They knew this was coming and did nothing about it.

[Momo_Kozuki]

The "indie company didn't expect huge player explosion" excuse really doesn't work.

Square Enix sold the expansion and charged the monthly fees. Square Enix had the sales number and should have realised that the number greatly exceeded their outdated servers' capacity. Those sales did not happen the morning before EW launch.

.

You forgot that free-trials and people who don't pay for EW yet also access the same servers of EW buyers. And they are still able to log in during EW Early Access, just without the access to EW's contents (MSQ, new regions and new classes).


Basically, it is the same number of pre-EW early access launch who continues do whatever pre-EW they can do, plus the early-access people who flock to shiny and new contents.