All of Aether closed down

[Barraind]

Seems that when the DC split occurred, it scared a lot of people to changing to Aether servers, mainly because "CRYSTAL WILL BE THE RP SERVER, AND WE WON'T BE ABLE TO RAID ANYMORE!!!". You know, because there weren't players on Crystal servers that raid, as clearly evidenced by the present state of Aether. Can't even login without a queue anymore, which never happened before the fact. There were other factors too, but that seems to be a big one.

Its a significantly deeper issue.







For comparison sake:


Total Pop:

Elemental: 108k
Gaia: 108k
Mana: 123k

Aether: 155k
Crystal: 162k
Primal: 152k


Active Pop:

Elemental: 21k
Gaia: 20k
Mana: 23k

Aether: 34k
Crystal: 30k
Primal: 33k


Based on how Mana behaves (when it gets locked and congested), you can assume a datacenter is too populated (stress on the login and world servers, ect) when it sits at 70% of the population of every NA datacenter, either total or Active (or a function of both).

Given that, and given that JP datacenters have 3 more servers each than NA servers, it isnt surprising that NA servers are going to be continually overstressed and overpopulated for the purpose of character creation, and if logic for world status and character creation follows how the JP setup works, it could continue to worsen.

Also note that every server on crystal is locked for character creation roughly 12 hours a day.

[Hasrat]

For everyone saying "go crystal" and "preferred servers" and everything, anecdote: Currently on Zalera, preferred server off and on, seems to usually be preferred. Even at the deadest middle of the night hours, I'm still getting a login queue. 20 or less; it's not much, but it's there. Yeah, the server opens up to creation/transfers off and on. But, it one of the low-pop servers can still have a queue at those hours, preferred or not, capacity must be tight. Maybe probably it'll die down after a while. Maybe not as much as expected. Who can say. What I can say is, back when I was on Mateus at 4.0, login queues weren't a thing after the first few days at these same hours (unless I'm remembering wrong). That was when Mateus was also low pop, but growing, after Balmung was locked.

Point is, either capacity is lower than it once was (artificially throttled to prevent breakage), or servers genuinely are brushing up on capacity during prime hours. Or something else. In any event, new servers should probably still be needed. What we have isn't cutting it.

[Sandoria]

I love being on Aether. Most my friends are here and it's got a generally positive community. Not being able to invite friends or family to come play with me really stinks though. I've made an alt on Crystal to visit friends who have no choice but to roll there but it's not the same as being able to adventure with them on my main. Hope they add a server or two so people don't have to choose between friends they play with.

[Vrankyl]

For everyone saying "go crystal" and "preferred servers" and everything, anecdote: Currently on Zalera, preferred server off and on, seems to usually be preferred. Even at the deadest middle of the night hours, I'm still getting a login queue. 20 or less; it's not much, but it's there. Yeah, the server opens up to creation/transfers off and on. But, it one of the low-pop servers can still have a queue at those hours, preferred or not, capacity must be tight. Maybe probably it'll die down after a while. Maybe not as much as expected. Who can say. What I can say is, back when I was on Mateus at 4.0, login queues weren't a thing after the first few days at these same hours (unless I'm remembering wrong). That was when Mateus was also low pop, but growing, after Balmung was locked.

Point is, either capacity is lower than it once was (artificially throttled to prevent breakage), or servers genuinely are brushing up on capacity during prime hours. Or something else. In any event, new servers should probably still be needed. What we have isn't cutting it.

Log on queues on preferred servers likely have little to do with their actual population and are more likely a result of the World Visit feature. I know many people based on Balmung who have been doing all of their expac stuff on Zalera to avoid running into full instances and queues. Which of course in turn creates queues on Zalera because of the people on there. The Preferred Status is likely a status based off of the number of characters that have Zalera as a home server not how many are actually on the server.

[worldofneil]

$18 will solve your issue. Just pick a sever on Crystal and transfer there.

Sorry, but no. You cannot transfer to a world that is actually marked as congested. A standard world that is currently locked from creation yes, but not a congested one.

I did that last week.

Assuming your profile has updated, you transferred to Coeurl which is a "Standard" world hence it let you transfer. That doesn't work for Aether (this thread) where all worlds are marked as congested.

The Standard/Congested status only changes with patches so until there's maintenance there's no chance of it changing.

[Hitoshura]

$18 will solve your issue. Just pick a sever on Crystal and transfer there.

I did that last week. So far all those RPers and fursuit-players or whatever they’re supposed to be in sone folk’s imaginations... have not given me cooties... and my results in PUGs haven’t been different... so, I guess it’s not all that bad here with the freaks

The one thing that did change is my usual login queue went from 3000 to 42...

This... isn't really a viable solution. People have friends and communities, housing, FC's -- it's unreasonable for the 'solution' to be to uproot those communities with no guarantee of FC housing, and potentially at a cost, in order to play with our friends who have finally become interested due to the massive hype around Shadowbringers. One of the major reasons people lose interest in MMO's is obstacles in the path of playing with friends. It's unwise to punish both current players and new players simply because the new players are joining at a time where it's expected that many people will be joining. Usually, you'd want to accommodate for something like that.

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

Sorry, but no. You cannot transfer to a world that is actually marked as congested. A standard world that is currently locked from creation yes, but not a congested one.



Assuming your profile has updated, you transferred to Coeurl which is a "Standard" world hence it let you transfer. That doesn't work for Aether (this thread) where all worlds are marked as congested.

The Standard/Congested status only changes with patches so until there's maintenance there's no chance of it changing.

What they are saying is you can solve your problem by moving from aether to crystal.

Using the advice that everyone gave to those on balmung who asked for it to be opened. "just go to a different server"

(legacy character from before server merges. was on balmung, don't rp, moved to mateus for housing)

[Microbrewed]

I posted a similar post about a week ago. I've been trying to play with my friends for a few weeks now and still haven't been able to transfer to ANY server on Aether.

The thing I don't get is why all the servers are listed as congested on Aether when the population on some servers isn't congested at all. I have a level 1 alt I made on Jenova years ago and when I logged on late PST last night there was no queue. Right now there is a 20 person queue that goes by in less than 1 minute. This server is still listed as congested. Coeurl is often listed as green standard and has a 36 person queue. How does this work? Why did they artificially lock ALL servers on Aether when the populations of some of the servers in the data center aren't congested at all. I get they want to force people onto Crystal but this is just preventing people from playing with their friends and family. This is especially true for players that were on a break during the data center splits and came back to learn they can no longer play with their FC or friends.

[Ferth]

Its a significantly deeper issue...

I find it really interesting that the data centers in japan all have three more servers and the data centers for North America all have 50% more of the total/active populations.

Someone is sitting on their hands at SE.

Is it that much more expensive to have more servers in North America? Why are they being so stingy with this?

[MPK]

If we add another Aether world more people would immediately transfer over from Crystal to Aether making it immediately congested which will make the population balance more skewed.

Just got to figure out why people don't want to play on Crystal.