every time someone says "a chip shortage, or they can't find more servers".

[kejakalope]

God forbid they rent servers from 3rd party. That would force their techincians to work once they would have to migrate people from rented machines to their own in 2025+. But hey we have like 15 servers on europe and 2x that for japan, big logistics.

Getting a machine to work as a FFXIV server is not like setting up a minecraft server on a random Dell Inspiron. It takes extremely specific hardware.

[Krotoan]

God forbid they rent servers from 3rd party. That would force their techincians to work once they would have to migrate people from rented machines to their own in 2025+. But hey we have like 15 servers on europe and 2x that for japan, big logistics.

The continued smug insistence at the idea that people who do this for a living and work in one of the most tech-forward countries in the world would simply overlook or dismiss temporarily renting server space if it was feasible is maddening.

If it was as easy as "just rent some server space" I'm reasonably sure this would have been implemented months ago in preperation.

[Saefinn]

i think of this. sorry that I could only find a clip in Spanish for the part I wanted. https://youtu.be/xxoEiKfjzlQ

When people deny that it's the issue it makes me think of Flat-Earthers.

You can tell them the reality, you can provide them with the evidence to back it up but because it doesn't fit their world view, everybody else is lying and cannot accept the truth.

God forbid they rent servers from 3rd party. That would force their techincians to work once they would have to migrate people from rented machines to their own in 2025+. But hey we have like 15 servers on europe and 2x that for japan, big logistics.

There's a fair chance they have specific hardware requirements and require a bespoke solution and control over their whole infrastructure. It's a huge load it has to handle whilst maintaining high performance and low ping. I expect they probably do a fair bit to optimise their own servers to this effect, which is the advantage of having control over your own infrastructure.

There's no guarantee third parties will be able to meet their specific needs. Just like buying any old server might not either. Rented server spaces have their use, but hosting a hugely, hugely popular MMORPG I feel like is something that would require its own infrastructure and not a borrowed one.

As for the number of servers between EU and JP, remember that JP servers don't just house JP players, because for many other countries the ping will be better connecting to a JP servers. Speaking as an EU player on a US server, the ping does make a difference (EG: I had to compensate for it in Titan Savage due to the tightness of some mechanics). So it's not like say, somebody in Taiwan is gonna connect to a US datacenter when Japan is a lot closer. And Japan itself is a very densely populated country that probably has a pretty huge FFXIV following.

And until recently, the EU likely was fine for server space. Somebody suggested before that when more EU servers were added that people complain about how long Duty Finder queues were, so there is a disadvantage to having too many servers. So I would suspect JP has the number of servers to match their population else I suspect they'd run into low population complaints.

[Hustensaft]

And until recently, the EU likely was fine for server space. Somebody suggested before that when more EU servers were added that people complain about how long Duty Finder queues were, so there is a disadvantage to having too many servers. So I would suspect JP has the number of servers to match their population else I suspect they'd run into low population complaints.

NA and EU Worlds haven't been fine since Shadowbringers launch.

There are several people tracking the active characters on the lodestone. In these benchmarks, EU and NA have been at over 20k active characters per world since June 2019. In June 2020 they were at 22-24k. All while japanese servers were at 11k per World. JP just has vastly more worlds per DC and per active player. (let's leave the housing implications per world out for now)

Population grew slowly but steadily and servers have been full. They just didn't do anything and had no plans to do so until post Endwalker launch. It's a massive failure on their planning and managment department since they cheapened out to future proof anything.

[ClaudeHerel]

Leave my multibillion dollar corporation alone RIGHT NOW

[Theodric]

The continued smug insistence at the idea that people who do this for a living and work in one of the most tech-forward countries in the world would simply overlook or dismiss temporarily renting server space if it was feasible is maddening.

If it was as easy as "just rent some server space" I'm reasonably sure this would have been implemented months ago in preperation.

It's a mitigation method.

It also isn't unusual for businesses to seek profit even at the cost of sustainability. It's been an issue for a while, now, where the game has sought to pursuit bigger and bigger gains despite not properly being able to handle the amount of players it has already.

Housing is one of the biggest examples of that. Other MMO's manage to provide player housing for each and every player. Some of them are even older than FFXIV itself, or launched around the same time period.

...and before anyone accuses me of being salty due to lacking a house? I have one. Yet I know many people who don't and likely never will manage to get their hands on one through no fault of their own.

[Shialan]

And FFXIV is not Square Enix' sole IP. So what does it matter how much money the company as a whole is worth?

[Theodric]

And FFXIV is not Square Enix' sole IP. So what does it matter how much money the company as a whole is worth?

I'm pretty sure they've admitted in the past that FFXIV is helping to keep them afloat and is extremely profitable. One can assume, then, that they would be bending over backwards to ensure that things are as stable as possible.

As for their other IP's, I believe there was a certain game that lost the company millions and millions. So the idea that every decision the company makes is great strikes me as rather strange. Let's not forget the state of 1.0, either.

Source: https://www.pcgamer.com/uk/square-en...vels-avengers/

[Saefinn]

NA and EU Worlds haven't been fine since Shadowbringers launch.

There are several people tracking the active characters on the lodestone. In these benchmarks, EU and NA have been at over 20k active characters per world since June 2019. In June 2020 they were at 22-24k. All while japanese servers were at 11k per World. JP just has vastly more worlds per DC and per active player. (let's leave the housing implications per world out for now)

Population grew slowly but steadily and servers have been full. They just didn't do anything and had no plans to do so until post Endwalker launch. It's a massive failure on their planning and managment department since they cheapened out to future proof anything.

I didn't know about EU having a population issue before this launch, as far as I understood there wasn't any issues logging in nor creating characters or server stability problems. But then I'm a Balmungian, so maybe my metric of a population issue is different because we've always been a very heavily populated server. To the point where I ended up getting my personal housing on Zalera instead, but that can be attributed to the point that it was picked by the community as the unofficial RP server way back when.

But I know they added a new EU and US data center back in 2019. This was to try and handle the expected population issues in preparation for Shadowbringers.

I also know that the global shortage started around 2018 and 2019 due to trade wars that caused a decline and this of course has been exasperated with COVID19. I do not know if at the time they could have then opened another data center or got more servers because they've only made reference to the shortage more recently but then it has only shown itself to be a real issue more recently. At least as far as I am aware, as I've not seen complaint threads or heard any prior to launch and aside from when we got so many new players that they ran out of digital copies of the game.

But the timing of their last implementation of new servers does match when this all started to become a problem. As referenced here.


This quote might be the more relevant part, because I'd expect it may have had an impact on Japanese companies:

The Japan – Korea trade war that began in 2019 commenced with Japan implementing export restrictions on raw materials used to make chips. Major semiconductor manufacturers SK Hynix and Samsung, both headquartered in South Korea, were caught in the crosshairs trying to secure inventory to buffer production against disruption. The major chipmakers in South Korea were heavily dependent on chemicals produced by Japan vital to chipmaking. The already lingering concern of the semiconductor supply chain from tensions between the US and China heightened as a result of this additional disruption to the production of chips coming out of Asia.

And then of course COVID 19 worsened things.

[HolyReign]

People don't seem to be able to understand, that it doesn't matter how much a company is worth, or how much money they're making from game sales. If a product that they wish to purchase, is not available, due to there being a world-wide shortage of critical components, you can't just throw money at it to fix it.