Casual players locked out of FFXIV for indefinite time!

[elvenmad]

Only 2 European Data Center's with 12 servers !
Compared to 3 North American Data Centers with 24 servers How does that even make sense ? no wonder it's near impossible to just sit down to play for an hour or two on EU, queues at "normal" play times are 5k plus with at the min an hour just waiting in queue......doing nothing and hoping you do not get lobby kicked

While all this chaos is happening in the "west" Japan has 3 Data Centers with 32 severs and every time I've looked at Server status there's always been "green" (not full servers available) while for EU and NA ONLY time there are "green" servers is the early hours of the mornings, afternoons and evenings you can forget it there all FULL

Comparing the size of the 3 region data centres it does not make sense EU has so little, pretty sure one "average" country in the EU is easily the same size has Japan.

On 1 January 2021, the population of the EU was estimated at 447.0 million inhabitants for 12 servers ! Population wise NA is not far off same as EU but has twice the amount of servers
December 12, 2021 population of Japan is 125.0 million inhabitants who have 32 servers available

TLDR , it's inevitable it's going to be very hard to play in the EU with the amount of servers it has and I can't see it getting any better in the near future

[Ardeth]

There is no easy solution. Even if SE were to solve 2002, the real issue still is the thousands upon thousands of players trying to log in at the same time - hours in queue. The only thing to do is wait, or somehow convince everyone to spread out their play schedules (log-in time). It will be like this for a good while yet; until everyone stops logging in at the same time. Many will sooner than later start filing out after doing what they wanted in Endwalker as well. Draconian measures will only add to the frustration of players.

Well we can agree on that. My "Draconian" measure was just a spitball idea anyway. I was trying to think of a fair way where everyone got to play and not just no lifers, night workers and people who use 3rd party software.

Unfortunately for me I'm that person who just can't play at all under normal circumstances. And unfortunately my weekend off conesided with a wind storm so I literally am physically unable to at this point. It's like the world is picking on specifically me when all of my neighbors have power and I have to sleep with 3 blankets going on 3 days now.

Anyway I've rambled enough I have to go take a shower and get ready for work.

[M0rrigan]

Only 2 European Data Center's with 12 servers !
Compared to 3 North American Data Centers with 24 servers How does that even make sense ? no wonder it's near impossible to just sit down to play for an hour or two on EU, queues at "normal" play times are 5k plus with at the min an hour just waiting in queue......doing nothing and hoping you do not get lobby kicked

While all this chaos is happening in the "west" Japan has 3 Data Centers with 32 severs and every time I've looked at Server status there's always been "green" (not full servers available) while for EU and NA ONLY time there are "green" servers is the early hours of the mornings, afternoons and evenings you can forget it there all FULL

Comparing the size of the 3 region data centres it does not make sense EU has so little, pretty sure one "average" country in the EU is easily the same size has Japan.

On 1 January 2021, the population of the EU was estimated at 447.0 million inhabitants for 12 servers ! Population wise NA is not far off same as EU but has twice the amount of servers
December 12, 2021 population of Japan is 125.0 million inhabitants who have 32 servers available

TLDR , it's inevitable it's going to be very hard to play in the EU with the amount of servers it has and I can't see it getting any better in the near future

But that doesn't mean an entire region with 400m+ will play the game. Don't get me wrong, I agree that EU needs more worlds or a new DC, but that's not physically possible for now it seems, that's the whole shortage issue.

I was looking for player statistics and although I couldn't find 2021 ones, the latest reports showed that Japan, even though it's a "smaller country" compared to Europe or America as a whole, had more overall players (both account created and active monthly) than the other regions. It's just that they have way more worlds and their playerbase is spread across different servers, which doesn't overload their datacenters. It makes sense NOW that EU datacenters are being overloaded, after a big flux of players that arrived after they could purchase more servers. From their company perspective, it wouldn't make sense to buy more servers just for a launch date back then before the whole shortage issue when the European datacenters weren't doing so bad (not so great but not as bad as now).

[Misutoraru]

Our everyday life in Cerberus is login at 1700 and may be able to get in game around 2030 or 2100 if you are lucky enough not to get a 2002.
Not surprised Cerberus has been congest since 2019, with the big influx or returning players for EW launch, it was destined to be a disaster launch

[flipwizardmagoo]

On Ultros, I’ve noticed that logging in anytime before 1600 is very easy, and any time after will take much longer and possibly result in disconnects and queue drops. This congestion lasts until around midnight, so unless you don’t sleep at night or wake up to play before work, you may not be able to. It’s unfortunate for sure.

