Why did they stop kicking out afks like they used to

[Avoidy]

They did this at the start of the expansion because the game actually had so many players logging in that the servers were on fire and they had to temporarily stop selling copies of the game. Eventually, for some reason, the game stopped having an overpopulation issue so the afk-kicker was no longer deemed necessary.
Sad thing is, it didn't even work all that well when it was implemented. We still had the dancing dudes dancing for 24 hours a day 7 days a week. People with basic scripting knowledge (or people with friends who knew it) were running a script that'd tap a button for them every couple of minutes to trick the system while they afk'd in their locked home all day so they could get back in the game after work. The massive queues created a ton of pressure to stay logged in even at times when you'd normally log out, and the problem rapidly became a cyclical one. I hope the cloud infrastructure combined with the dynamis DC will help alleviate these issues in Dawntrail, assuming it even garners enough attention to warrant this kind of problem to begin with of course.

[Poporito_Popoto]

Because the game would be empty otherwise.

Wish that were true. Then I wouldn't have to miss out on S-ranks because I'm stuck in a 50+ person queue waiting on the server transfer. Or getting a failed teleport because the new area is congested.

[ShikiRyougi]

I for one find the kick timers to be so annoying, I'm so glad it's been removed. I don't like having to tab back in to do 1 click after 30 minutes or like hurrying myself while eating dinner just so I don't get kicked out and have to reload back in and so forth, all that stuff makes me less likely to play a game and part of why i'll never play Runescape because of all their afk timer kicks.

the main thing is that I work while playing games at the same time, two monitors, sometimes i'll be working for a while and won't be able to stop doing something in time to do a click in FFXIV, then i'll play for like a couple hours in a row and maybe afk for 30 mins again, etc.

[Oizen]

They like the sell the illusion of activity to new players by keeping the main 3 cities active.

[Atelier-Bagur]

You guys and your crackpot theories. Literally was because EW's launch had severe population overload and people wanting to queue into the game, so they had to put in afk lockouts to accommodate for other players wanting to log in.

Its why Dynamis was created, its also a major reason why they're testing cloud servers to prevent that issue. Although really EW launched at the best time during the WoW/content creator Exodus but we'll see if Dawntrail will have that same success (not even a chance lol)

[Ascended_Demon]

It says the server is full during the wait countdown.

Not to be rude but duty roulette often says "average wait time: however many minutes" and that ends up not being the case. Just because some pop up says so does not make it so. I actually had no idea about the login server processing logins in waves until I saw this thread and then it made sense. The servers literally aren't full, because if they were you'd be waiting a whole lot longer to get in with there being no auto-kick. You'd be waiting for however many people to finally log out of their own accord.

[NekoMataMata]

You guys and your crackpot theories. Literally was because EW's launch had severe population overload and people wanting to queue into the game, so they had to put in afk lockouts to accommodate for other players wanting to log in.

Its why Dynamis was created, its also a major reason why they're testing cloud servers to prevent that issue. Although really EW launched at the best time during the WoW/content creator Exodus but we'll see if Dawntrail will have that same success (not even a chance lol)

I don't see why it wouldn't have that same success on launch. The community hasn't stopped selling the game out to everyone they possibly can, and even if we're currently in a content lull, that's just the normal game cycle these days.

People hop from game to game normally, regardless of if it's single player or not. You know how everyone is constantly throwing money at single player games, switching between each latest release, dumping screenshots and videos on their socials, and whatever else? I'm pretty sure they do it for MMOs too. Retention probably won't be there after a few months, but there will be enough people logging in to make us all miserable with queue times.

[Absurdity]

I don't see why it wouldn't have that same success on launch. The community hasn't stopped selling the game out to everyone they possibly can, and even if we're currently in a content lull, that's just the normal game cycle these days.

Because the WoW exodus coinciding with Endwalker's release meant everyone and their dog was trying the game. This rush is long over so Dawntrail will most likely be back in line with every other XIV expansion launch, because most of those WoW players have experienced XIV now and gone back.
If they were all still here we would probably still be dealing with massive login queues.

[Neoyoshi]

This is how it is with just about every expansion cycle that i can remember since Stormblood; the auto-afk system is implemented for the new expansion, and then usually within the 1st year auto-afk is turned off. I may be wrong about the passage of time on when auto-afk is turned off, but from my recollection, if has felt like it was this long stretch of time in which the auto-afk timer was on. xD