Server restarts to boot afk players?

[Uriahnool]

I don't mean like suddenly shutting the servers down without warning, but it would be nice if once or twice a day the system would say "We're going to log everyone out in 20 min to reset logins."

I mean, that would give everyone a fair chance to play and kick out people trying to stay online while AFK. It might be every four hours or so, but at least that should give more players a chance and/or encourage people to log when done. I think the more people can't get into the game the more tempting it is to say logged in.

[Eunys]

I really don't think people understand that kicking afk people still won't get you in any faster. It's not like there are thousands of afk players per server, but there are thousands trying to log on those servers. What will you do next to cry about if they did do this and you notice you still can't get in?

[Rhylee_Mau]

But if the thousands of AFK are kicked... the thousands trying to get in, would. Bad logic there...

Edit: Yes there ARE thousands AFK (look at the I'm not logging off overnight crowd )

[Eunys]

But if the thousands of AFK are kicked... the thousands trying to get in, would. Bad logic there...

Edit: Yes there ARE thousands AFK (look at the I'm not logging off overnight crowd )

Again show proof there are thousands of players AFK. We have proof that there are thousands trying to log into heavily capped servers, there is no proof, number of any kind from SE showing AFK players. Restarts would only put active players in a situation that they might not get back in during the flood of reconnects.

[Slambo]

Yeah I could aether jump right now and show you 200+ afk in screenshots and the servers just went down and came back up like ~1 hour ago.

http://imgur.com/a/Lviip Just 4 aetherites.
1-2 people moving per picture. The 2 hunting zones had FATE's going on so the fate parties were not sitting in town.

[MaiyaBeaumont]

Yes, I'm sure the AFK people are causing EVERY issue that the servers are having.... (sarcasm).

[BigSpang]

This should be done to flush the servers at least twice a day.

[Ferth]

Despite what some of you would like to believe there is a portion of the player base who once they get in will not log out. At 10 am today my free company had 30 members on, 4 of them were actually playing.

You can make whatever statements you want about this being a non-issue, but as long as there are people logged into the game but not actively playing it's wasted server space. It is not a long term fix... it's not even a large scale fix, but taking the time to code an afk boot timer, and occasionally flushing the servers is a good idea. As is a queue that actually works from the moment you hit character select, regardless of whether the world you are logging into is full or not.

No, it won't solve every issue we are having right now... frankly, even the new servers are most likely going to hardly put a dent in the log in issues. The overarching problem is that pretty much every server has more people who want to play on them than the server can hold. Most likely the only way to really fix this issue is through adding new servers and offering free server transfers for free companies, both of which will require time to implement.

I don't care if I end up being 3000th in the queue. Provided people are actually leaving the servers, and others are steadily replacing them I know I will get on sooner or later.

[Jennestia]

The trouble with wanting to mess with people not AFK is SE will just anger those of us who had no trouble getting in and doing our content. What if we finally get into a Praetorium Duty Find and SE announces servers are restarting 10 minutes in - we then try to relog and can't.

What then?

You just inconvenienced a ton of people simply because of the crusade against AFK players.

[Monzcarro]

I used to be against it. But after seeing all the people who think there's no problem logging on, I think it would make for a beneficial educational experience were they to be kicked off at prime time.