Regarding the Ongoing Congestion Situation and Compensation

[Machoman]

We were expecting some news to fix the 3 hours queue login ... this compensation does not solve the current problem.

This ^

It's a nice gesture and all, but does not solve the problem of the error 2002.

[Naiw]

The chip shortage hasn't been ongoing for two years. They've had two years to get ready for Endwalker's launch, even longer if you include the fact that people have been complaining about capacity during launch windows since the closed beta of ARR.

They couldn't have predicted the WoW refugee influx, they couldn't have predicted all the effects of the pandemic, but they've had multiple previous smaller scale issues of the same nature during every previous expansion, that all indicated the company needs a MUCH stronger focus on server infrastructure outside of Japan. They've ignored these lessons for the most part, and now that hardware is scarce us customers are paying the price. Had they kept up with demand previously, sure they'd have had some infrastructure sitting idle during the lul periods, they'd probably still be facing off against a lot of congestion, but they wouldn't be faced with a situation as bad as the one they have now, where European customers are facing queue times that aren't just long, but actually impossible due to a combination of queue length and frequent errors resetting progress.

Exactly this. And when it comes to Square Enix in general they have a long history of similar behaviors- pushing issues under the rug and if and only if they're fixing them it's because they see a chance to grab even more of your money. This expansion has been paid by every player who currently can not play and even those who have not bought the expansion is unable to play the game, not everyone are unemployeed and have their parents serve them with food and stuff- some of us are only able to play maybe an hour or two at of course peak hours.

I don't understand people at all that defends this or claims "they warned us", yeah so what? what if HBO warned that all subscribers will be unable to watch their service because everyone wants to see the latest WB movie they got, while the FFXIV user agreement explicitly states that you are not allowed to take legal action against SE, it's probably not unlikely that would succeed in court. This is a paid service and that's when obligations come into play- there are clauses for intermittent loss of service but as this is far from intermittent and it has been predicted by pretty much everyone, non the less they kept selling preorders knowingly that just a handful of the players would be able to play, it's shady at best.

[dutiona]

Exactly this. And when it comes to Square Enix in general they have a long history of similar behaviors- pushing issues under the rug and if and only if they're fixing them it's because they see a chance to grab even more of your money. This expansion has been paid by every player who currently can not play and even those who have not bought the expansion is unable to play the game, not everyone are unemployeed and have their parents serve them with food and stuff- some of us are only able to play maybe an hour or two at of course peak hours.

This. Let's not talk about the glamour dresser not being available as a housing furniture lol.

I don't understand people at all that defends this or claims "they warned us", yeah so what? what if HBO warned that all subscribers will be unable to watch their service because everyone wants to see the latest WB movie they got, while the FFXIV user agreement explicitly states that you are not allowed to take legal action against SE, it's probably not unlikely that would succeed in court. This is a paid service and that's when obligations come into play- there are clauses for intermittent loss of service but as this is far from intermittent and it has been predicted by pretty much everyone, non the less they kept selling preorders knowingly that just a handful of the players would be able to play, it's shady at best.

I agree completely with you. That is shady at best. In the era of cloud computing everywhere, SE should have been able to prevent, mitigate this issue at the very least. They did not. Despite encountering the same issues 3 years ago with ShB, 5 years ago with SB and 9 years ago with ARR (I dont know for HW, I wasn't here). I must add, they knew at each major patch they have issue. They had issue at 5.2, 5.4 with queues ranging from 600 to 1k at raid time. One disconnect within the roster meant 20min of wait fore him to fend off the queue to log back into the instance.
And this issue has been reported time and time again. SE does a poor job at saving your place in queue (it works for a few people, for most of the people it does not). SE does a poor job at not timing you out off of queue (why the hell does it need a full time connection with you again ? A 5min poll with a 15min timeout after a poll-failing and associating your login credentials with your queue ticket should be the absolute minimum).
On that issue, I have my theory. I believe if you have a two-factor authentication your credential changes each time you relog in queue due to re-entering the 6 digits hence making you loose your place in queue.
And finally, SE does a poor job at evolving their infrastructure to something that can scale... They should have been to handle the issue they are facing right now.

[caffe_macchiato]

I've heard a lot of people say that this is the smoothest MMO launch in history. Those people will be satisfied with their free game time. Square Enix Holdings Co., Ltd. is unwilling to put investment in FFXIV, so until they do, it might be wise for the rest of us to find another MMO to play. The shareholders won't care, and players will have something to play instead of waiting in queue. It seems like a win-win solution.

