ELI5: Why the absolute hell did SE not use Azure or AWS as a temporary solution?

[VisperCon]

1. They need a specific chip type to increase the amount of servers.
2. Said chip type is currently hard to find and we have a global shortage of, and have had, for over a year now.
3. All the WoW players came to FFXIV 6 months ago, increasing the active playerbase to a size NOBODY could have predicted.
4. Due to all of the above, they did everything within their power to take care of things while trying to avoid things getting worse.

These all sound like issues of a systemic failure that were years in the making compounded by either an unwillingness to invest or strategize. They had record profits in April of 2021, that was 8 months ago and the population continued to grow MoM. That's just basic trending and forecasting. Companies need to be able to pivot to deal with these types of things but SE's complacent approach to their servers have showed quite the failure. If they "did everything within their power to take care of things"...what exactly did they do?

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

These all sound like issues of a systemic failure that were years in the making compounded by either an unwillingness to invest or strategize. They had record profits in April of 2021, that was 8 months ago and the population continued to grow MoM. That's just basic trending and forecasting. Companies need to be able to pivot to deal with these types of things but SE's complacent approach to their servers have showed quite the failure. If they "did everything within their power to take care of things"...what exactly did they do?

8 months ago was in peak "there are no chips" season. They would have had to forecast this years ago, which means forecasting WoW falling to pieces and almost everyone and their mother jumping ship overnight. No one forecasts growth like that when its outside norms. Also COVID happened, which caused more people to have time at home, increasing counts of logged in players, and at that point, it was too late to fix things.

[Catwho]

These all sound like issues of a systemic failure that were years in the making compounded by either an unwillingness to invest or strategize. They had record profits in April of 2021, that was 8 months ago and the population continued to grow MoM. That's just basic trending and forecasting. Companies need to be able to pivot to deal with these types of things but SE's complacent approach to their servers have showed quite the failure. If they "did everything within their power to take care of things"...what exactly did they do?

They ordered the OCE data center servers last spring (before they announced it during Fan Fest) and were warned they could not be delivered until 2022 which is why it is scheduled for patch 6.1.

[Divinemights]

These all sound like issues of a systemic failure that were years in the making compounded by either an unwillingness to invest or strategize. They had record profits in April of 2021, that was 8 months ago and the population continued to grow MoM. That's just basic trending and forecasting. Companies need to be able to pivot to deal with these types of things but SE's complacent approach to their servers have showed quite the failure. If they "did everything within their power to take care of things"...what exactly did they do?

First, no one is expecting Covid 19
Second, no one is expecting US government would be "not smart" enough to actually launch economy war on China during Covid 19.
A lot of restrictions have been put on TMSC and that Korean semiconductors manufactures where they need to do background check first
What do you expect these manufactures do?
Do the background check or just sell to the companies they recgonize?
This further add burden to the semiconductor shortage.
So get over with it and deal with it