SE: You are loosing potential customers

[Fyce]

We saw their numbers, the game is not doing that well. It is existing.

You saw what numbers? The one released march last year?
I mean, there have been no official numbers released recently, and sites like xivsoul take ages to do a full scan for active characters...

Besides, I don't think there are a lot of subscription based MMORPG doing as well as FFXIV, the old dinosaur that is WoW aside.

But yes, the lodestone is often not up to date with current restrictions, you have to try ingame directly, and not during peak hours.

[SekhmetM]

AFK people should be kicked, though. Not sure why automatic kick was removed.

After an hour AFK people should be kicked.

[Magis]

You saw what numbers? The one released march last year?
I mean, there have been no official numbers released recently, and sites like xivsoul take ages to do a full scan for active characters...

Besides, I don't think there are a lot of subscription based MMORPG doing as well as FFXIV, the old dinosaur that is WoW aside.

But yes, the lodestone is often not up to date with current restrictions, you have to try ingame directly, and not during peak hours.

This site requested an updated figure from SE and they replied with 500k at that date.

http://www.mcvuk.com/news/read/squar...ribers/0143457

At least since January subs sat at 500. Not that it is bad for an MMO.

[Malevicton]

This site requested an updated figure from SE and they replied with 500k at that date.

http://www.mcvuk.com/news/read/squar...ribers/0143457

At least since January subs sat at 500. Not that it is bad for an MMO.

From your own source: "These MMO figures actually come from an original financial report that was filed on March 31st, 2014."

The article was written in January, the articles sources were not... That stupid Polygon article just refuses to die.

[Gillionaire]

Kicking the AFK people would do nothing, SE is the one that locks the server from making a new character not the people that are AFK.

but.. but.. but....
people being logged on adds stress to the servers which is the source of the problem.

If you can't link the correlation between the two, well.. I dunno what to tell ya.

I agree, there needs to be something done about afk/dancers.

Before I went to sleep, just out of curiosity, I decided to do a /stepdance in Gridania.. When I woke up, my character was still logged on dancing away..

Imagine if 20 people did that in a populated spot, that's instant source of lag right there (Mor Dhona/Limsa anybody?)

[Shneibel]

why are we going back to auto kick afk again ? I though we all hate that ? de-ja-vu much ?

[Magis]

From your own source: "These MMO figures actually come from an original financial report that was filed on March 31st, 2014."

The article was written in January, the articles sources were not... That stupid Polygon article just refuses to die.

From my own article:

Updated: These MMO figures actually come from an original financial report that was filed on March 31st, 2014. Square Enix tells MCV that the actual number of Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn paying subscribers sits at 500,000, with over 2.5m registered users. These numbers do not include the game's performance in China, which charges Chinese gamers on a per-minute pay model. A Realm Reborn will launch in Korea in 2015.

Did you stop at the first sentence? Yes, they clarify the original article's numbers was March 2014 not January 2015, and then proceed to double check with SE who gave them the current number.

[Alberel]

I doubt that they add new EU servers. It will be more like transfering the current EU servers to europe.

Correct, they're actually transferring the entire EU datacentre to Europe which means any NA players currently on the EU datacentre will likely see an increase in their ping. We haven't heard much more about this since the London Fanfest though. I was expecting them to do it around the launch of the expansion.

With regards to the OP though I actually agree that they should lift the restrictions. Most other MMOs don't restrict new players in this way, they just use the login queues to regulate population on each server. If a particular server ends up congested then the queue gets long and a lot of players start wanting to transfer to another server to avoid the queue. Handled in this way it's a self-regulating system with no need for artificial character creation restrictions since new players can join their friends and those on busy servers are effectively encouraged to transfer because of the growing queues. If they just offered free transfers from busy to empty servers it would be fine.

[Fyce]

This site requested an updated figure from SE and they replied with 500k at that date.

http://www.mcvuk.com/news/read/squar...ribers/0143457

At least since January subs sat at 500. Not that it is bad for an MMO.

So, either there are 1.5m chinese players, or they jumped from 2.5m to 4m registered users in two months.

[Shneibel]

With regards to the OP though I actually agree that they should lift the restrictions. Most other MMOs don't restrict new players in this way, they just use the login queues to regulate population on each server. If a particular server ends up congested then the queue gets long and a lot of players start wanting to transfer to another server to avoid the queue.

I personally will not approve that way because:
1. Annoying: cannot log in after long work day is more annoying than new player cannot join their friends
2. Encourage the mind set of afk in game - it will become worst than it is now

I'd rather keep my old customers happy than try to please the few new players who I don't know how long they will stay and play. The server lock out is update every 12h and there is certain hours the server will be unlock, the new player can try to get in at those time.