Only 6 EU Servers?!?

[Dingo9012]

I know this has probably been posted to death, but I'd like an answer:

WHY ARE THERE ONLY 6 EU SERVERS?!?

Someone did the math;

There is 1 server for ever 5 million Japanese People
There is 1 Server for every 28 Million Americans
THERE IS 1 SERVER FOR EVERY 123 MILLION EUROPEAN PEOPLE?!?

In Beta Phase 4 Square Enix added 10 JP servers, 4 NA Servers, and only 1 EU Server. During the Beta 4 Weekend (16-19 August, 2013) It was virtually impossible to create a character on an EU server, nevermind play on one. I spent the whole 4 days rolling character on JP servers because they were the only one's with space, so if you knew these facts, and could tell that there weren't enough EU servers;

WHY DIDN'T YOU ADD ANYMORE EU SERVERS BEFORE YOU ALLOWED EVERYONE ACCESS INTO THE GAME?!?

I understand that the Beta Phase 4 Weekend was an Open Beta and so there were a lot more people playing the game than during previous Beta Weekends, but surely someone must have looked at the figures for the EU servers? Or seen a graph or a chart on how long the queues were? Or how many people per hour were getting the "World Full" message? Because what do you expect us to do in the EU; pay £8.99 a month to stare at log-in screens and trying every few minutes to access one of half-a-dozen overcrowded, inaccessible servers and never actually play the game?

Or how's this for a suggestion: When Final Fantasy XIV 1.0 failed, Square Enix apologised and sacked the team responsible...how about you let the community know who is responsible for the shambles that is the EU Server list and put up a vote to see if they keep their job?

[Dingo9012]

As of right now: 19:32 GMT - Saturday 25th August, 2013 - It is impossible to log-in to an EU server. It is impossible to even create a character on an EU server.
As of right now: When the Post Man turns up on Tuesday morning with my Final Fantasy XIV Collector's Edition Boxes (1 for me, 1 for GF) I am considering sending them straight back, because there is no point spending money on a game I cannot play.

[Iroukan]

Knowing that FF'S games are pretty popular in EU I think it's strange too.

[LainX]

I start to think to send back my collector edition. If i cannot play, is usefull i buy the game.
I hope is better after 1 month but I think more people don't continue to play and SE start to merge the server.

[guyaume]

What a waste of time, efforts, hope, dreams....

[Leyvin]

Well first, your math is wrong if you're going by Overall Population or Potential Market... even more so as the more important aspect of a Server / Shard is how many concurrent players it can handle.
It makes sense there are more Japanese Servers Available, given that is where Square Enix (and most importantly the Development Team) are located ... this means they likely will be the most stable with fixes / maintenance taking less time due to local access rather than remote access.

In-fact the simple fact that problems continue to plague the NA / EU Servers, while the JP ones remain stable actually point to the issue not being the Game or Network Code; but simply a Server issue, and I'm not even convinced the problem is with the load as connection remains constantly Excellent and even in-game things are smooth. The fact there are connection time-outs, unresponsive services, etc... points far more to the Server Cluster itself is not setup properly.
I mean with usual server 'overload' you see it struggle with that extra load, but there has simply been non of that - it either works or doesn't. The only way it is that black'n'white when networks are concern is when the Routing is improperly setup.

[Dingo9012]

Actually my Math is based on a simple "Population of [Europe/North America/Japan]" Search on google, which comes up with a big blocky number in google, which I then divided by the number of servers designated for that region, ie: 25 JP, 19 NE, 6 EU...which came to those figures I listed above, rounded up or down to the nearest million...try it for yourself? I never specified potential markets, demographics, or anything other than population size.

Secondly...when creating a character on a JP Server, you have the ability to create on ALL servers...conversely, when trying to create a character on an EU server, they were ALL unavailable, as were several NA servers. This would mean that the JP servers are not at maximum capacity, while ALL of the EU servers and some of the NA servers were. Based on population alone we can see that Europe has a larger potential market seeing as how there are roughly 6 times more people in the whole of Europe than in Japan, and 200 million more than in North America, and yet we have considerably less servers to choose from...this is just terrible planning and has nothing to do with server location or server issues, it is just a lack of foresight on SE's behalf, and a failure to observe data from the Beta Phase 4 Weekend as I stated above.

As for the rest of your speculations; There is no overload because the servers are not getting anywhere near overload, they are simply accepting a low maximum capacity that is easily dealt with and then going grey so no more characters can be created, thereby blocking anyone else who wishes to play in the EU from playing on those servers. Just read the message that was posted 5 hours ago by Naoki Yoshida: http://www.vg247.com/2013/08/26/fina...s-server-woes/

[Fayto]

Quite frankly your math is bullshit since both NA and EU share the same data center, so it doesn't mean crap how many EU servers there are since they are in the same location as NA servers.

[wirewitch]

Quite frankly your math is bullshit since both NA and EU share the same data center, so it doesn't mean crap how many EU servers there are since they are in the same location as NA servers.

It's not bull at all, people want to play with others in their own time-zones for obvious reasons. Later in the game you don't want to be logging in for a raid in the small hours of the morning when you're meant to be at work the next day.

[Dingo9012]

Quite frankly your math is bullshit since both NA and EU share the same data center, so it doesn't mean crap how many EU servers there are since they are in the same location as NA servers.

As wirewitch said below:

It's not bull at all, people want to play with others in their own time-zones for obvious reasons. Later in the game you don't want to be logging in for a raid in the small hours of the morning when you're meant to be at work the next day.

I don't want to have to get online at 3/4/5 in the morning to go raiding with NA players who schedule raids for 6pm local time. Would you be willing to play in a guild, in a raid, with people who are 8-9 hours behind you, so while they're fresh home from work with an hour or two of rest you're watching the sun rise and worrying that this next boss might make you miss your bus to work? EU servers are for people running on typically GMT and upwards of one to two hours, so my argument still stands; Why are there only 6 EU Servers?!?