It's Time for Answers on these "DDoS" Issues

[andrewdeluxe]

I have "DDoS" in quotes because at this point there is no way these are DDoS attacks happening every single day.

It's time for some communication and answers, Square Enix. Why is this happening? Is it actually DDoS attacks every single day, multiple times a day? Is this a much deeper issue with the servers? Are you actively working on fixing this? Why have you just been radio silence on this except for the rare bot post about it on the Lodestone?

It's ridiculous and embarrassing at this point. It has been happening every single day since the patch launched and consistently since Dawntrail launched. No other online game has this many issues as consistently as FFXIV.

[DontCryMaria]

The game is borderline unplayable some days. While it seems like the issues aren't as frequent as they were a month or so ago, there are definitely days where you can't do things like alliance raids because of how many times the entire instance gets disconnected in an hour. I remember trying to do Nier 3 on several different days, and only was able to clear it ONCE because everyone got sundered mid-boss.

[njorun]

I've heard tell that people bringing this up to Customer Support get told that it's a problem on their end, too. Which seems funny.

Square, are you REALLY trying to tell us that over 1,000 people are having the EXACT same issue, all at the same time, multiple times a day? Come on. Your players are not stupid, despite what you seem to believe. Take off the clown makeup, and communicate with us. What steps are being taken to try and combat this? Are any steps being taken at all? It's hard to justify paying for a game that doesn't give enough of a damn to try and fix its issues, much less actually acknowledge them.

[kurikame]

The lack of transparency on this is also concerning. This has been happening for, what, over a year and we have no form of compensation, no damage control, and no communication?

It is very disheartening and I would like to see Square step up and do something. Anything, honestly.

[Sepher]

The DDOS is ruining the game for me. It has been going on for over a year and has now hit a point where it is out of control, with multiple DDOS attacks per night, and is simply unacceptable for a game we pay to play.

No other game I have played has ever experienced a constant stream of DDOS attacks for over a year.

[lemieuj]

Two years of disconnects (refuse to call them ddos) almost every single day for almost two years now is crazy.

[TwiceDamned]

I can give you the "answers". It really doesn't take a rocket scientist to actually say WHAT is happening.

And it's going to require a massive intervention on the part of Square-Enix; or a complete and final takedown of the game.

It is either:

1) A massively determined RMT/DDoS group whose intention IS to end FFXIV -- which will require identification and SE Legal to root them out and arrest them under relevant laws.

or

2) The North American physical servers are dead, and the game is going to have to be taken down for new actual physical hardware. Since this has been going on for a rather extended period of time, this isn't really likely -- because you'd think they would be able to identify faults in the physical hardware.

[blasebbg]

I'm beginning to wonder if it is DDoS at all. Other MMOs don't have this problem. Shooters don't have this problem. Why target just FFXIV?

[TwiceDamned]

Someone in SE Legal actually got to an RMT outfit in one of the games and took it partially down.

That outfit made it their business to kill FFXIV.

That's why I think this is nothing short of a targeted attack.

[Leiard]

I'm not sure people here in this thread actually understand how hard it is for a company like SE (or any company) to do anything against a DDoS attack. Technically, there isn't one single person, or group of people doing this. It's thousands, even tens of thousands of malware infected computers flooding traffic in a server or datacenter, constantly hitting that server/datacenter with pings and login attempts for a period of time. It's called a botnet. Sure, there's probably one, maybe a few actual people behind that botnet, but trying to find who's controlling thousands upon thousands of PCs in this botnet is virtually impossible.

It takes government-level investigation and time to actually find out who created the botnet and prosecute the individual(s) involved. Furthermore, if it's a botnet for hire like Rapperbot (which only recently saw action taken against its creator by authorities earlier this year), then that means ANYONE on the world wide web with money, probably bitcoin to help hide paper trails, can hire it.

Finally, we don't know if it's hitting servers specific to SE, FFXIV, or hitting just general ISP servers that SE happens to be using. The level of misdirection is simple, but the result, as you can see, is pretty effective.

Are there steps SE can take? Yes and no. Yes, in that they can probably take security steps to ensure each and every IP trying to access their servers are bonified users. However, that's a level of scanning that will slow down the login process even further, and still might not do anything against an attack. And that's if it's even their servers being attacked, and not a different level of traffic owned by someone else like some broadband company who doesn't give two squats how frequently our game is being interrupted by DDoS attacks.

TL;DR version: It's a simple method of attack, way more complicated than people realize to combat.