World Visit queues need rethinking.

[Gyson]

Yesterday, while in-game, I used the world visit feature to temporarily travel to another server. I was genuinely worried about potential issues with the queues, but it was early in the afternoon and I had planned on aborting the plan altogether if I saw a serious queue waiting for me once the option had been used.

Instead, after selecting the option the transfer was instantaneous, and within seconds I was placed on another server. In less than a minute I wrapped up what I had went over there for (purchasing an item from the market) and promptly returned to the main aetheryte in Limsa to transfer back to my home server.

Except this time I was presented with a queue of 30, with an estimated wait time of 14 minutes. Fine, it's not optimal, but not the worst thing ever.

Instead, the wait ended up being 13 hours. Needless to say my entire gaming session for yesterday was lost as a result.

For some odd reason, the world-visit queue doesn't share a line with the login queue we're all dealing with lately. I saw friends and guild mates logging out of and back into my home server many times throughout the day, evening and night. Instead, it seems that the world-visit queue clearly has a much lower priority, and apparently requires the login queue to be clear before it allows any progression to occur.

I really don't understand the thinking here. I know some will argue that the world-visit queue isn't as bad as the login queue because you're technically in the game and can play it! But that's not painting an accurate picture. Yes, if your goal is to play on another server, then it's not that big of a deal. But if you're in the queue to transfer back to your server, then your goal is obviously to be logged back into your server.

Taking this further, I feel like many people aren't exactly aware of how this feature works - primarily, if you're queued to switch worlds, then you can't zone. It won't let you do that while you're in the transfer queue. That means your character must remain in either Gridania, Ul'dah, or Limsa the entire time you are queued - in my case, that meant 13 hours. You can't even zone from lower Limsa to upper Limsa, you are just stuck on the same map the main aetheryte occupies while you wait on your queue. You can't access your retainers, and there's no real "gaming" to be done in these locations, so at that point you're basically limited to chatting at best.

Worse, unlike the login queue, you are required to remain active while you wait in the world-visit queue, otherwise you'll be flagged as AFK and disconnected from the server, at which point you then have to wait through the login queue to load you onto the server you actually want to leave, and then wait again for the wold-visit queue to take you to the server you're trying to reach.

Something needs to give here. At a minimum the world-visit queue should (within its own queue) prioritize people who live on the destination server over those who are visiting it from other servers.

Restrictions on what you can do while waiting on a world-visit queue need to lighten up. If you're going to make a player remain active in your game for 13 hours while waiting on that queue, then you need to allow them to actually play the game while they're waiting.

But, really, the world-visit queue should just share its line with the login-queue - both queues house groups of people who are waiting to be logged into a specific server. The login-queue should not have to be empty before the world-visit queue can progress. I can accept waiting in a queue for server-X with every other player waiting to be logged into server-X. But expecting players to wait for that line to repeatedly cycle in its entirety, dozens and dozens of times until no one else is interested in logging in, is insanity and one of the dumbest setups I have seen in an MMO in very long time.

For anyone who is about to suggest using the world-visit feature from the character selection screen (rather than the in-game aetheryte) - please be aware that you can not select your destination when you do that. Rather, that feature is designed to send you to a (random) lower population server. And that wouldn't have worked in this case.

[Clicked]

You can now log out and switch your servers then log back in to bypass this issue now. Before you were truly stuck, now you just need to wait in line somewhere else (until congestion is resolved).

As for queue priority, I can see both sides. At least the person queuing is able to play, even if not on their home server for the time being, and they have a way to get into their server by getting in line. On the other hand, you can't access several features unless you are in your home server or play the game while queued for transfer.

I think it makes sense to share the queue for the world, but the world transfer people should get in the back of the line, not skip to the front. That said, it's probably not easy to do that on the technical level. Those queues likely exist completely separately on the backend.

[CelestePinke]

World visits are being abused and needs to be done away with. The supposed reasoning behind them was that players would be playing with their friends but that is simply not happening. I have found several “wanderers” not in parties, bots that are not targetable because they are under the map but lvling up. I caught the lvling bots from other worlds while at the GC turning in provisions. The world visit system was a nice idea, but immediately abused. Also when there is no auto kick because of high traffic these bots will sit afk for hours and in the mean time I’m being queued to log in because of these bots and players.

[RareItems]

This happened to me too. Got stuck on Goblin and was waiting for over 300 mins just to get back to Balmung.

[Slayer25c]

World visits are being abused and needs to be done away with. The supposed reasoning behind them was that players would be playing with their friends but that is simply not happening. I have found several “wanderers” not in parties, bots that are not targetable because they are under the map but lvling up. I caught the lvling bots from other worlds while at the GC turning in provisions. The world visit system was a nice idea, but immediately abused. Also when there is no auto kick because of high traffic these bots will sit afk for hours and in the mean time I’m being queued to log in because of these bots and players.

Who made u the world visit police.

[Lunalepsy]

It's super congested—relax!

[Jojoya]

Back when they announced that world visit was being added to the game, they said that players trying to return to their home world would be given priority by the system if there were queues. As far as I can tell, that isn't what happens in practice.

I understand the reasoning that players attempting to log in to play should take precedence over those already able to play but there are features players need to access that aren't available when they're off world. At the very least allow those players trying to return to their home world do so in a timely fashion while leaving world visit temporarily disabled for those trying to transfer to worlds other than their home world.

[technole]

You knew better to world visit over a market board item during congested times.

[Yahallo]

World visits are being abused and needs to be done away with. The supposed reasoning behind them was that players would be playing with their friends but that is simply not happening. I have found several “wanderers” not in parties, bots that are not targetable because they are under the map but lvling up. I caught the lvling bots from other worlds while at the GC turning in provisions. The world visit system was a nice idea, but immediately abused. Also when there is no auto kick because of high traffic these bots will sit afk for hours and in the mean time I’m being queued to log in because of these bots and players.

Yeah no. Just because bots are using it, doesn't mean actual players aren't using it either. I have used it to visit friends on other worlds, and I personally can't wait for the datacenter visit to visit friends on other datacenters.

[Hasrat]

Taking this further, I feel like many people aren't exactly aware of how this feature works - primarily, if you're queued to switch worlds, then you can't zone. It won't let you do that while you're in the transfer queue. That means your character must remain in either Gridania, Ul'dah, or Limsa the entire time you are queued - in my case, that meant 13 hours. You can't even zone from lower Limsa to upper Limsa, you are just stuck on the same map the main aetheryte occupies while you wait on your queue. You can't access your retainers, and there's no real "gaming" to be done in these locations, so at that point you're basically limited to chatting at best.

So... why not just cancel the world visit and go actually do some playing? The only one at fault here for waiting in town for 13 hours twiddling your thumbs is you.