To all the people who are complaining about login queues

[Aurikai]

STOP blaming other companies for this mess, sick of this excuse, it's absolutely disgusting.

If you want me to give a week or two, then REFUND my subscription cost, PURE and SIMPLE, let's see how long they operate when they lose a month's worth of subscription costs. So tired of people "white knighting" and making every excuse in the book for their failure. You clearly don't understand people's outrage.

[Borril]

STOP blaming other companies for this mess, sick of this excuse, it's absolutely disgusting.

If you want me to give a week or two, then REFUND my subscription cost, PURE and SIMPLE, let's see how long they operate when they lose a month's worth of subscription costs. So tired of people "white knighting" and making every excuse in the book for their failure. You clearly don't understand people's outrage.

You are getting a week/likely more of free game time. So you are getting exactly what you asked for?

And who's blaming other companies, in general it's a problem hitting tons of companies and its problems on multiple levels, we can be annoyed at square for not expecting a player base jump after a big mmo going down brought a lot of people, even people who never played MMOs, to try a new game, in the middle of a worldwide pandemic that forced many companies to halt productions, as well as supply lines to stop.

I'm not a programmer, I don't work on 14, I honestly think the errors are crappy but I think people are also acting like they think the devs themselves were evilly cackling while they ignored this

[Eli85]

Square-Enix is not a small indie company. There were options on the table for them, but they proved too costly, and so they were dismissed. When a company as big as Square-Enix chooses profits over a good experience for their players, we (the players) are understandably very upset.


Semi-conductor shortage means nothing to these large companies. Don't try and deflect them from blame that they rightly deserve.

[Borril]

Square-Enix is not a small indie company. There were options on the table for them, but they proved too costly, and so they were dismissed. When a company as big as Square-Enix chooses profits over a good experience for their players, we (the players) are understandably very upset.


Semi-conductor shortage means nothing to these large companies. Don't try and deflect them from blame that they rightly deserve.

Apple had to stop production of IPad and iPhone due to this shortage.

Apple is bugger than Square

[Eli85]

Apple had to stop production of IPad and iPhone due to this shortage.

Apple is bugger than Square

Right, because lowering production (you had to produce X before you can stop), is equivalent to doing nothing.


Spoiler: it's not comparable.

[Illmaeran]

So tired of people "white knighting" and making every excuse in the book for their failure. You clearly don't understand people's outrage.

I get it, I sincerely, truly get it as I've experienced similar situations elsewhere. It sucks, full stop. Launch histories of this game and others help to paint a picture that makes this one seem even worse than it is. It doesn't help that other games don't have the login server issues this one does. It doesn't help that other people are able to play when you can't; it only makes the situation worse for the person unable to play.


We "White Knights" get it. We get that people are rightly angry that they're not able to participate in a game they're paying for. We get the need to express that anger and frustration on an official platform. We also get that there's a much larger chain of events that has put things out of SE's reach. We're able to see the broader picture, have paid attention to SE's communication with the players, likely have more empathy than others, and are able to be understanding of the constraints events of the past two, almost three, years have put on international trade.

I know from personal work experience that there's a 6-12 month lead time on *plastic bottles* and that shipping times and costs have more than tripled. That's wreaked havoc with our supply chain and logistics operations. The company I work for's one of the largest in a hobby industry that's a complete luxury and have seen historic growth the past two years. People are home a lot and therefore get involved in hobbies more than they previously did; including trying new games. Many businesses, including the ones who make the components that go into servers, aren't able to get the parts they need to make their product fast enough to keep up with demand, if they're able to make them at all. Even if they can place the order, the lead time on receiving it is likely very long, which means the lead time of the server manufacturers is equally long.

We saw the exhaustion and sadness on Yoshi-P's face when he announced the recent two week delay. We know the CBU3 team have been working ridiculous hours to get things working as well as they can.

We understand that SE had planned the installation of an entire new data center which, when online, would have funneled Oceanic players off existing DCs, reducing burdens on their worlds. This fact alone shows that SE was paying attention to growth, anticipated the need for new servers, and planned accordingly based on projected growth rates. Unfortunately, circumstances beyond SE's control dictated that the DC wasn't able to be installed on the original timetable and the OCE players are still logging into the various JP/NA/EU worlds they have been.

If being empathetic, seeing the broad picture, and understanding that people, departments, and companies are under unprecedented constraints means we're "White Knighting", so be it. It does not, however, mean we can't understand peoples' outrage. Many of us White Knights aren't able to log in either; we just try not to let it upset us much.

