Root cause: Error 90000 & 10102

[FrankGrimes]

So the login and instance issues continue after 3 "Emergency Maintenance's". (Going on 4 now) While many feel content to blindly argue that "this is early access, bugs and server congestion are going to happen", I have a hard time agreeing with that sentiment. The problem is that the JP servers are not having any of these issues. To me, this points to a failure on Square Enix to go with reputable co-location companies, solid network and server hardware, and reliable infrastructure. I am fairly positive that there are 1000's of simultaneous connections on the JP servers with NO ISSUES. NA/EU and JP are running the same version of the game, same code, yet one game is playable and the other is broken. Until SE dumps some serious upgrades to their NA datacenters, no amount of "Emergency maintenance" or code optimization is going to fix this.

[Hansem]

I am starting to share this sentiment

[BunnyKiller93]

Agreed. 10char.

[Raist]

It all boils down to them wanting to keep the regions in synch (duty finder and such). IF they would just go ahead and bite the bullet and let each region be independent of each other, most of the issues might go away (in theory). At least then, we'd be dealing with more localized issues that might be easier to address. But... this is SE. Might as well ask the sun not to shine or the wind not to blow.

[Dannyl]

It MIGHT be a hardware issue, but I'm not so sure. I think the NA data center (there's no EU one, it's only one in Montreal) just has more players. A hint toward that fact is that there's as many JP servers as NA ones, but the latter has 3 times the population. The source can be found in the JP translation post from an interview with Yoshi P. stating that there was as many EU players as JP ones and twice as much NA than JP. I'd post a link to the forum post in question, but I cannot access it currently given the forums' high load. Now the question is why they opted for such a server splits and not give EU its own data center, but I assume it's a cost driven decision as the JP servers they most likely already own while paying a specialized company for the NA ones. Now depending on the contract clauses, deciding to just add new servers at this time may not be financially viable and they may simply hope for the average population to go slightly down during peak times which will most likely happen in 1-2 weeks.

[FrankGrimes]

You do realize how embedded RPGs and MMOs are into the Eastern culture right? To assume that there are more players in NA then JP is a bit of a stretch. There are actually 25 JP servers, 19 NA servers and 6 EU servers. So if what Yoshi P said (or at least what got translated) is true, that there are twice as many NA players than JP (which I have a hard time believing), why would we have fewer servers? Ultimately we can not see true traffic numbers, location stats, or network/hardware specs for the NA datacenters. We are in the dark and hoping that SE has the ability to fix the issues quickly.

[Dannyl]

You do realize how embedded RPGs and MMOs are into the Eastern culture right? To assume that there are more players in NA then JP is a bit of a stretch. There are actually 25 JP servers, 19 NA servers and 6 EU servers. So if what Yoshi P said (or at least what got translated) is true, that there are twice as many NA players than JP (which I have a hard time believing), why would we have fewer servers? Ultimately we can not see true traffic numbers, location stats, or network/hardware specs for the NA datacenters. We are in the dark and hoping that SE has the ability to fix the issues quickly.

As EU and NA are in the same location, it's still 25 servers for NA/EU and 25 servers for JP (and Australia). Now since the forums respond slightly better, I could get the link, note that it's about Legacy players though, which my memory didn't seem to register, so the overall number including the new players could be very different: http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...-English/page4 which translate this interview: http://www.4gamer.net/games/199/G019924/20130823089/.

From the post:
About how much European Legacy players are out there?

Depending on which point of data, that’s hard to answer, I’ll just say there are about same amount of Legacy players as Japans. The most is NA, which is about twice the amount of Japan.


As for the why, as I said, it's most likely a money, but that only SE knows.

[Crunchy_Waffles]

Yup. SE is starting to become notorious for poor decision-making skills when it comes to partnering with other companies.

Click and Buy? lol
Digital River? lol
And now whoever is hosting our NA/EU servers in Montreal and whatever hardware they're using is making the #3 spot.

[Raist]

EIDOS is based in Montreal (remember they closed that deal just over a year ago?). Most likely the driving force behind our servers being in Montreal. Think SE's footprint in the UK is pretty small by comparison, so they probably didn't think they'd have enough resources to run a third data center over there. I forget all the details... last time I looked at their infrastucture was during the Tsunami/Earthquake disaster.

If they are in fact trying to repurpose some of EIDOS assets for this...that could very well be a large part of the problem I guess.

[Balzaque]

really sad for such a good game.. i hope this doesnt drag through launch, they still have 1~2 more days to figure this out, i really dont understand how a big company as square enix could underestimate so much on how many servers and how many players they would have on launch this is not like their first mmo and not like they dont have any experience with this games.

why would you barely test your servers for stress test and network issues? overconfidence? this is probably a software+hardware related issue that only manifest with this many players at the same time, something that they should have planned better to test before going live.