Aether Data Center and Balmung - an observation from today

[Ayer2015]

Blame your fellow players.... I left over it. Everyone is afk on Balmung, though that was the case even before SB

[Reinha]

So, if the Aether data center's lobby server was the target of the DDoS attack then all worlds would have similar queues. This being not the case, either a) the DDoS attack is targeted specifically at the Balmung hardware or b) far too many people are circumventing the auto AFK kick via various means (which are all over this forum) which artificially inflates the active user count resulting in a massive login queue.

Or maybe, c) there are too many active players on Balmung. The last Lodestone census showed that Balmung had more than twice the amount of changing characters than other "congested" worlds. Balmung's overpopulation has been a known fact for a while and I don't know why people think it has changed for the better during an expansion launch. Consequences of far too many active players are absurdly long login queues and instability.

If the situation is so bad that legit players resemble a DDoS attack, it's time to start moving out. There is nothing SE can do that would significantly change things. It's mad to think that a few hundred people avoiding the afk logout timer would have a noticeable effect over the tens of thousands of people trying to play every day. There is still a queue on Odin, which is just under half the size of Balmung, so Balmung will have login queues until either its activity or population has halved. Probably a month or two longer at least.

[Dualgunner]

Coeurl native here, only time I ever saw big numbers (triple digits are huge for Coeurl) were the 16th and the 18th. Since then things have quieted down and it is rare to see a queue unless it is something like 5.

I think you have an afk issue going on sadly.

Coeurl as well. Can confirm these numbers.

[Thortok2000]

If people were afking, the afking would be around the clock, 24/7. Except the queues are only at peak times.

These aren't afkers, these are active players. The server is just that crowded.

Sure, SE should fix afk-avoidance exploits. They should fix a lot of things. But the afkers aren't causing the issue, stop telling yourself that. It's overpopulation that's causing the issue.

[Aramina]

If people were afking, the afking would be around the clock, 24/7. Except the queues are only at peak times.

Er not exactly....

Example: Let's say a population cap is at 10,000 and there are 5000 afkers. Off hours there are 2500 active players. 2500+5000=7500 so no queue. During peak times there are 7500 active players. 7500+5000=12500 and thus a queue.

[Kerwin]

If people were afking, the afking would be around the clock, 24/7. Except the queues are only at peak times.

These aren't afkers, these are active players. The server is just that crowded.

Sure, SE should fix afk-avoidance exploits. They should fix a lot of things. But the afkers aren't causing the issue, stop telling yourself that. It's overpopulation that's causing the issue.

Wrong. The only time people log out is overnight. People login early morning and afk before prime time so that when they get home from work/school they don't wait 3 hours for a damn queue out of the 3-4 hours of free time they have.

Afk exploiters is a problem, and people don't stop doing it and contesting an already full server.

[VanilleFang]

This is Balmung we're talking about here. Is anyone really surprised?

[Niraves]

You could come play on Hyperion with me! We don't have long queues!

But in all seriousness, it probably is just people afk. And there are so many players on Balmung to beginwith so its gonna be a pain to get through the queues. I can't even imagine trying to play on such a crazily populated server. My dps dungeon queues are over an hour most of the time, if I had to wait in queue for three hours to even play? I can't even..

[Averax]

[ExKage]

If Balmung's populations are so ginormous that their queues of 4 hours (probably 2 to 3x as long as the next largest populated worlds) are entirely population based as it appears to be since the queues sorta disappear around Midnight Pacific to 8am, then Square Enix absolutely should have placed the hard locks on it sooner instead of allowing the continous ability to transfer in. I've been on Balmung since late 2013 and early on I'd made hundreds of in-game friends from around the world and around the United States that were on Balmung from its inception or earlier (pre-Balmung creation from mergers). It's not easy to convince your hundreds of friends to leave, especially when most of those are your RL friends or those you actually play the game with continuously. While cross-duty works in some cases, it's not always the case.