this is out of control

[MiniTofu]

Um pre-release early access. This is not official release until June 20. So we are tester and a few that get to start a bit and play around.

Why so upset?

[math101]

Um pre-release early access. This is not official release until June 20. So we are tester and a few that get to start a bit and play around.

Why so upset?

Early access by definition means, you get to access the full product earlier than other people. It definitely does not involve being a tester.

[MiniTofu]

Early access by definition means, you get to access the full product earlier than other people. It definitely does not involve being a tester.

Early Access is meant to stop PR review the game because it is not actually launched till June 20.

MMORPG website, PCGamer, Kotaku, VG247, Polygon, Destrunoid, Massively Overpowered websites are awaiting for official launch review. By then the game should be smooth as much as possible.

[Aramina]

Early Access is meant to stop PR review the game because it is not actually launched till June 20.

MMORPG website, PCGamer, Kotaku, VG247, Polygon, Destrunoid, Massively Overpowered websites are awaiting for official launch review. By then the game should be smooth as much as possible.

No early access is meant to... well.... access something early. What reviewers are doing has nothing to do with it.

[Discordia]

Early Access is meant to stop PR review the game because it is not actually launched till June 20.

MMORPG website, PCGamer, Kotaku, VG247, Polygon, Destrunoid, Massively Overpowered websites are awaiting for official launch review. By then the game should be smooth as much as possible.

Early Access was a bonus for pre-ordering the game. It's like any other pre-order bonus in any other game. Some are physical in nature (e.g., you get a bookmarker, a pin, a plushie, etc.), while most are digital in nature.

In this case, this is a DLC for pre-ordering. This isn't WoW, where there were beta testing available for players to stress test the servers before launch. And since you don't seem to understand how MMO works, this isn't a brand new game. This is just merely an expansion, and as such, SE should've seen this coming from a mile away. If you want to know about their track record, in the past week alone, their reputation has tanked due to major problems with a mobile game (some of you may have heard) called SINoALICE (シノアリスー), which is directed by Yoko Taro (Nier:Automata), and they've probably had a total of maybe 30 hours of uptime over a whole week period in which the servers were crashing, congested and eventually taken down in at least 5 emergency maintenance.

Whoever is in charge of server operations and their network at Squeenix should be fired.

[vio_p]

Early access by definition means, you get to access the full product earlier than other people. It definitely does not involve being a tester.

have you ever played a mmo that had early access and did not receive any fixes during the first week or two?

Personally i've never played a mmo that has been perfect from day one, they've all needed some fixes. Also while there are some people not happy with combining the term tester and paying customer, they need to realize that even though we have paid for the game, pay a monthly rental for the game we are also public testers for the game even if we dont want the be and the only way not to test the game is to stop playing.

[Aramina]

have you ever played a mmo that had early access and did not receive any fixes during the first week or two?

Personally i've never played a mmo that has been perfect from day one, they've all needed some fixes. Also while there are some people not happy with combining the term tester and paying customer, they need to realize that even though we have paid for the game, pay a monthly rental for the game we are also public testers for the game even if we dont want the be and the only way not to test the game is to stop playing.

I never played one that completely prevented you from progressing the story for over 24 hours and counting.

[Chiami]

There are two possible expalantions for this huge mess, given SE is sitting on years of experience running these games AND they also knew (or should have known) how many copies of pre-ordered Stormblood were out there, so knowing how many people would be on the servers going for MSQ wasn't even remotely rocket science.

a) This is a level of incompetence that would get people fired in other areas of business. I can tell you for sure (and I have worked in IT just as people close to me) with something as we are seeing here there would have been blood in the meeting room.

b) This is actually planned. Take their money, let them in early… but don't ensure they can actually continue. If people get angry, do a bit appeasement tactic. Renting extra servers for the intial onslaught seen as an investment not worth the customers possibly lost over this. After all, there are the RPers, the avid fanboys/-girls that excuse everything done by SE (as seen in this thread), and many people who will be annoyed but won't cancel their subscription over this. So as long as the net loss of subscriptions over things like these does not hurt the bottom line, compared to cutting corners (insufficient infrastructure, bad planning, cheap production methods/value etc.), increase of new subscriptions through aggressive market ing etc. … why bother.

The second is an attitude I have seen quite often in large cooperations (yes, from the inside). I don't know if it is the case with SE, but increasingly everything I am seeing in this game points in that direction.

It remains to be seen how SE handles this additional cluster**** within the expansion. But my hopes are extremely low.

Right now "Early Access" simply has turned into "Waiting for Access" and I simply regret having pre-ordered. I doubt I will ever pre-order again, if I actually renew my subscription, given how bad SE has become in balancing classes (WHM...), handling the community beyond appeasement tactics and marketing schemes, and many other in-game issues.

If I want to be treated badly or stand somewhere in line I can have that for free elsewhere.

[Ramiren]

b) This is actually planned. Take their money, let them in early… but don't ensure they can actually continue. If people get angry, do a bit appeasement tactic. Renting extra servers for the intial onslaught seen as an investment not worth the customers possibly lost over this.

This is pretty much the impression I got, it seems to me that Square-Enix just isn't willing to invest in the additional server capacity required to properly cover their product launches, knowing that this capacity may well go to waste once the hype dies down. From a short term business perspective this seems sound. However over the long term, the more people start to see this pattern of long queues, broken events and sporadic service at launch, the less likely they are to actually invest in those games at launch.

I like to think, by and large, FF fans are a pretty smart bunch, most of us aren't just casual gamers, many of us were around before call of duty turned gaming into the cesspool it is today. I don't think anyone is really stupid enough to preorder a third or fourth expansion knowing the state the original game, ARR, first and second expansions all launched in.

As for people saying "this happens with every MMO launch", it doesn't happen with every launch, but it does happen frequently enough, especially to Square-Enix, that they should by now be learning from these mistakes and not repeating them. As consumers our patience only stretches so far, and when you repeat the same capacity issues every single time you launch, people will lose patience. "Don't attribute to malice what you can attribute to stupidity" only applies when the stupidity isn't repeated over and over.

[PubstarHero]

b) This is actually planned. Take their money, let them in early… but don't ensure they can actually continue. If people get angry, do a bit appeasement tactic. Renting extra servers for the intial onslaught seen as an investment not worth the customers possibly lost over this.

The sad thing is that in most businesses, renting intitial servers is pretty much SOP for major launches to prevent messes like this. They had preorder numbers, they have download records, they have registered accounts, AND they have 2 previous major launches under their belt. They should have known that this would happen and that maybe they needed to do a 30-50% boost in instance space for a month. Or you know, use some kind of dynamic usage system they set up with their host. I work in a Datacenter myself, and none of this is particularly hard if your developers know what they are doing, and spinning up load balancing systems is cake.

But the real crime here? Complete radio silence. Nothing has been said from SE or the NA NOC team since 1:45PM yesterday. Where I work, we have to send out notices and status updates a minimum of every 2 hours, even if its "Everything still broken, we have no idea what is causing it".