IT folks, realistically what can SE do to alleviate the current situation?

[Hasrat]

Yeah, shortage issues. Getting latest hardware takes time. Let's hope SE could get it sooner.

Personally, I don't even see the "shortage issues" being the major factor here. I mean, obviously it is in getting OCE up. But that's kinda the point. OCE was already in the works. Even without shortages, new hardware would've necessarily been planned for after OCE, meaning after 6.0 launch. Even if shortages were never a problem, they never would've had new hardware ready to go immediately, and by the time they did, much of the chaos will have died down.

So, yeah, a classic "hands are tied" situation. They're doing the best with what they've got. Anyone that's kept up with their updates would know we're in a far better place than we were even a year or two ago, with the small internal improvements they've made. But, that only gets you so far when faced with a tsunami of new players.

[Feronar]

Have players enter death arenas at the que screen for the right to play the rest of the game.

That would require them to set aside instance servers for that purpose, resulting in less server space to play the rest of the game.

[Zyama]

Better question: Do people actually think there are steps that can be taken right now that they are not already taking? Folks really think devs are just sitting back laughing at all the frustration? Just ignoring the problem until it goes away?

Too many people asking "why aren't they doing [x]?" and not enough questioning "what makes you think they're doing nothing?"

Laughing? probably not, but their history proceeds them, for instance the housing dilemma, the game has had housing since 2.1 and they still haven't gotten it right. The simple fact is they got their money for the game and there are enough people that are willing to accept the status quo. Some even going so far as to suggest "working as intended".

[TristanX]

Personally, I don't even see the "shortage issues" being the major factor here. I mean, obviously it is in getting OCE up. But that's kinda the point. OCE was already in the works. Even without shortages, new hardware would've necessarily been planned for after OCE, meaning after 6.0 launch. Even if shortages were never a problem, they never would've had new hardware ready to go immediately, and by the time they did, much of the chaos will have died down.

So, yeah, a classic "hands are tied" situation. They're doing the best with what they've got. Anyone that's kept up with their updates would know we're in a far better place than we were even a year or two ago, with the small internal improvements they've made. But, that only gets you so far when faced with a tsunami of new players.

Yup, massive increase of players. Whatever happening in their server/network team. They are finding solutions. Eventually these issues will be fixed.

Oh, i got 2002 issues on day 1. 3000 queue then 2002 multiple times. 7000 queue after that. I got no more 2002 issues. The wait time is hours though. On day 2, I just login early in the morning with 2 digit queue. My problem solved. Its good to work from home. On office weeks, I use remote desktop to queue 1 hour before peak hours.

[Risq]

I work in big data. We have tens of thousands of servers. A lot of our hardware runs 10 to 50k a pop for a complete server setup. We are just barely getting hardware that should have been delivered 9 months the ago. We have diversified our vendors and are putting up hundreds of thousands of dollars to different vendors in hopes we can get hardware from somewhere faster without sacrificing stability and service we provide while doing it. From a hardware perspective there is probably little they can do or even could have done if they started trying 6 months ago. There is also little way for a company that is not constantly ordering hardware to even have any idea it is this bad.

They have done an amazing job. They have provided compensation, apologized, they sent out a letter in advance setting the expectation that there would be queues like no one has ever seen and the reason for it. They sent out letting players know when peak times are. I have gotten on every day as has most of my FC and friends as we knew if we wanted to get in we do it when others are not.

As consumers of a product there is a number of people not doing things to help and that's where I see a big failing right now. Play when the lines are short and help balance the load. If you can't get on during low volume wait till another time. Don't stress yourself out and be a better person.

I have been working in the industry as well for 25, and personally I see this as the "free and easy" way to address the issue of unhappy users.

It's really easy to say "Sorry" (or hard depending on the person) but it cost you nothing. I'm sorry, here's a fee coupon, is the basic of basics in any industry when you have issues and screw ups.

This is more of an issue of when the Accountants start the "Cost of buying new servers versus Return on existing equipment. That's a matter of how much depreciation is left on the existing life of a servers versus upgrading them for a launch.

They also don't like servers that cost them a lot to buy just sitting around having to be amortized because they were purchased for an initial rush, but now those users lose interest and those new servers are sitting idle, because they weren't purchased for growth, but for fan curiosity and they will be gone after a month or two.

And the point of playing during "Non-Peak" hours is great.

So I'll just tell my boss that I ether have to play during working hours, or I'll have to change my sleep schedule so that I can play after 2am. But that also means I may have to give up any family time I might have.

Yep, that is the better option the more I think of it.

Sometimes I have a fantasy of enough people quitting that upper management has a heart attack over the accounting decisions they have been making to not upgrade any servers for this because they are waiting out the initial curiosity rush.

[Faelel]

remove the queue limit?

[Myrany]

remove the queue limit?

I am not an IT person but I could see full server meltdown if the limit were removed. My non IT brain says the queue limit is there for a hardware reason. Could be wrong but that is how I imagine it.

[Nihility]

almost seems like a perfect storm situation.
Shipping and silicon issues making getting parts to beef up servers or add new ones in any realistic time frame. For a company this size getting new servers isn't really a money constraint they would even consider. Spending money on the company tends to be a good thing for taxes anyways
Then like two months before endwalker we get this weird WoW implosion and giant exodus of players coming to FFXIV
Just from past experience it seems like the servers were improved to a point that could handle double but ended up getting like triple or quadruple

I would imagine the random 2002 isn't really as random as everyone thinks and it would definitely be nice if they could fix it. When it's not weekend/peak time and the queue is only around 2000 or so, it's not really happening at all.
I do feel bad for EU though, they're actually hitting the 12000 limit and getting 2002 for everyone at all times thing

[Catwho]

If this were my software team, we would be:

* Investigating programmatic changes to the login queue to alleviate the 2002 issue. The one thing we can control is our own code, so that's the place to start.
* Contacting the IT vender we ordered the servers from (the OCE data center servers) and asking if we can jump the line for twice the price, paid to the other clients we'd be skipping. (This might not be legal.)


That's really all they can do.

[RethDaron]

They have terrible infrastructure. I don't know how they have things set up but they used the existing servers for so many excuses before this went down (Balmung being completely out of housing way before the pandemic but they can't add more instanced servers as an example), and I can't help but feel like they kept kicking the can down the road until it led to this.