[Zileth]

Honestly super impressive. A whole week of free play time, and also clarifying what the errors mean.

Also, big oof, 10 to 12 hours of congestion for NA/EU. Hopefully the measure they can take to at least prolong the queue session will help a little bit, but obviously there's only so much they can do with a packed login server.

They most likely will be giving out more free play time or items during this time till que times are made better or they get more servers up and running once they can get a hold of the servers to install

[Moonlite]

The 7 days is to buy time to see if they can find a miracle back door fix. It says if problems persist they may extend it. This is all very reasonable.I still question when they put an order in for new servers. They should probably come clean about it. But as long as they are willing to reduce your cost while the login is broken, at this point that is literally the best they can do. So they are doing the best they can do now, the Humpty is broken.

[Zileth]

This. Let's not talk about the glamour dresser not being available as a housing furniture lol.



I agree completely with you. That is shady at best. In the era of cloud computing everywhere, SE should have been able to prevent, mitigate this issue at the very least. They did not. Despite encountering the same issues 3 years ago with ShB, 5 years ago with SB and 9 years ago with ARR (I dont know for HW, I wasn't here). I must add, they knew at each major patch they have issue. They had issue at 5.2, 5.4 with queues ranging from 600 to 1k at raid time. One disconnect within the roster meant 20min of wait fore him to fend off the queue to log back into the instance.
And this issue has been reported time and time again. SE does a poor job at saving your place in queue (it works for a few people, for most of the people it does not). SE does a poor job at not timing you out off of queue (why the hell does it need a full time connection with you again ? A 5min poll with a 15min timeout after a poll-failing and associating your login credentials with your queue ticket should be the absolute minimum).
On that issue, I have my theory. I believe if you have a two-factor authentication your credential changes each time you relog in queue due to re-entering the 6 digits hence making you loose your place in queue.
And finally, SE does a poor job at evolving their infrastructure to something that can scale... They should have been to handle the issue they are facing right now.

There a reason why some games use cloud servers and some dont. I have not clue whats the pros and cons in both really the only thing I know cloud can add more resources without little to no down time and thats about all i know. So could be way to costly to move everything now to cloud is the reason they have not done this or maybe there some type of limitation that wont work with what they are needing so could be the reason.

[Zileth]

I've heard a lot of people say that this is the smoothest MMO launch in history. Those people will be satisfied with their free game time. Square Enix Holdings Co., Ltd. is unwilling to put investment in FFXIV, so until they do, it might be wise for the rest of us to find another MMO to play. The shareholders won't care, and players will have something to play instead of waiting in queue. It seems like a win-win solution.

By all means tell us all these other great MMOs to go play........ Oh, because there is not really.

The only other one would be Black Desert Online however thats nothing like FF14 and the style most liked about WoW and FF14 lol

[dutiona]

There a reason why some games use cloud servers and some dont. I have not clue whats the pros and cons in both really the only thing I know cloud can add more resources without little to no down time and thats about all i know. So could be way to costly to move everything now to cloud is the reason they have not done this or maybe there some type of limitation that wont work with what they are needing so could be the reason.

They have many kind of servers, login server, instances server, world (?) servers, they already have some kind of cloud computing going on right know for the world visit system. I agree that there are issues when running mmo engine on clouds, due to latency etc. The instances servers at the very least should be run in a managed environment so that players have a great experience doing dungeons, trials etc.
But the login/authentication servers ? I don't think so. Yet they give us that crap about a hardcap of 17000 in queue due to server limitations ? Instead of handing 7-days of subscription, just buy dozens of AWS buckets to maintain more simultaneous connection properly and not have the error 2002 plaguing people.
Cloud computing can be costly, but you pay what you use. You can scale up when you need it, then scale down when you don't need it anymore. I don't believe buying more resources for the paying customers cost more than handing them all 7-days (maybe more ?) to everyone.

[JanVanding]

This thread made me realise why I did the right thing getting out of the retail sector when I did.

SE literally does what Blizzard or EA would not, they would not give you any time back period. They gave you 7 days which is pretty exceptional customer service

Yet all I see is whining and "it's not enough" , "I want, I want, I want"

We get it you're a bunch of spoiled brats that are on such an entitlement level from never been told no you make the kid from Charlie and the Chocolate factory look tame.

Yes the issues suck, SE is giving you more compensation than any other company has done in the past, yet you continue to Bray and whine and moan "but I'm the customer and I'm always right "

Look in the mirror, you're the reason the term Karen exists.