When will NA get more shards?

[Arixtotle]

This, try non-peak hours tomorrow and it'll be fine. It's the weekend with an expansion just released, the servers are going to be packed no matter how you look at it.

This isn't about me. It isn't about "packed servers". This is about new players being unable to make a character anywhere. Why do you think this is acceptable practice? Why do you think it's okay for JP to have so many more servers with the same, or even slightly smaller, player base?

[Enla]

This isn't about me. It isn't about "packed servers". This is about new players being unable to make a character anywhere. Why do you think this is acceptable practice? Why do you think it's okay for JP to have so many more servers with the same, or even slightly smaller, player base?

I never said it was, however I'm explaining /why/ it's happening and that come tomorrow for the most part it'll likely be alleviated until Early Access is over due to people needing to work. Please don't put words in my mouth.

Personally I do think they need to add more capabilities for our existing servers to handle the strain, especially as they want new people to jump in, but making new servers entirely is something I'd hesitate at enforcing until the dust has settled and we see how things are actually distributed.

[Arixtotle]

I never said it was, however I'm explaining /why/ it's happening and that come tomorrow for the most part it'll likely be alleviated until Early Access is over due to people needing to work. Please don't put words in my mouth.

Personally I do think they need to add more capabilities for our existing servers to handle the strain, especially as they want new people to jump in, but making new servers entirely is something I'd hesitate at enforcing until the dust has settled and we see how things are actually distributed.

With the new world visit feature I don't get why making new shards is a big deal honestly. It won't spread the players too thin since they could visit other shards. It would allow more players to have houses for one. NA actually has the biggest player base out of the three areas. Last month there were over 400,000 active characters. It's probably at least 500,000 now. I don't understand SE's thinking on this if I'm honest. The only think I can think of is they paid for lesser servers than they have in JP so they can't make more than the 24 shards we have now.

[Mistyregions]

This isn't about me. It isn't about "packed servers". This is about new players being unable to make a character anywhere. Why do you think this is acceptable practice? Why do you think it's okay for JP to have so many more servers with the same, or even slightly smaller, player base?

I dunno probably because NA isnt the center of the known universe and JP takes care of it's own before others. Seeing that it's a JP company I'm sure they are more inclined to take care of there costumer base first.

[CazzT]

I dunno probably because NA isnt the center of the known universe and JP takes care of it's own before others. Seeing that it's a JP company I'm sure they are more inclined to take care of there costumer base first.

If you offer your services in multiple locations, it's common business practice to provide equal level of service to all locations. This isn't a citizenship thing, it's a game.

[JWag12787]

If you offer your services in multiple locations, it's common business practice to provide equal level of service to all locations. This isn't a citizenship thing, it's a game.

Business practice would be supply and demand, if the demand is there, supply it. I agree the queues and registration currently is bad, but often times, it isn't, so is it worth making new shards that will be hallow and empty after the rush of Shadowbringers completes?

[CazzT]

Business practice would be supply and demand, if the demand is there, supply it. I agree the queues and registration currently is bad, but often times, it isn't, so is it worth making new shards that will be hallow and empty after the rush of Shadowbringers completes?

Supply and demand doesn't apply the same way for online gaming. You don't run the game on a toaster just because you have less players in that area of the world. Hence, equal level of service.

As for the servers being ghost towns after the initial population spike of a new expansion? A legit concern. Though at this point, I've seen queue times often enough, throughout the day, and have heard of it from people on other servers and data centers, that I think it's safe to say we can add at least one server to each data center (or a new data center altogether). Still, we don't have the full numbers. Maybe it's just a matter of increasing the allowed number of players on each server, though? Too many variables in play and not enough info available.

Something needs to be done, though.

[JWag12787]

They also are not run evenly. Japan has more shards than NA, and EU has less shards than the other two. So, the demand for servers does play an impact, which is why they launched new EU servers as well.


They have increased how many are allowed on at a time, and the queues dropped significantly after that. Hopefully they are sitting, discussing "how can we offer character creation on servers" kinda meetings.

[CazzT]

They also are not run evenly. Japan has more shards than NA, and EU has less shards than the other two. So, the demand for servers does play an impact, which is why they launched new EU servers as well.


They have increased how many are allowed on at a time, and the queues dropped significantly after that. Hopefully they are sitting, discussing "how can we offer character creation on servers" kinda meetings.

I see what you mean with supply and demand now. Yes, in that regard you don't run more servers than you need to. I didn't read your initial reply that way because it just seems common sense to me.

And yes, hopefully they are. hopefully they are short meetings that are only looking to decide "how many" not "should we". hehe

[Arixtotle]

They also are not run evenly. Japan has more shards than NA, and EU has less shards than the other two. So, the demand for servers does play an impact, which is why they launched new EU servers as well.


They have increased how many are allowed on at a time, and the queues dropped significantly after that. Hopefully they are sitting, discussing "how can we offer character creation on servers" kinda meetings.

Thing is, the demand is there. There are about the same amount of actives on the JP and NA data centers. And yet JP has 32 servers to NA 24. Now I can understand that the market is different. NA likes fuller servers and we yell doom and gloom if servers are empty. But three more servers won't have a bad impact in the long run. Especially with the world visit system now. They were able to see the demand in EU, which had on average 21k actives per shard, now they need to see the demand in NA since there were already 19k active accounts on average per server before ShB launch.

Note: These numbers come from unofficial player census records based on Lodestone data and are not hard numbers. Japanese Source