7 days of Free Game Time due to Congestion.

[Greenshaw]

The white knighting in this thread and others makes me chuckle. The company had vast foresight on server issues before the surge of players even happened. The money they have now lost due to player compensation could have just been spent making actual servers. They would be less in the hole if they had simply done that. We dont know all the details, sure, but its a gross mishandling of a launch. Make any excuse or retort you want but the game wont even let you get in que or let new players make characters and they allow people who do get in to stay in. Its sad, the game being this good and unable to even play it. AND this is just early access, can you imagine how much worse it will be on actual launch date. Cant wait to see even more "Just give it another week, it will get better!!!" posts.

[RethDaron]

I doubt the queues will go down enough over the next 7 days for most people with normal work schedules to play any reasonable amount of time. Hope they stick to their word and extend if further if needed.

[Naiw]

The white knighting in this thread and others makes me chuckle. The company had vast foresight on server issues before the surge of players even happened. The money they have now lost due to player compensation could have just been spent making actual servers. They would be less in the hole if they had simply done that. We dont know all the details, sure, but its a gross mishandling of a launch. Make any excuse or retort you want but the game wont even let you get in que or let new players make characters and they allow people who do get in to stay in. Its sad, the game being this good and unable to even play it. AND this is just early access, can you imagine how much worse it will be on actual launch date. Cant wait to see even more "Just give it another week, it will get better!!!" posts.

Well, Just think about all the kids who got/get this game for x-mas, servers congested- can't create new characters. I predict a class action suite.

[Greenshaw]

Well, Just think about all the kids who got/get this game for x-mas, servers congested- can't create new characters. I predict a class action suite.

All the people who free trail or god forbid buy the game to play with friends for the release as well!! Bro, how do you sell a game people cant even make a character for....
Whoever is on finance team, should be reviewed for sure. Don't give me this crap about server parts. You can still purchase them as of right now for a premium. That premium is significantly less than the money they squandered with compensation.

[MD5Ray01]

That isn't exactly true. There's a 6-month to a year long wait period for stuff that needs semiconductors due to a shortage.

[DeaconMoore]

Well, Just think about all the kids who got/get this game for x-mas, servers congested- can't create new characters. I predict a class action suite.

It's not Christmas yet so of course they can't make characters yet. Also where are ya getting that suite? Does it have enough armchairs for the actors playing lawyers?

[Naiw]

All the people who free trail or god forbid buy the game to play with friends for the release as well!! Bro, how do you sell a game people cant even make a character for....
Whoever is on finance team, should be reviewed for sure. Don't give me this crap about server parts. You can still purchase them as of right now for a premium. That premium is significantly less than the money they squandered with compensation.

Now I don't know about Square Enix but in general Japanese companies don't operate like companies in the western world do, every single decision has to go through each upper manager until it reaches the end boss, it could be anyone on any level who thought the purchase was "unnecessary", check the ringi decision system- I've dealt a lot with this through work. But I believe they probably realize they made a huge mistake by now question is what happens over x-mas but it's probably not unlikely that heads will roll.

[Navnav]

I know you can't afford food now, but once you get a job, I will give you this free burger............................................

[CazzT]

It's actually good, yes people are going to be disappointed ATM of course because they did everything humanly possible to at least try and reduce the impact to people

They didn't, though. They've known of this issue for years. It's happened with every expansion launch. Apparently it happened with ARR launch, too. This isn't something they haven't dealt with before. So no, they didn't do everything they could. By all evidence, they've done nothing about it except give out free game time. And while 7 days is very welcome and very generous, it's also less than a bandaid for a gaping wound that could have been prevented. As another person pointed out, for some people those 7 days don't matter since the hours they work (factoring in drive times to and from) basically means they don't get to play.

One of my FC mates, and a dear friend, works 9+ hours a day right now, with a 1 hour drive to work and 1 hour drive home. He logs on and spends about 5 minutes saying hi to everyone and then logs off because he needs to go to bed to get enough sleep for the next day. Because that's all the time he's able to squeeze in due to the login issues. He's been through long queues before, he knows to expect that. But that's not playing the game. For him, those extra 7 days means 35 minutes of being in game. across an entire week.

Some of my FC mates spent 6+ hours trying to get in.

I want to make it clear I appreciate the generous compensation. It's far more than pretty much any other dev team would give. But I also want to make it clear that this wouldn't even be necessary if they had dealt with this KNOWN ISSUE in an appropriate manner since it's happened numerous times already.

Now I don't know about Square Enix but in general Japanese companies don't operate like companies in the western world do, every single decision has to go through each upper manager until it reaches the end boss, it could be anyone on any level who thought the purchase was "unnecessary", check the ringi decision system- I've dealt a lot with this through work. But I believe they probably realize they made a huge mistake by now question is what happens over x-mas but it's probably not unlikely that heads will roll.

As long as one of those heads is NOT Yoshi's. I can't think of a better leader than that man. I'm sure he has his flaws, but I've rarely seen anyone take responsibility and show genuine, heartfelt sympathy for the plight of players like he has. The day he's gone from the FFXIV team is likely the day I bid Eorzea a sad and painful farewell.

[Greenshaw]

That isn't exactly true. There's a 6-month to a year long wait period for stuff that needs semiconductors due to a shortage.

Aaaaand there it is. There isnt that level of wait for business willing to spend a premium to secure them. Lets say in a random world each server to fully build costs a 6million premium. You pay 50 cents to play each day give or take. If ff has 12 million people (should be higher) playing each day, they make 6 million per day off subscriptions. Each day compensated could have just been another server they were willing to buy. I have no business degree and I can figure that out. How on earth do you have an entire finance department who cant figure that out!!!!