I really can't understand, WHY THERE'S NOT A QUEUE SYSTEM?

[The_Lord]

That which you posted is just as good a speculation as mine... Can you point out anything they ever said that mentions the word "queue"? They only talk about "login restrictions" and that 1017 means you tried to log into a full server.

They never said a single word about how this queue works. From what I can see, that "queue" is just a login processor that pushes people into the world as to handle multiple people trying to login at the same time. It has NOTHING to do with handling the world's population nor it has any kind of real queuing control to let people in as people log out.

Actually my explanation actually has some logic and proof behind it, whereas your "speculation" seems more like a frustration rant, not that I don't understand that. The queue system is still there...every time I finally get past the 1017 errors, I see it before it finally lets me log into the game. It's not the same number every time I see it, and it does count down, though most of the time it logs me in before I hit 0. When you log into the game world and it's full..it would normally put you in a queue. Well you yourself just stated exactly what they communicated...they are limiting the LOGINS. If you are in the queue you have already gotten logged in, now you are simply waiting for the server to actually place your character into the game world. Maybe the miscommunication here is over the definition of what login means. In any case, the queue does exist, they simply are artificially restricting it, so that's why you are getting 1017 and only see the queue right before you get logged into the game.

As to why their infrastructure is set up in this manner, they haven't said, and honestly, they never will.

[MJFERN]

That which you posted is just as good a speculation as mine... Can you point out anything they ever said that mentions the word "queue"? They only talk about "login restrictions" and that 1017 means you tried to log into a full server.

They never said a single word about how this queue works. From what I can see, that "queue" is just a login processor that pushes people into the world as to handle multiple people trying to login at the same time. It has NOTHING to do with handling the world's population nor it has any kind of real queuing control to let people in as people log out.

1017 means that you tried logging into a server that is currently so full on population that they are artificially disabling the queue to prevent the login server from crashing. The concurrent logins created by queues are what was causing some of the problems since beta. Think of it this way, the new population is a soft limit (y), but the login server can handle up to the hard limit (x) names as currently configured. Anyone between the two would be in queue, but since your attempt to log in is X+1 or X+3987, you don't even get the queue.

[AlexionSkylark]

Well, you need to stretch a little your interpretation as to accept that post from SE as proof of your theory about the queue system. It's not a clear explanation of anything, and that's why I categorized it as speculation.

And about logic... let me try to explain it further what I'm trying to point... What I'm saying is that there is no "queue", in the real meaning of what a queue is to other MMOs.

A queue in most MMOs is a mechanism that controls population in a server, keeping it at a hard cap. Working with examples: let's take the 7.500 cap as it was stated now we have on our worlds. So... people keep logging in normally, as long as there's less than 7500 people inside. if person #7501 tries to login, they'll be put as first place in a queue, the next person will be #2 on the queue, and so on. So, if anyone logs out of the world, the queue system puts Mr. 7501 inside, and everybody in the queue moves up a slot. That way, as people log out, people are let in, server population never goes past the hard cap, people eventually gets in, and everyone is happy. The player, who'll eventually get in just having to wait a while; the game, who won't crash for having too many people connected; and the company, who won't have to put up with people complaining about "server full" errors

Now, What I'm saying here is that FF14:ARR does NOT have such a system in place. What it does have is a system that "funnels" people trying to log into a server at the same time into a queue, pushing them to the world server one by one. Nothing else. So, when you get past this "queue", one of two things happens: the server is not full, and you get in, or the server is full and you get a 1017 on your face. So, when they say they are "limiting logins", I take that means only that they, by default, don't have any kind of cap on how many concurrent users are allowed in the worlds, and when they are "activating login restrictions", it merely means they flipped on the switch that puts the 7500 max pop, blowing additional connections off with a 1017.

I don't know you, but I think that this theory explains just about anything that happened the past weeks, including the error where people get a 1017 "while in the queue" (you were waiting for your login to be processed, then when you got through the world was full and you got the error). Catch my drift now?

[Kosmos992k]

As to why their infrastructure is set up in this manner, they haven't said, and honestly, they never will.

To be fair, reading between the lines of the messages from Yoshi and the maintenance notes, you can kind of see what the problem is.

The worlds are split up into zones. There is a single world server that coordinates all the things that are global to that world, everything else is instanced. All zones are separate instances, the zones on the game map (Old Gridania, New Gridania, Central Shroud, etc...) are all instanced zones. The zones for a single world are tracked by the world server. the world server itself supports a certain concurrent access cap (originally 5000, and now 7500-ish). But, that it the entire world, all of the zones taken together. However, each zone instance has it's own capacity for players. I very much doubt that a zone instance hosting 5000 or even 7500 players would function particularly well. I'm guessing though that they are capable of hosting that number of players since it's possible (though unlikely) that all active players in a world might wish to visit Gridania. Crowded though it would be, I don't think the game would stop players entering Gridania.

However to maintain performance for those in the game already, I think that the zone instances employ a soft limit of concurrent sessions. When they are above that limit, the game will prevent a player from logging on if their character would start in a zone already at, or over it's capacity limit. So even if the world itself isn't full, you could potentially get a 1017 error because the zone you are attempting to login to is too full already. This was aptly illustrated during the beta 4 and Early Access when SE limited new character creation (and still are) to prevent the starting zones (the three main cities and the zones immediately adjacent to them) from becoming overloaded and unplayable.

They have consistently stated that as player spread out, they can lift those character creation and login restrictions. I would anticipate that as players do spread across the realm, things will become far easier over time with regard to this issue and SE will be able to stop manually throttling login and character creation and enable the queuing system that functions in the same manner as most posters demand.