IT folks, realistically what can SE do to alleviate the current situation?

[ascensyon1]

my below suggestion is taking into consideration that they are looking/working on implementing solutions...

at least make the queue have a grace period for the lobby errors. example.. instead of loging in and you're 4000 in queue and by the time you hit 3000 you get kicked out and then log back in to a 5000 queue

and/or

priorities PAYING SUBS.. i hate to say it but SQUENIX relies on us to pay their bills for the non paying members to enjoy a lot of content for free... both of these would go a long way... but ultimately the below will need to happen SOONER THAN LATER:


it should be like this... 4000 queue down to 3000 then get disconnected or lobby error. 5min grace to log back in and when you get back in your "grace period spot wasn't lost it , it still continued to go down the queue and you pick up where you left off... it would make this non sense more digestible …. and we all know this problem wont go anytime soon. it'll get worse tomorrow even and for atleast the next couple of months... they have to upgrade the infrastructure

[Roxiu]

Believe I saw or read that paying subs have priority in queue for logging into the game over free to play people.

Aside from that, I can't see a company like SquareEnix sitting back and watching us all with our heads exploding without some kind of plan in mind. Just doesn't make good business sense. As for everyone else that IS running around with their hair on fire--take it easy, I'm sure they will figure out a way to handle it.

[Snorky]

my below suggestion is taking into consideration that they are looking/working on implementing solutions...

at least make the queue have a grace period for the lobby errors. example.. instead of loging in and you're 4000 in queue and by the time you hit 3000 you get kicked out and then log back in to a 5000 queue

and/or

priorities PAYING SUBS.. i hate to say it but SQUENIX relies on us to pay their bills for the non paying members to enjoy a lot of content for free... both of these would go a long way... but ultimately the below will need to happen SOONER THAN LATER:


it should be like this... 4000 queue down to 3000 then get disconnected or lobby error. 5min grace to log back in and when you get back in your "grace period spot wasn't lost it , it still continued to go down the queue and you pick up where you left off... it would make this non sense more digestible …. and we all know this problem wont go anytime soon. it'll get worse tomorrow even and for atleast the next couple of months... they have to upgrade the infrastructure

I agree with this I don't mind waiting but it is frustrating getting pushed to the back of the line over and over again.

[Dyvid]

priorities PAYING SUBS.. i hate to say it but SQUENIX relies on us to pay their bills for the non paying members to enjoy a lot of content for free... both of these would go a long way... but ultimately the below will need to happen SOONER THAN LATER:

I agree, free trial accounts need to be suspend until the issues are fixed. Telling your paying customers to get to the back of the line while other eat for free is maddening.

[Feronar]

Let players who are willing to accept higher latency temporarily transfer to other regions for free. For example, some NA and EU players could temporarily play on JP realms where they can play during Japan's off-peak hours. Likewise, some Japanese players could temporarily play on NA or EU realms during our off-peak hours.

[Hoosier]

Nothing, absolutely nothing. Delaying the release to wait for new hardware would have $@&&! Even more people off. Even with a bunch of new hardware once everything is “back to normal” there will just be lots of excess idle hardware because this type of situation only happens at a games release. They cant easily reprogam the game to work on other infrastructure that could just be rented. Would be more unstable if they did. We have the best solution. The game is out. Eventually people will finish and stop playing as heavily again and more people will get in. If there were queue problems this severe a month ago then we could determine other options, but even then they alreadg have plans to expand and release new data centers but they are stuck because of world evens and cost.

As my group at work calls it, this is a “wait longer” fix.

This isn't like any other expansion for FFXIV. They had a massive increase in player base come over from other MMOs, more specifically WOW. Those people didn't come over for the End Walker expansion entirely. They switched because WOW lost its appeal. Chances are they will not be returning to WOW until Blizzard releases a new expansion which isn't expected anytime soon so the larger than typical player base is going to be here for some time. Maybe not quite as large as it is the past few days but still enough that they need to make changes to their infrastructure to grow.

[Psythe]

I work in big data. We have tens of thousands of servers. A lot of our hardware runs 10 to 50k a pop for a complete server setup. We are just barely getting hardware that should have been delivered 9 months the ago. We have diversified our vendors and are putting up hundreds of thousands of dollars to different vendors in hopes we can get hardware from somewhere faster without sacrificing stability and service we provide while doing it. From a hardware perspective there is probably little they can do or even could have done if they started trying 6 months ago. There is also little way for a company that is not constantly ordering hardware to even have any idea it is this bad.

They have done an amazing job. They have provided compensation, apologized, they sent out a letter in advance setting the expectation that there would be queues like no one has ever seen and the reason for it. They sent out letting players know when peak times are. I have gotten on every day as has most of my FC and friends as we knew if we wanted to get in we do it when others are not.

As consumers of a product there is a number of people not doing things to help and that's where I see a big failing right now. Play when the lines are short and help balance the load. If you can't get on during low volume wait till another time. Don't stress yourself out and be a better person.

[Razed]

They could have upgraded their infrastructure in advance, or subbed it out to AWS or Azure. If they used AWS or Azure they literally could have deployed more servers / resources with a minimal amount of mouse clicks. The incompetence of the current situation is staggering when it could have and should have been preemptively mitigated when they knew full and well they had hordes of new players.

[kadriel]

Fix the queue. I would be happy if I could actually get in line and actually log in instead of getting an 2002 halfway everytime. It is not that there is a line. For me is that I just can't log in

[ascensyon1]

my below suggestion is taking into consideration that they are looking/working on implementing solutions...

at least make the queue have a grace period for the lobby errors. example.. instead of loging in and you're 4000 in queue and by the time you hit 3000 you get kicked out and then log back in to a 5000 queue

and/or

priorities PAYING SUBS.. i hate to say it but SQUENIX relies on us to pay their bills for the non paying members to enjoy a lot of content for free... both of these would go a long way... but ultimately the below will need to happen SOONER THAN LATER:


it should be like this... 4000 queue down to 3000 then get disconnected or lobby error. 5min grace to log back in and when you get back in your "grace period spot wasn't lost it , it still continued to go down the queue and you pick up where you left off... it would make this non sense more digestible …. and we all know this problem wont go anytime soon. it'll get worse tomorrow even and for atleast the next couple of months... they have to upgrade the infrastructure

im sure they are actively monitoring the forums, their network analyticals and projecting when their network will be expanding and trying to find temp solutions. hopefully they will have more impact than the ones they've put in so far. i've only noticed the q getting worse and i see it get much worse starting tomorrow and for a very long time.