[Borril]

Right, because lowering production (you had to produce X before you can stop), is equivalent to doing nothing.


Spoiler: it's not comparable.

I actually meant to write more, but still, the semiconductor shortage us affecting plenty of other businesses, and as I mentioned on my post itself, there are several other factors, I'm not saying g you can't be mad, but I'm saying people are all just raging when it's a problem that we'd likely still hsve even if they had some preparation. We still had a huge player boost that caused player numbers to go way off people's predictions, we still had a shortage that slows diwn production.

Realistically the only smart move I could see at this notice would have been delay Ebdwalkers till the Oceanuc servers were set up, which could help if we had a solid migration there,

[huqboss]

Most of people(including me) understands hardware limitations and that they are reason for long queues - it's fine. What sux is software - server after losing data package simply disconnects you instead of trying to refresh connection. What I found out yesterday is that you have short time to restart launcher and come back to same spot in queue... Now SE pls tell me - how hard is it to reestabilish connection instead of showing error 2002? If you didn't babysit your login screen for 3h you might be too late to restart launcher on time. This is the reason why people are pissed off - we wait for couple of hours just to see error screen and relog to wait even more... On Saturday I wanted to log in ~1pm, was in game ~10pm - bloody 9hours (didn't know yet about need for babysitting of login screen). Fix damn sw problems and all will be fine.

[Soraki-Muppe]

Let us say they fix the 2002, like really fix it, but the long login que remains. How long does anyone think it will take before people get sick of having to wait in que 4-5h? My guess is a few weeks, a month at most before many just give up and stop playing, among those players most are likely to spread the word that players should not go near FFXIV since players will not be able to play what they paid for, it is the kind of PR the devs do not want.
Now I managed to play during early access due to getting up early even during the weekend and not having any other plans, during the weekdays when I have to go to the office I can forget to play, or well que for 4.5 hours in order to run a single expert before I have to get to bed. The expansion is great if you get to play.

Now I do believe that Yoshi-P did not want this situation, I also believe they are doing their best to solve the problem. Even so, 4-5h long ques are not a sustainable situation even without 2002, time is not on their side.

[Greenshaw]

I get it. This isn't good for us, but how many times have they reiterated about semiconductors? MANY, MANY TIMES.

Live Letters, Announcements, and such if you paid attention to their news feed and the letters Naoki Yoshida wrote to us rather recently about Errors and Congestion.

I understand the outrage that is not getting to play your game immediately as soon as you buy it because you're hype about it. The reason why people are getting 2002 errors is simple, as said in the letters Yoshida gave us, summarized: They prevent the Game Servers from crashing and becoming unplayable, and requiring emergency maintenance.

It should be obvious which is worse because it literally kicks everyone out and prevents them from playing the game, compared to trickling through the queue.

Again, the servers are always stressed whenever they've launched a new expansion, and considering that they're wanting to pay more for semiconductors and there being a shortage, welp; there you have it. Yoshida and his team were already trying to rush getting the semiconductors to make the servers they need to handle the kind of load they're dealing with now probably after the player influx when Blizzard shot themselves in the head for WoW alongside the allegations they are facing.

All the dev team tries to do is give their best; this is known since Yoshida does a Live Letter a bit after launch to announce anything new going forward, as well as recap on issues and the like. Every time there's been an expansion release, I've heard this phrase from his lips: "Our team has been working around the clock."

This means they are doing all they can to make sure the launch is clean, even if it is rather muddy right now.

Give it a week or two, then come back. The game time they are giving means this:

This is for the current situation - and if they compensate any more days, I will add them here for how much revenue may be lost based on how many days they compensate for us.

I am so immensely sick of seeing this cop out excuse. Stop white knighting something that was forseen years in advance. Ive been playing the game for 2 months and just browsing the forums and talking with people, ive been informed that these issues have been here since stormblood launch. The game has got more traction since then and shadowbringers blew it up even more. LAST YEAR i recall a friend complaining about login times. They new this expansion was the last of this storyline and people would be swarming to play it. Yet alone the wow players and new players. This should have been addressed at least the moment of endwalker creation. We pay a box price and sub for a game that cant even be played. Stop looking like a complete idiot defending them due to a shortage that happened in the last 5 months. Its how you let companies get to the point we are now with SE servers and Blizzard with their storytelling......