"DDOS" for MONTHS on end with no resolution UNACCEPTABLE

[Lorika]

Maybe should work on offline option or start letting ones have private servers. If this keeps going on think I will cancel my last family sub for FFXIV and take my money to online game that doesn't get DDOS attacks every other day.

Offline version of a MMO... you do realisze that a MMO client is only one part of the game right?
Private servers : you mean thoses scam were the "admins" ask for donation to keep the server running on highly bugged version with not even half of the content, then suddently close the servers and disapear with the money?

Thoses two option are just no.... Playing a MMo like a solo game or with only 10 person on an entire server.... It's just.... Well, you know.

[kajv95]

My gf and I play a game every night to see if the first thing we see on social media is something about DDoS. This is way beyond the border of ridiculousbess... We're unsubbed rn tho

[Khryseis_Astra]

I keep seeing people debate if it's the actual FFXIV servers getting DDOS'd or this NTT node people keep mentioning. How do we determine what is causing it? Because I remember I time I had to use a VPN to get around the problem node and there was ZERO world from SE in the Lodestone about it. But now we're getting a Lodestone post almost every day about DDOS attacks.

I’m curious about that too… back when the first big lag spikes started happening ages ago and they were having us do tracerts, the San Jose and Sacramento nodes at NTT were showing up as the point where it was all going bad. I freely admit I have no tech knowledge, but this feels different. Back then I had near constant lag and stuttering. I couldn’t walk more than 3 steps without a noticeable pause. My minions and mount animations would stutter. When things got really bad, things would freeze up, then all the animations would go off at once in fast forward mode.

Tonight’s Strayborough… Went fine til the hallway just after the balloons. I don’t “feel” the lag, I’m walking around just fine. No one else appears frozen. The pokeball is over my head off and on, and I’m still able to move through the dungeon with the rest of the party, but I can’t use any of my buttons. The noise plays for the beginning of the spell but doesn’t do anything. There’s no freeze and fast forward, it’s like I only got the last split second visual of any attack showing up with no time to dodge it, or it’s registering my movement too late and I’m being teleported to another spot on the floor. I could finally use skills when we got to the dolls, but then the lag came in. Rest of the night was just “normal” lag, with the occasional pokeball for me or other party members, while getting hit with things I should’ve been well clear of. Other nights, I’ll know it’s starting up when I’m hitting buttons and the animations are actually playing normally but damage isn’t registering to the enemy and the spells are still there like I hadn’t used them.

I don’t know if this is DDOS or bad NTT nodes or a combination of both… but it’s just about every day now!

[DiaDeem]

So...

I'm not an engineer. Everywhere I've ever looked it up, it says that there's no real solution to DDoS. Any LCK fans here? Remember what Riot Korea had to do with the T1 situation?
With that knowledge, I'm not sure if there's anything SE can do, and I say that in earnest. If there's any engineer that can explain it in further detail, I'd legit would love to know.

Either that, or the conspiracy is true and their servers are self-imploding I guess?

[Archeron]

Nobody would be surprised if the servers are self-destructing. It's not like any of the money this game generates is put back into the game, and Dawntrail has MORE than proven that to be the case more than any prior expansions.

Butttttt We are the end consumers, and if they cannot provide a stable service that we are subscribed to monthly, they should not be charging full price for said service.

I couldn't give a rats ass how they "deal" with the problem. Servers imploding? DDOS attacks? Yoshi P spilled coffee in the server room? I don't care. We're all paying monthly and we're recieving inferior service, and there has been zero transparency on Square Enixes part. It shows just how little they care for NA players. SE doesn't need knights in shining armor crusading in its name to protect its honor. SE can literally just communicate with its paying customers instead and threads like this wouldn't even need to exist. But instead anytime we want information we have to bring out pitchforks and torches, and even worse, journalists, to get even get a response from the higher ups.

[Titania40]

After wading through this entire thread I have to wonder, just what do people expect Square-Enix to actually do about the DDOS attacks? As far as I know, there's no real way to stop them beyond getting hardware and an ISP that can handle a higher load. And even that doesn't really work, since the attacker can just increase the volume of requests used in the attack.

Does FFXIV suffer from an excessive number of DDOS attacks compared to other MMOs? Why yes, it does. But this isn't because the other companies found some way to prevent DDOS attacks from affecting them. It's because they just aren't being targeted by DDOS attacks as often as FFXIV is. Blizzard-Activision gets hit with DDOS attacks on occasion, which shut down the ability to even log into their games. But it doesn't happen anywhere near as frequently, because something about the FFXIV player base seems to encourage people who preform such attacks.

