Aether Data Center Down

[Ablongman]

I'm sorry, Matt, but going to have to call you out on this one.

These errors are not something to do with a bug, or unexpected problem, on the part of the lobby server or World servers. What you're seeing with these errors is a result of the massive congestion surround Balmung and Gilgamesh (two of the largest NA Worlds), which happen to be on Aether. These two Worlds maintain an almost maximum number of concurrent users because of how large the population is on both of them. The errors you're experiencing are due to the large amount of congestion.

...which is something SE could have predicted as early as 2.0 Open Beta, because several online communities (a couple that I know you're at least aware of, if not a part of) had settled on these two servers as their homes by then. Why were these two servers placed on the same datacenter? And what measures has SE taken since that initial blunder to mitigate this congestion, even? Restricting character creation indiscriminately, which negatively affects people who already reside on the server (because sure, preventing me from rolling alts on my home server is -totally- going to affect number of concurrent users, when I can only be online on one character at a time).

I understand and have been patient, Matt, but there's nothing happenstance about what's happening here. I am certain SE saw this coming. The least you folks could have done was make 2002 and 5006 kick us to the post-login launcher rather than aborting the process entirely. Most other games do it this way.

While the Development and Operations teams are working to ensure that the servers are stable and doing everything they can to avoid downtime, unfortunately, this issue a result of the large populations being housed on the Aether data center.

We truly apologize for the frustration experienced and ask for your patience and understanding.

Clearly they're working, because they're sure as hell not posting here. It took you 3 days to acknowledge this at all, which is a recurring issue with this development team. I understand if you'd rather not communicate like, say, Blizzard. But would it have killed you to drop a note just like this on the 19th? I get that communicating doesn't solve the problem, but it at least garners some good faith from people and shows you care. At this point it comes off more as crowd control than anything else.

And before some white knight accuses me of heresy, I love this game. I've continued to support it since 1.0. It's possible (and I'd say preferable) to love something and still be cognizant of its flaws. But as this game grows in popularity, I worry that it'll attract an audience that won't stand for this stuff as many of us have. They won't come here to whine either. They'll just unsub and leave quietly and go play the next big thing. I'd rather see SE rise up to the occasion and succeed, personally.