[DBriggs304]

Most people who play this work...

[Batbrat]

It's actually a great idea to log everyone out every 8 hours. Think of it this way.

Right now, at any given moment, there's up to 20,000 people waiting in queue.
If we log everyone out every couple hours, we can easily double that-triple that even. We can have even more people waiting in queue instead of anyone actually getting into the game. We should change it so that anyone who logs in just instantly gets kicked right back out. I'm waiting in queue? You're waiting in queue, we're all waiting in queue. Until I get in anyway, then I get to stay but what we really need to do is kick everyone else out.

Also, I think we should have an option to pause our subscriptions. You know...some kind of way to stop paying for a bit. Like maybe some kind of...some kind of system implemented where if we no longer wished to be subbed, we could just stop it. Because this is an outrage, right?? As they give this to us, they need to think about how we got here. How they have billionares who are just sitting there refusing to buy servers that don't exist. Call it something impactful. Like..like cancelling..like uhh..like...unsu-

[Ampheni]

I don't know what kind of "responsibilities" SE could take, if their hands are tied, their options are also very limited.

But if i have to try thinking of something that may satisfy some people, these are the only options I could think of.
1. Add more servers (which is not possible as YoshiP stated before, they simply cannot provide something they don't have and cannot get, if they could we wouldn't be here)
2. Fix 2002 (I don't work for SE, so I cannot say how they set up their login servers, but I can imagine they would get a lot less complaints about the current situation if that's fixed)
3. They could offer an option for active subscribers to refund and cancel this month's subscription, and offer refund for Endwalker expac for people who have yet to experience any part of Endwalker expansion since it's launch.

At least this is all I can could think of to "take responsibilities" according to what yoshiP had already stated in his letters/blog posts.

[Tavieon]

It's actually a great idea to log everyone out every 8 hours. Think of it this way.

Right now, at any given moment, there's up to 20,000 people waiting in queue.
If we log everyone out every couple hours, we can easily double that-triple that even. We can have even more people waiting in queue instead of anyone actually getting into the game. We should change it so that anyone who logs in just instantly gets kicked right back out. I'm waiting in queue? You're waiting in queue, we're all waiting in queue. Until I get in anyway, then I get to stay but what we really need to do is kick everyone else out.

Also, I think we should have an option to pause our subscriptions. You know...some kind of way to stop paying for a bit. Like maybe some kind of...some kind of system implemented where if we no longer wished to be subbed, we could just stop it. Because this is an outrage, right?? As they give this to us, they need to think about how we got here. How they have billionares who are just sitting there refusing to buy servers that don't exist. Call it something impactful. Like..like cancelling..like uhh..like...unsu-

Come to think of it... When I played some other game, when the congestion was at its peak, the developer sometimes didn't let server up not for more than a day. They said 'emergency maintenance' and it happened almost daily or even 12 hour period. Sometimes, the maintenance took almost a workday long. Maybe it was their way to do this?

[IdowhatIwant]

Right now though, if you do not queue in early, you just can not play. And expecting people to queue early is neither fair in regards of their time and even starting to get absurd when it comes for people that are not at home before evening.

Talking about this topic - that there are paying customers that actually are locked out of playing - is something I actually deem rather important. And though I might repeat myself with this, I say it again: No apology or reasoning or whatever will suddenly make it "all right" when a part of the population that is paying for a service and is paying for an expansion is locked out of it until "further notice". That is just wrong.

And to add something of a compensation that actually might be something that works: reimburse days lost.
People that quit their subscription because it doesn't make sense for them to play already miss out on playing the expansion early. And on early access. Now saying: hey, even though you don't want to play under those circumstances - even though you CAN not even play under those circumstances - here is some extra days - fine, right? No, it absolutely is not.

Two Responses:

1. You are not actually locked out, you simply refuse to wait there is an actual difference.
2. You were told this was going to happen months ago, were given an apology months ago, and were given a reason months ago. You still bought the expansion and maintained a subscription.

Is what you are doing is acting entitled by using terms that make the situation sound worst than it really is. The situation is complete crap but you are making out as if SE has specifically prevented you from being able to play. You could have heeded there warning and waited for things to die down but you chose to purchase the expansion and keep your subscription.

Reality is there is nothing SE can do in the immediate time to fix the issue. If you are unable to wait in the queue, or log in early it may be best for you to save your money for the time being.

If you are expecting refunds or anything special perhaps you should read the terms you agreed to. They likely say thank you for your money but if what we sold you blew your house up sorry no refund.