Quote Originally Posted by Gunloeth View Post
The incredible part is that this hasn't happened before with FFXIV. The HW and SB and even ShB launches were very smooth. I've been playing since 2.2 (and in 1.0) and have never seen anything like this before. It's a set of really unfortunate circumstances. The only good news here is that the game is tremendously popular - unless people who hate it are logging in just to hate it. I don't know at this point!

How can Square-Enix (or any other company, or person) buy more servers when there are just no chips available to make the machines in the quantities needed? It's not a matter of just adding 3 machines here, or 10 there. When you add capacity to a data centre at this level, you lease a whole floor at once, a massive number of racks. If you can't fill those racks with machines, then leasing empty space is a cost few accountants or CFOs would be happy to approve.
This is almost exactly what happened during the ARR launch, funny enough.

Still, you can't treat the problem with more hardware. Especially temporary floods of activity. There's a reason MMOs usually have troubled launches.

It'll fade within a few days, my only real regret is until then I have to hear all the WoW refugees threatening to punch holes in walls or throw an outright tantrum over 60 cents of subscription fees.