This launch is a mess.

[Freki42]

As a bus driver, you don't sell 300 bus tickets when your bus can only sit 100 travelers for that trip.
As a restaurant employee, you don't take money for 200 meals when you only have enough food to make 100 meals

I could provide hundreds of these examples, clearly not needed though, and ...

As a game developer, you don't sell more expansion keys than your servers can host.

Simple really.

That being said, how do you think the community will react to this?

if that is the case they could not sell any more products or allow account activations once the amount of accounts grew to more than they can handle, which means it would not exist at all anymore and not have had now 4 expansions in the past 8 or so years. Though the idea of the bus tickets is a similar idea it is not the case and here is why. there were X (say 4000) of the physical collector's editions available. in your scenario if they sold more than they have available you are 100% correct unless they said hey there was an error and those in excess of the amount in order of time would get that money refunded. but digital content is not limited untill the ACCOUNT DATABASE is full, which generally will be a huge number. it is when the account database gets full and crashes that is when they should have acted before. but till then, the amount of accounts and expansions purchased does not matter because not everyone generally will be running and signing on except during times like this. the game grew in popularity for the last 4-6 years and in the past year skyrocketed and there was no way to anticipate Blizzard coming under fire for deplorable work conditions and leaks that the gms hated the players (high ups) and didn't care what happened with the players if they came or went they expected if one left two or more would take their place till one leaves again and they again expected 2 or more to take their place. The time was right for a mass exodus because of these two factors since the game play had been stale for a while (because of the latter of the above) people left, what did they find out there? FF14 still holding strong and growing so people told people that told people. and in 2020 finally they came in droves and by then we were already well into the run on computers and servers because of pandemic and then the chip shortage. nothing could be done at that point. so NO there is nothing like a cap that has been reached and if it was set that way then the game would NEVER survive or GROW

[Floppyjo]

if that is the case they could not sell any more products or allow account activations once the amount of accounts grew to more than they can handle, which means it would not exist at all anymore and not have had now 4 expansions in the past 8 or so years. Though the idea of the bus tickets is a similar idea it is not the case and here is why. there were X (say 4000) of the physical collector's editions available. in your scenario if they sold more than they have available you are 100% correct unless they said hey there was an error and those in excess of the amount in order of time would get that money refunded. but digital content is not limited untill the ACCOUNT DATABASE is full, which generally will be a huge number. it is when the account database gets full and crashes that is when they should have acted before. but till then, the amount of accounts and expansions purchased does not matter because not everyone generally will be running and signing on except during times like this. the game grew in popularity for the last 4-6 years and in the past year skyrocketed and there was no way to anticipate Blizzard coming under fire for deplorable work conditions and leaks that the gms hated the players (high ups) and didn't care what happened with the players if they came or went they expected if one left two or more would take their place till one leaves again and they again expected 2 or more to take their place. The time was right for a mass exodus because of these two factors since the game play had been stale for a while (because of the latter of the above) people left, what did they find out there? FF14 still holding strong and growing so people told people that told people. and in 2020 finally they came in droves and by then we were already well into the run on computers and servers because of pandemic and then the chip shortage. nothing could be done at that point. so NO there is nothing like a cap that has been reached and if it was set that way then the game would NEVER survive or GROW

Stop gaslighting, most of what you have said doesn't make sense. Your account database presumption is meaningless here. Just because a computer can create records to an insane number, doesn't mean that there is no cap on account codes. No competent business designs an accounts system that continues to take purchases in excess of the inventory on hand, this is common business accounting.

The word is "forecasting", many business models across all industries, especially in consumer services rely on this, daily. They knew ahead of release that this was going to be an issue, we know this because they told us so, if you research communication prior to EA. They should have stopped and said, "Listen, we want to provide the best service. We know what will bring the experience into the red, because we are professionals and we cannot compromise the experience for those who got in first. As at this time we are "All out of stock"". Just like every other business does when their products run out.

If you have been playing in the month prior to EA, you would be aware that you have been in a queue almost every time you have tried to log in for the last month, and this is when Endwalker isn't even live yet. The company would be even more aware of this. They would also have the ability to identify the numbers for purchases of the expansion and which of those expansion upgraded accounts were online and which were not. This would tell them who was waiting for release to resub after making the expansion purchase(forecasting), there is no way they were unaware that they sold more than they were capable of serving as stated. Your misunderstanding of digital goods is flawed. I also work in a digital goods and services industry for internet services and there are policies and processes in place to check for "service availability". We don't sell digital services to people where they cannot use the product.

The conversation about blizzard and growing population, etc ... all off on a tangent. They already told us well in advance that there was going to be a queue's issue. We know they were aware months in advance that their population has increased without the expansion even landing because of the Blizzard exodus. They had mnore than enough time to make changes to accomodate this, including pushing the release date back until they were in a position to provide the service.