I don't know, maybe the problem is that players of those other MMOs get jellous of Final Fantasy XIV's success and try to bring the game down? Maybe it's disgruntled players taking their frustrations out on the servers? Maybe it's 4Chan users thinking it's funny? I don't know, and none of the rest of the player base likely does either.

[Archeron]

After wading through this entire thread I have to wonder, just what do people expect Square-Enix to actually do about the DDOS attacks? As far as I know, there's no real way to stop them beyond getting hardware and an ISP that can handle a higher load. And even that doesn't really work, since the attacker can just increase the volume of requests used in the attack.

Does FFXIV suffer from an excessive number of DDOS attacks compared to other MMOs? Why yes, it does. But this isn't because the other companies found some way to prevent DDOS attacks from affecting them. It's because they just aren't being targeted by DDOS attacks as often as FFXIV is. Blizzard-Activision gets hit with DDOS attacks on occasion, which shut down the ability to even log into their games. But it doesn't happen anywhere near as frequently, because something about the FFXIV player base seems to encourage people who preform such attacks.

I don't know, maybe the problem is that players of those other MMOs get jellous of Final Fantasy XIV's success and try to bring the game down? Maybe it's disgruntled players taking their frustrations out on the servers? Maybe it's 4Chan users thinking it's funny? I don't know, and none of the rest of the player base likely does either.

If there was no defense against DDOS *whatsoever* literally every single game service would be taken down and unavailable 24/7. Xbox Live, PSN, Steam, you name it, it would be trashed and taken offline if it were *that* easy.

WoW has been DDOSed, but the difference is, that it was NOT ongoing for months on end. Even while they were embroiled in controversies and the community was absolutely LIVID with them, WoW servers were not being taken down every single night, at the same time, for hours on end, every single day, for months. While everyone seems to be claiming that Square Enix "Can't do anything", or that they are "Defenseless" against such attacks, why is it that every other MMO has been able to handle these problems and minimize their disruptions? I'm no engineer, but SE doesn't deserve the benefit of the doubt when this has been ongoing for a prolonged period of time and there has been minimal communication about what is being done to resolve this issue, if a resolution is even possible in the first place... Which you know they could literally make a post about on the lodestone informing us about what is going on, like any other company would in their position.

I guarantee you nobody is jealous of FFXIV, especially after Dawntrails mixed reception. I'm sure the competition is actually delighted with the turn of events, no DDOS is required when SE launches an expansion that doesn't meet expectations and drives a portion of the community away and into other games.

[Titania40]

From my research, while there are "defenses" against a DDOS attack, they are preformed by the ISP and not a company like SE. Even then, those defenses don't stop said attacks, merely try to mitigate some of the effects. The main defense is how you respond during and after the attack. And if your company isn't even the target of the DDOS, but merely an incidental victim due to your ISP being the actual target? Then there is literally nothing you can do beyond contacting the ISP.

So again, with that in mind... Just what do people expect Square Enix to actually do to stop all DDOS attacks on them and their ISPs?

[Archeron]

From my research, while there are "defenses" against a DDOS attack, they are preformed by the ISP and not a company like SE. Even then, those defenses don't stop said attacks, merely try to mitigate some of the effects. The main defense is how you respond during and after the attack. And if your company isn't even the target of the DDOS, but merely an incidental victim due to your ISP being the actual target? Then there is literally nothing you can do beyond contacting the ISP.

So again, with that in mind... Just what do people expect Square Enix to actually do to stop all DDOS attacks on them and their ISPs?

1. Communicate with their paying customers, whom they are taking $15 a month from, and are providing an inferior, unstable service to, and either tell them "We can't fix it" or give them a timeline as to when a fix may be implemented.
2. If they *can't* do anything about it, Why not just say that? Make a lodestone post. Instead they choose to say nothing, beyond that they are "implementing countermeasures" which only makes them look worse with each passing day when nothing changes.
3. Compensate, or partially compensate everyone who has been affected by the downtimes, and unstable service.

I mean this is just BASIC customer service.

Is it my fault as a paying customer that they can't find a solution to a problem that is affecting their business? No.
Is it my fault as a paying customer that their ISP is being DDOS attacked? No.

Compensation should be owed due to the length of time these disruptions have been going on. I don't care if its because Square is the "Victim" of a DDOS attack, I don't care if its because their servers are imploding, I don't care if the sky is falling and the world is ending, they have an obligation to provide a service to their paying subscribers, and if they fail to provide that, then compensation should be owed, especially given the length of time this has been going on for.

[Loggos]

I don't know if this can somehow help anybody to get a clearer picture what the root cause could be, but: I have been having no problems at all on Light/EU data center so it seems like NA is affected locally?

The odd thing is, when there was that big DDoS attack before Dawntrail, EU servers were affected and we had very unstable or unplayable games too.
So it seems like this time something is different?