Shouldn't the pre-orders told you how many wouldn't be able to play???

[Vanex]

Oh stop, this was the most preventable mmo mess of all time, numbers don't lie. We knew it in OB, they knew it through preorder numbers. Somebody forgot a zero and made Yoshi P and this game look like sheet. Hopefully it will be fixed tomorrow but there is still NO excuse for it and the person/s responsible for has certainly caused a loss should be terminated if they have not already. Cheers to all others who worked on this awesome game.

[Mhyrria]

Why the heck do people think that 1 server = 1 physical hardware? It's a VM for crying out loud. One hardware is capable of running multiple servers at once.

[LloydShade]

Let see how my masterminded head would have done...

Number of FFXIV 1.0 accounts: known.
Number of FFXIV 1.0 average playerbase: known.
Number of FFXIV 1.0 returning players: unknown.
Number of FFXIV 2.0 pre-orders: partially unknown (pre-orders were available for almost up to release).
Number of FFXIV 2.0 copies sold at release day: unknown until release day.
Number of beta testers for open beta: unknown.
Number of players playing only when the game is free: unknown.
Number of players that will truly pay for the game: unknown.

Estimated amount of servers needed... hum... Blue.

What my masterminded head will tell SquareEnix:
-[ME] Yo Square, FFXIV:ARR, which is the first MMO to ever be re-released can have this ridiculously low number of players (in which we have way too many servers to support) or this crazy high number that would require us to triple our number of servers.
-[SquareEnix] Yeah, that report's a bit inaccurate. How about we wait until you have a proper report before we spent hundred thousands of dollars on equipment that may not even be needed?


Yup, SquareEnix had everything to foretell the re-launch of the first MMO to be ever re-released.

[Duros]

RIFT, SWTOR, TSW and even GW2 all had issued and people raging for the first weeks or months.

Actually SWTOR had a pretty smooth launch. I was playing it since the pre-release, and don't recall any problems anywhere near this bad. I can't speak for the others since I didn't play them at launch.

[SgtPepperUK]

OB registrations mean nothing. Secret World attracted a ton of players for beta but that did not correlate to sales. What was it? One million beta registrations that led to somewhere around 200k sales at launch or shortly thereafter.

Edit:

My theory in FFXIV's case was that there was a flurry of pre-orders in the last week before launch. I know quite a number of people who only bought it after playing the OB.

The sales department probably didn't know how many people the servers could handle, no one thought they needed to as sales weren't expected to be that great.

So the sales team probably sat there thinking Great, look how many copies we're selling and, as so often happens with big companies (the one I work for is no exception), this uptake in sales was either not related to the rest of the company in time or only to those who didn't understand the implications, with those who probably needed to know finding out too late the specifics.

Anyway, that's my theory, it does seem to fit with some of the things Yoshida said and that such a situation can occur in a large company like SE is no surprise, in fact moreso because it's a large company.

[Lockisezmode]

Actually SWTOR had a pretty smooth launch. I was playing it since the pre-release, and don't recall any problems anywhere near this bad. I can't speak for the others since I didn't play them at launch.

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=12777

Here read about how many people complained because they didn't have access. You know since you were either A) One of lucky ones or B) woefully ignorant.

[Duros]

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=12777

Here read about how many people complained because they didn't have access. You know since you were either A) One of lucky ones or B) woefully ignorant.

I guess I was extremely lucky. Cause I had no issues at all. The only thing I remember people complaining about on my server was the lack of real space travel.