This is what I honestly feared for, when reading the maintenance.

The fact that they're not raising the cap on the server and just opening the servers to other people will not help the current users that have characters on the current servers (Legacy servers in particular) logging on. The fact remains is that multiple people want to do two things:



a) Log into the game to play the game and cannot create a character due to the character lockout restriction (Which they are somewhat resolving by offering new servers)

b) Log into the game on their server that they've got either a Legacy character or their character already created (Which they are not at all resolving by adding new servers and adding an increase to the duty finder.)

The duty finder imploded because there were too many people on the current servers queuing up for story AND dungeons and that made it crash. The restrictions are based on this and as such, it's well worth increasing the power of the DF servers so everyone can, you know, actually 'play' the game for its story. The problem I have is that I'm a Legacy member that can't get on a Legacy server who I'm playing with other Legacy Members who will not be allowed to transfer even IF they offer free transfers to the new world! (This is actually presumption. I'm not sure if they might add one or two extra Legacy servers and allow NA/EU members to transfer. That would be the logical thing to do.)

So in short, I'm expecting one of two things:

a) The servers added will have a couple of Legacy servers, allowing Legacy members to transfer off to those servers, as well as offer transfers off of any servers to the new ones. This comes at the risk of their server transfer system slowing down with the massive requests. But either way, would be the best way to try to alleviate the current situation.

or

b) The servers are added, no transfers are given, and people are told to go to the new servers if they want to create, which won't help as those servers will lock up and we'll get the same problems we are currently experiencing (1017, 2002) but the latter error more frequently as there's no mention that the lobby server will get an increase in size either.

My sincere request from this player who does work in the IT sector (Seems a lot of people claim that title huh. Take my word for it, if you must), is that you carefully consider the following:

1) When adding servers, please make sure that you add a couple of Legacy servers. This leads to number 2...

2) Allow free transfers which will allow you to redirect traffic off of the current servers that are being hammered by users wanting to get on. This will lead to number 3...

3) Prepare your transfer server database to get a lot of volume and not crash to cause more headaches as you're already annoying a good portion of your playerbase. (Not saying all, just saying I've seen a lot of complaints lately about this, worse now that the servers are practically full in N/A all day.)

4) Bar doing number 2 and 3, seriously consider investing in hardware to increase the ability of the current datacenter to have more than 5000 people. Yoshida, as much as you have knowledge about the MMORPG world, you are severely underestimating the fact that the genre has exploded since FFXI. Every game at this point has users that will want to test the game out as they are either fans of the series of Final Fantasy or that they're looking for that next game to lock into. Locking your server down to 5000 seems low. (Granted, I have 'no' idea what the servers of every day MMOs have. It might be around the same, it might be more, it might be less. I'll fully admit my knowledge in this specific area is lacking.)

I'm sincerely hoping that Tuesday night's maintenance is going to fix the issues. But reading what Yoshida has written, I'm fearing the worse and not expecting to play anytime soon. (Going on 13 hours now trying to log on, trying every second hour for around 30 minutes.)

Let's hope for the best, but keep your expectations low.