Quote Originally Posted by Krotoan View Post
If it was as easy as "just rent some server space" I'm reasonably sure this would have been implemented months ago in preperation.
The problem -- at least with the MMO architectures I have been inside of, and presumably with FFXIV's -- is that your logical "server" is not a single physical server. There's a cluster of database servers that handle all your items and character data, there are instance servers for zones and duties, etc. "Leviathan" or "Lamia" or whatnot aren't a single machine, but a whole cluster of many different servers working together. And those physical servers all talk to each other. They talk a lot. That is not traffic you want going outside a physical datacenter and traveling across internet infrastructure, because it will absolutely destroy the game's ability to function.

Or at least, to function without so many weird performance problems that we all want to burn everything down.

Leasing servers would, of necessity, require doing that; when you lease server space from some cloud computing company, even if you go with bare-metal servers -- and even assuming that company has servers that meet the specific performance requirements that FFXIV has -- those servers will still be in that provider's data center, not Square-Enix's.

(Though, I mean, I guess if people couldn't play even after logging in, it would mean less people logging in. So I suppose it could still indirectly solve the queue problem...)