! Let's make new players wait even longer to finally be able to play on EU or NA servers. Wooptiedoo! Bad idea!]
3) Second week of new worlds, offer FREE transfers for ALL characters. [I agree, but let's make is the first week, including complete guild transfers]
4) Third week..open new worlds to all. [Second week, open new worlds to all.]
5) Add an AFK kicker that would log afk players out after 30 min. AFK. [Implement ASAP! A timer is needed to lower the congestion of the servers.]

Also, since this would take an additional 2 weeks, I suggest adding 14 days free time as compensation.

Having the new world open to all initially would not resolve the overcrowding problem, I think that this suggestion will get you close.