There is a cap, you saying there isn't one when all logic, reason and decades of digital services business practices show this to be the norm across the world, won't make your fantasy any truer. You don't seem to understand accounting, supply and demand and provisioning in the digital sector very well.

Get a job at an ISP in the networking or provisioning side of the business, this will help you understand.

[Freki42]

Stop gaslighting, most of what you have said doesn't make sense. Your account database presumption is meaningless here. Just because a computer can create records to an insane number, doesn't mean that there is no cap on account codes. No competent business designs an accounts system that continues to take purchases in excess of the inventory on hand, this is common business accounting.

The word is "forecasting", many business models across all industries, especially in consumer services rely on this, daily. They knew ahead of release that this was going to be an issue, we know this because they told us so, if you research communication prior to EA. They should have stopped and said, "Listen, we want to provide the best service. We know what will bring the experience into the red, because we are professionals and we cannot compromise the experience for those who got in first. As at this time we are "All out of stock"". Just like every other business does when their products run out.

If you have been playing in the month prior to EA, you would be aware that you have been in a queue almost every time you have tried to log in for the last month, and this is when Endwalker isn't even live yet. The company would be even more aware of this. They would also have the ability to identify the numbers for purchases of the expansion and which of those expansion upgraded accounts were online and which were not. This would tell them who was waiting for release to resub after making the expansion purchase(forecasting), there is no way they were unaware that they sold more than they were capable of serving as stated. Your misunderstanding of digital goods is flawed. I also work in a digital goods and services industry for internet services and there are policies and processes in place to check for "service availability". We don't sell digital services to people where they cannot use the product.

The conversation about blizzard and growing population, etc ... all off on a tangent. They already told us well in advance that there was going to be a queue's issue. We know they were aware months in advance that their population has increased without the expansion even landing because of the Blizzard exodus. They had mnore than enough time to make changes to accomodate this, including pushing the release date back until they were in a position to provide the service.

There is a cap, you saying there isn't one when all logic, reason and decades of digital services business practices show this to be the norm across the world, won't make your fantasy any truer. You don't seem to understand accounting, supply and demand and provisioning in the digital sector very well.

Get a job at an ISP in the networking or provisioning side of the business, this will help you understand.

no you stop trying to gas light me. because if you said alright, we can only hold 850 people at any one time per world server then the number of accounts could never increase till they upgraded that (you yourself said you can't sell 300 tickets to the same bus time/route that can only seat 100 in your post) so that is what you are limiting the amount of codes that can be bought till an account is removed from that database, that is a small number. and if you know mmos like you try to know, those first 850 people will not all log on at any one time and without more people then you can not get a revolving period of time where people will play. because they will all either QUIT and stop paying OR they will only play during the prime time for gaming on that world. and you COULD only delete an account if the user requested it deleted because they would loose progress and if they were intending on coming back. the game would slowly die as more and more couldn't play at the same time as their life circumstances dictated, because you would have no money coming in.

Now could you get unlimited accounts to work? heck no you couldn't. that was to show the flexability of the digital workings of the server environment. the server environment user numbers are only limited by the user database programming and maintenance. so you want to "FORCAST" how many people will be there.. sure thing alright lets say they've gotten through base launch and been operating 2 years (heavensward time period i believe) they might have hit that server limit to keep the server working and not overloading it. Alright perfect, now they are at a loss because they can not allow new players to buy anything till the old crew requested their account removed. OK! great! now, how to they keep the money coming in? they can only offer it to those accounts that are still in the database but they can't sell more because of your "you can not over sell the server limit"

That's what you said. it will be all out of stock, and though they might get one expansion maybe two eventually most people will bow out as less and less keep going past a month or two when they get that. and eventually the game will be shuttered and never get to survive to a 4th expansion. This is why they can not and will not limit the number of DIGITAL products sold. you are trying to make it on them, when the issue is just purely a queue overloading and that is something to look into YES. and YES I've been playing for over 1.5 years straight and I've had queues almost 95-99% of the time playing during that time, never once was it over 2000 people except when there was a server outage and people flooding back in when it came back up. most queues were less than 900 and even then that only took about 5 minutes. I understand supply and demand, provisioning (in the digital sector) and accounting (though i'm not a certified accountant) but I am a certified IT and security specialist, I pointed flaws in your theory and you say i'm gaslighting you? If that is so, your own response telling me i'm gaslighting me and even then ATTACK my personal knowledge you know nothing about, my AGE that you know nothing about, and MY experience that you know nothing about, if that isn't gaslighting then well someone has their definition wrong. I never said that you were wrong, on the contrary i AGREED with you if the product was PHYSICAL, 100% agreed and pointed out your examples were of a physical nature not of a digital nature which you were trying to apply the physical upon the digital which is rarely the case.

Answer me this since you know it all, how many IPv4 addresses are still available? If they are when will they be exhausted, if they are exhausted how can the internet work by using IPv4 at this point? please enlighten me on your knowledge.