Clarification From Dev About the 30-Minutes AFK Logout

[Superskull85]

Most other MMOs don't but the free to play ones might. There's a million reasons why someone might be idle for more than 30 minutes and those reasons don't need to be said since it is a pay to play MMO anyway. It's not like this game is on the cloud where the more players there are at once, the more expensive it will be to host. They already own all their servers and besides the electricity it takes to process more people online, it's irrelevant. Plus, the cost is included in the monthly bill you pay for. If you really want to stay logged in passed the limit, you technically could. But the timer is going away in 6.1. Not that it matters so much since it takes 2 minutes to login again but getting idle kicked does take away from the MMO experience.

"being in the cloud" is not a mysterious and abstract thing as you seem to imply it is. FFXIV is an online game and is as much 'in the cloud' as anything with an online service (ie server and servers). FFXIV would still need to bring more servers online if more and more users login at once. More servers, owned by Square Enix of not, costs more and more money. The entire reason login queues exist is because of capacity limits at the beginning of their server infrastructure. AFK timers exist to manage the number of concurrent users on at once, lessening world server load and need to expand server availability and capacity. More users -> more servers -> more money needed to sustain it.

Server maintenance goes well beyond just electricty too. There are also employee payroll that is needed to manage, catalogue, upgrade, and replace infrastructure as needed. In order to maintain infrastructure expenses must also be paid on physical hardware as it wears out or as needed for upgrades and expansion. Strorage hardware is one of the most frequent replaces, as an example. These costs exist even if it is owned by Square Enix. Managed services (a common example people bring up is AWS) are not exclusive to 'the more expensive it will be to host.'

As a an entry level only subscriber your contribution to the overall cost to keep FFXIV running and maintained is minimal. The majority of cost coverage comes from additional payments in the form of the mogstore, collectors items, soundtracks, merchandise purchases, premium and additonal subscriptions per player, and internal company transfers. If you just pay the entry level subscription you do not, technically, have the right to use resources to play 24 hours a day 7 days a week. It is a privillege that Square Enix extends to each player if they have the capacity and means to do so while maintaining close-to-stable service. A privillege that Square Enix can take away any time they want by implementing throttling measures.

[Kes13a]

Not that it matters so much since it takes 2 minutes to login again but getting idle kicked does take away from the MMO experience.

lol, excuse me what?

if you arent at the keyboard.. what "MMO experience" are you experiencing since you arent playing?