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

[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.

[ZombieLover84]

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.

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.

[MJFERN]

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.

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.

[ZombieLover84]

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.

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.

[Raist]

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.

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.

[MJFERN]

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.

See, this argument is hysterically funny to me. I work in an internet environment. And knowing, for certain what the traffic numbers are going to be is never ever what we shoot for. We shoot to be prepared to handle the MOST traffic we can handle, based on what we sold yesterday and what we hope to sell tomorrow. Which in a case of digital & physical media sales for an online game would mean, to plan to have to host a player for every physical copy printed along with a doomsday 'can we handle that much, really?' number of digital downloads. From the looks of things they didn't even bother to be ready to handle the traffic of just the physical copies of the game.

You think most people waited until EA to buy the game? See, that would indicate to me inherently irresponsible spending. By the time I woke up the morning EA began, there were already traffic and login problems. Who in their right mind goes out to buy access to a game they know there are already issues logging into? If I hadn't already preordered, I'd have waited until this was all sorted out. The same with every single person I know out in the real world who I've talked about this game with. Thankfully for me, the two people I'm most likely to play this game with haven't bought their copies yet. So when this all gets sorted out and I know what server I'm on, they can hop on whenever they decide to without having to worry about character transfers or anything.

[Raist]

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.

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).