Splitting up friends defeats the spirit of an MMO. Please reverse this server mess.

[Mibgestalt]

Y'all are acting like this change is for no reason, or only for social reasons.

This change is for technical reasons. So, unless we can weigh in on the technical aspects of it, there's very little to say.

There's really no reason they couldn't have just opened a new empty Data center rather than forcing existing servers over to it besides trying to make sure it flourishes faster, which leads to more money. It's not hard to imagine business decisions, they're always just to make more money.

[Final-Fantasy]

So they should revert their plans just for a handful of people, while the other fourteen million are fine with it, if they weren't where are they all complaining at?

[dragonseth07]

So they should revert their plans just for a handful of people, while the other fourteen million are fine with it, if they weren't where are they all complaining at?

To be fair here, the number of people who actually know this is coming is small. In general, only dedicated players keep an eye on announcements and stuff for a given game. Hell, most players don't even read patch notes, and just get confused when stuff changes.

[InkstainedGwyn]

There's really no reason they couldn't have just opened a new empty Data center rather than forcing existing servers over to it besides trying to make sure it flourishes faster, which leads to more money. It's not hard to imagine business decisions, they're always just to make more money.

"Our current datacentres are full."

"Oh, ok. Just add an entirely new datacentre full of empty worlds."

"But how does that reduce the load on the current datacentres?"

"Just offer free transfers."

"Oh! Right! It worked so well for Balmung, why didn't we think of that?"

[Derio]

Its a change that has to happen, however I do think there should have been implemented a few months before 5.0 and not 4.5

[InkstainedGwyn]

Its a change that has to happen, however I do think there should have been implemented a few months before 5.0 and not 4.5

While we don't have concrete responses, the way it was talked about sounds like it'll be in the latter half of 4.5 - which will only be a few months before 5.0. The understanding is that they're letting people finish up the current raid cycle with their statics.

[Mibgestalt]

"Our current datacentres are full."

"Oh, ok. Just add an entirely new datacentre full of empty worlds."

"But how does that reduce the load on the current datacentres?"

"Just offer free transfers."

"Oh! Right! It worked so well for Balmung, why didn't we think of that?"

What's this strawman?

If they actually LOCKED Balmung instead of letting people transfer onto it or create new characters during low traffic times, we wouldn't be in this mess. If there was a fresh, open data center people could transfer to, and the others were full AND new transfers/creation was locked, equilibrium would absolutely end up happening.

[InkstainedGwyn]

What's this strawman?

If they actually LOCKED Balmung instead of letting people transfer onto it or create new characters during low traffic times, we wouldn't be in this mess. If there was a fresh, open data center people could transfer to, and the others were full AND new transfers/creation was locked, equilibrium would absolutely end up happening.

Except that they did that. Balmung was locked for nearly a year, and they opened up (one? two?) new worlds.

Balmung lost barely a fraction of its population in that time, and a good number of people went to worlds that weren't the new ones, which did nothing to reduce loads on those worlds. Looking at the number of people up at arms at this - for good reasons, because losing statics and friends is a terrible thing - none of them would voluntarily leave. The whole issue is that everybody looks at it and says "well, I don't want to leave, I'll wait for other people to do it."

It's fun to pretend that SE is splitting the datacentres because they just want to be evil, but they stand to gain nothing by splitting them if there's "such a simple explanation" of just opening up an empty datacentre with empty worlds. In fact, given how many people are threatening to unsub over this, they stand to lose money. If they were forcing everyone off then demanding money to let them transfer back onto the worlds they left, I might accept your argument, but they're not. Transfers are going to be free.

I don't think this is great any more than anybody else does. I'm not terribly affected, but I'm not going to pretend others aren't dealing with some pretty awful decisions right now. I just find it hilarious when people present "such an easy solution" as if somebody at SE just made it their Monday decision to split the servers, "logic be damned". They tried equilibrium, and nobody responded. It's not hard to see why they made the decision they did, even if it's screwing a lot of people over.

[Hamada]

... Where to start?

1) You've been paying such fees for 5 years? Are you really comparing the ~$12 a month you pay (~$144 a year) to the fees that SE pays for server rack space? My $25k (note $25,000 a year which is 173.6x higher than what the average pay is) was for 5 VMs (sic- Virtual servers) that are in standby mode. When those go active they jump to approximately $100 an HOUR to run. For SE, to add one server to the DC is going to cost at least a couple hundred thousand dollars a year to run if not more.

2) Mog station profits are not directly flowed back into XIV's budget. The money you spend on that $30 mount does not go directly into Yoshida's coffers.

Running an MMO is not a cheap endeavor. Adding new hardware assets is not cheap nor is it especially easy to reconfigure. You spend a lot of time and money doing these things and all of it is a cost-benefit analysis.

How many posts do you need to read about WoW does it way better, manages their server better and actually upgrades them to understand your stance has no validity? Look at maple story 2, free to play that manages to give everyone an instance house, how is that able to run? What makes SE magically different? I answered that, they just do not want to spend money, even though they get tons though mog station and sub fees. How about some profits from mog station should go back to make the game better, because I am not seeing money put into this game. It is just the same copy/paste minimum funded game so SE share holders and board get more money.

If they wanted to prevent "Raubahn or Pippin EX" How about not have instanced battles that early in the time line if SE's outdated servers can't handle more then 100 people doing it at once?

Y'all are acting like this change is for no reason, or only for social reasons.

This change is for technical reasons. So, unless we can weigh in on the technical aspects of it, there's very little to say.

changed for money profit reasons* they do not want to put money in upgrading hardware, so this is the cheaper option.

To be fair here, the number of people who actually know this is coming is small. In general, only dedicated players keep an eye on announcements and stuff for a given game. Hell, most players don't even read patch notes, and just get confused when stuff changes.

this is true

It's fun to pretend that SE is splitting the datacentres because they just want to be evil, but they stand to gain nothing by splitting them if there's "such a simple explanation"

They "gain" less of a cost then fixing it properly, the dev team always done this for this game, work arounds and shortcuts. I may of voiced out against on a few, tolerated others, but this crosses the line. This is not something the dev team should be short cutting because SE is greedy.

I have faith the development team is able to do a lot more for this game and others if they where allowed to, because the flaws some of these changes bring is very glaring it is short sided. Because of that I am sure money is a strong motivator, or are you going to tell me indie gaming companies and f2p ones have more versatile skill set then the ones at software development for SE?

[Bourne_Endeavor]

So they should revert their plans just for a handful of people, while the other fourteen million are fine with it, if they weren't where are they all complaining at?

First and foremost, there isn't even a fraction of that many players actively playing. The numbers SE releases publicly are based on people who have purchased the game and made a character even if they aren't active anymore. The estimated active playerbase is approximately 600,000. Secondly, the backlash is far higher than "just a handful of people." Regardless, plenty of people don't follow the Live Letters and will only find out about all this when it actually happens.