Response to Congestion (as of Dec. 15)

[Nothv13]

Are we talking chips? No. We are talking the amount of players the servers can handle. They sold more preorders than the servers could handle.

So does pretty much every single popular MMO.

[Yahallo]

Took long enough jesus. The moment people started having login issues and mass reported the 2002 error and had 6k+ queues they should’ve stopped the sales. Server issues aren’t an unknown thing. Theyve been a problem since Heavensward. They didn’t do much about it then, and then we got Raubahn ex. Baffles me how many people think this is just now a problem lmao.

Entitlement and ignorance at its finest. Remember Shadowbringers launch that was buttery smooth? Totally not a case where a sudden influx of players due to a competitor dropping the ball hard and thus completely through their projected population growth completely out of the window all during a time when a pandemic and global chip shortage make neigh impossible to get timely hardware upgrades.

What, speaking facts makes me not deserve him? Sorry i choose to not get spoonfed by the devs. Fact of the matter is they knew it was an issue, they decided to continue profiting off of it until enough people complained. It’s scummy. I’m so sorry i don’t deserve your dear god yoshi p though. Maybe one day if i repent hard enough i’ll re-earn his praise ;p

So are you saying that they should have limited Endwalker sales right from the get go and the warning they gave about congestion, which gave people plenty of time to decide whether or not they want to buy Endwalker now or later, would have not caused a large backlash when people would not be able to decide if they were willing to deal with likely possibility of massive congestion and any other expansion launch shenanigans? Sure right now people are praising the limit of sales, but that is because a) they already own Endwalker and b) hindsight is 20/20. Pretty sure if they had originally limited Endwalker Sales, people would have complained about not being able to make the decision of whether or not they wanted to deal with the congestion.

You also aren't considering the amount of red tape in between the sale of the game and this decision. Highly unlikely that Yoshi P gets to make the final decision on compensation and postponing the sale of the game; that is generally something someone at the top echelons gets to decide. You also fail to take into account the sudden influx of players and how smooth Shadowbringers was, which does show that they have been making upgrades to the server over the game's life, it was just this expansion was caught at a very bad time. Global Chip Shortage and the ongoing pandemic makes timing very difficult.

[Velnora]

So does pretty much every single popular MMO.

And it's bad, every single time.

[Velnora]

Entitlement and ignorance at its finest. Remember Shadowbringers launch that was buttery smooth? Totally not a case where a sudden influx of players due to a competitor dropping the ball hard and thus completely through their projected population growth completely out of the window all during a time when a pandemic and global chip shortage make neigh impossible to get timely hardware upgrades.



So are you saying that they should have limited Endwalker sales right from the get go and the warning they gave about congestion, which gave people plenty of time to decide whether or not they want to buy Endwalker now or later, would have not caused a large backlash when people would not be able to decide if they were willing to deal with likely possibility of massive congestion and any other expansion launch shenanigans? Sure right now people are praising the limit of sales, but that is because a) they already own Endwalker and b) hindsight is 20/20. Pretty sure if they had originally limited Endwalker Sales, people would have complained about not being able to make the decision of whether or not they wanted to deal with the congestion.

You also aren't considering the amount of red tape in between the sale of the game and this decision. Highly unlikely that Yoshi P gets to make the final decision on compensation and postponing the sale of the game; that is generally something someone at the top echelons gets to decide. You also fail to take into account the sudden influx of players and how smooth Shadowbringers was, which does show that they have been making upgrades to the server over the game's life, it was just this expansion was caught at a very bad time. Global Chip Shortage and the ongoing pandemic makes timing very difficult.

You are correct. SE corporate, is historically known for being absolutely terrible.

[Divinemights]

Are we talking chips? No. We are talking the amount of players the servers can handle. They sold more preorders than the servers could handle.

Read full post.
I was editing for characters input limite of this forum

[Yahallo]

You can't sit there and say they could not see how many preorders were purchased.

Pretty sure if they had limited Endwalker Sales; we'd have a similar amount of backlash, if not more. Sure people are praising the halt of sales now, but it would be a completely different story if it was done before Endwalker's release. So many people, myself included, would complain about being unable to buy Endwalker, that we should have the decision on whether we want to deal with the congestion or not, that we want to be able to make the decision rather than have it be made for us, etc. Also, they warned players about the congestion several times ahead of time.

[Velnora]

Pretty sure if they had limited Endwalker Sales; we'd have a similar amount of backlash, if not more. Sure people are praising the halt of sales now, but it would be a completely different story if it was done before Endwalker's release. So many people, myself included, would complain about being unable to buy Endwalker, that we should have the decision on whether we want to deal with the congestion or not, that we want to be able to make the decision rather than have it be made for us, etc. Also, they warned players about the congestion several times ahead of time.

A game being sold out is far more digestible, than players having to babysit a queue for multiple hours.

[HyperSMB]

A game being sold out is far more digestible, than players having to babysit a queue for multiple hours.

Realistically that is a matter of opinion.

Either way, businesses are never going to limit sales and profit unless absolutely required by catastrophe. Sad reality.

[Packetdancer]

Finally for the chip shortage people. July is when he said they started plans for more. That means zero growth planned for EU/NA over two years.

My understanding from all their past notices about stuff is that July is when they started needing to plan for more. They did have additional capacity set aside for the Endwalker launch at that time already -- basically, they had planned for player growth as you suggest -- but that additional capacity got eaten by the influx of new players, forcing them to adjust plans.

When the huge influx happened, there was a day or two of bad login times and lag and such (and they closed character creation on several data centers and pulled the game from the store for a little while), and then they brought all that already-prepared extra capacity online early. Which was great, now the game could handle all the new players who had showed up!

But it also meant they no longer had extra capacity set aside to handle expected player growth, because it'd been used way ahead of time to handle a sudden unexpected player growth. Hence why back in July they started needing to come up with plans for how to handle additional player growth in the future; their existing plan got functionally torpedo'd rather unexpectedly.

And the chip shortage comes into play because the lack of available hardware means you can't just shrug it off and go "well, let's just go get more servers."

[Larirawiel]

But the good thing is, they do observe the community. Someone found out this strange disconnect-"feature", posted it on reddit and in the forums and they address it.

Cheers