The login issues and you: Why most posts here are uninformed and pointless

[ZombieLover84]

Hello all. I am here today to not to defend any company or entity, or to agree or disagree with any of the complaints that are currently the number one topic in the tech support forums.

First a disclaimer: I have no problems with any counter points or posts to my opinion or knowledge of the current login problems, but at least base it with factual information or evidence. My post is to educate every consumer who has bought FF XIV on the what's and the how's of this issue, and how you can resolve it and how Square Enix is trying to resolve it. Let's try and be logical and civil with our discussion, and maybe, just maybe, everyone here will start using these forums as intended: To self help others with technical issues such as graphical problems, bugs, glitches, etc. It's my goal to provide the information and solutions to the number one current problem so that we can all move on to enjoying our purchase, playing our game, and generally not yelling at one another for having a different opinion or standard as a consumer.

So let's start with the problem: A large number of users cannot log into the game world to play the game they paid for. Understandably, a lot of these users are upset and frustrated at this. Some a lot more so then others. Some users are defending the login issues, which in turn enrages others even more, and then the defenders defend even harder. It's a cycle that is typical of any sort of large scale issue or problem, regardless of what the product, service, or issue is. So, why is there such a huge gap between understanding and anger at this situation? Well it mostly comes down to knowledge and prior experiences. I am going to try and show both sides that they are equally right.

So let's start with the basic. You have paid X amount of your money to a business to get a service/product. Naturally, you expect the service/product to work as advertised. That's everyone. Currently, it's not working for everyone correctly and as advertised. This is indeed an issue, as such, as the consumer who paid for said service/product you have many options at your disposal to deal with this issue. Before we look at these options, let's look at the types of consumers who have this issue and see if we can break all of us down into categories. I will say this now: Whatever group you think you are in or I defined you in, is not good, or bad.

1. This group here are highly upset, to the point of blaming seller of the product and service and demanding compensation. It matters not if you are informed how or why the issue is happening, this group just wants what they paid for. Nothing wrong with that.

2. This group are highly upset, they also blame the seller of the product/service. However, they are not demanding compensation just yet. They are just venting their frustration because of the issue. Again, it matters not if they know how or why the issue is happening, they also just want to be able to use what they paid for. Again, nothing at all wrong with this.

3. This group, while upset, shows sympathy or understanding to the problem and even the company they purchased the product from. Again, nothing wrong with this.

4. The fourth group isn't even upset. Maybe they expected this issue. Maybe not. Maybe they think they understand the business's view point. Maybe they understand completely what is causing the issue, why the issue happened, and are not not laying blame on anyone. Nothing wrong with this.

Then we have consumers who do not fall into any of the other groups. Upset or not upset, they just want to argue or vent against the other groups. They may or may not actually care about the issue, they mostly just want to argue or counter argue against others just for the sake of it, with no intention of wanting a solution. Known mostly as "trolls", this group intends to lay blame on anyone they think they can upset. It matters not if they blame group 1, 2, 3, or 4. They will not back down or understand the viewpoint of anyone else. This is the only group where the intention isn't to find a fix for the problem or understand it, etc. This group just wants to insult or blame the other groups. Sadly, this group are usually the most vocal. They can appear completely unintelligent, or super smart. This is the group that bogs down the forums, accomplishes nothing, will find the next biggest issue even once the current one is solved, and you cannot reason, debate, with them. Luckily, they disappear rather quickly, move onto to other things to argue against, and typically can be ignored when you are prepared with the proper knowledge.

So my goal here is to educate the first four groups on how best they can accomplish what they want without upsetting or alienating the other three. This in turn will not only make you a more prepared consumer in the future, but it also get's rid of a lot of those pesky trolls who are just here to annoy everyone.

Back to the problem at hand. The product/service we have purchased are having issues and a lot of us cannot use it properly. So I am going to try and explain what is wrong, since this is the tech forums, and offer solutions to each group. I am going to try and be very basic here.

Anyone who has worked in their life knows that a business's purpose is to make a profit. Not to make money, because you can make money as a business but still have no profit. Without profit, you can no longer afford to make more products, pay your employee's, etc. So right off the bat, let's get this point out of the way: Square Enix had no intention of this problem happening. It does nothing but hurt their business and lose money.

Some people would say "but they already have my money, why do they care! They've already made a profit from me!" This is actually not true at this point of the product Square Enix is selling. While nearly all video games make their money from the actual selling of the product, major MMO's do not. Typically, the cost of a major MMO can range from anywhere from 50-75 million dollars, which the current leader, Star Wars The Old Republic, cost around 200 million dollars.

That 60 dollars also isn't what Square Enix actually get's when you purchase a game. Now, I am only going to use a disc based copies as an example, but let's say you bought FF from Gamestop or Best Buy.

20% of that goes to the console maker (around 12 bucks) (which is why for a while PC games stayed at around 50 dollars. The increase to 60 dollars on PC games has more to do with the increase cost of development then anything else).

20% of the 60 goes to the retailer, also around 12 bucks.

15% goes to marketing, around 9 bucks. (This can be higher or lower depending. Publishers usually spend more on marketing then actual development costs.)

Around 15% goes to the developer, again 9 bucks. (In this case, since the game was developed by the publishers in house development team you could technically add that onto the publishers income. However, that 9 bucks has already been spent. The publisher front the money to make the game to the developer. Major developers get better deals. Say you are a developer and your last game raked in around 85% on Metacritic, then the publisher might offer an incentive or bonus for they game getting an average of 85% on Metacritic. Yes believe it or not, developers use metacritic to gain extra money to develop their game, and it also can determine how much the publisher and other third party backers are willing to offer to the development cost.)

And then the Publisher, in this case Square Enix, 30% is around the average, or 18 dollars.

So that 60 dollar game you paid for made Square Enix 18 bucks.

So how much has Square Enix made off Final Fantasy XIV at the moment? Well...nothing. Let's be nice and say that the total cost of making FFXIV was 50 million dollars. Let's say that includes everything, develop, marketing, and distrbution. Now, let's say so far it sold 1.5 million copies.

18 dollars x 1.5 million = 27 million dollars.

Let's also remember that on PC this game cost 29.99, not 60 dollars. Also to be fair, this game was sold digitally on both PC and PS3, which has a much much higher profit margin for publishers and developers (which is why consoles and PC games are pushing digital sales)

Still, the math speaks for itself. The game hasn't made any profit yet. And we didn't even take into account the fact that since this is an MMO, there is a constant cost on the game. Servers, Continuous Development Cost, Game Master Employees, Forum GM employees, Customer Support Employees. Website costs, etc. etc.

The game probably won't become profitable until around 4-6 monthes AFTER the publishers starts getting the monthly pay to play fees. And even then, most of that is sucked back into future development cost, server cost, and all the other things I mentioned in the last paragraph.

Now, with this in mind, the business, in this case, Square Enix, has to come to an estimate on how many servers they need, how much concurrent users the servers can hold, etc. They base this on beta user numbers, pre-sale numbers, market hype, etc. And now we come full circle. Square Enix was simply did not estimate correctly just how popular the game was going to be. This in turn cause our biggest issue: login issues and server capacity issues.

Now, they can't just flip a switch and fix this. I won't get into the details on this, but they cannot simply bring down the servers and add more capacity, and they can't simply add more servers at the flick of a switch either. However what they can do is basically everything they could:

1. They stopped selling their game digitally until they can add more room. They can't of course stop Gamestop from selling a hard copy that the retailer has already purchased, but they can control their own digital sales. This is a business willing to sacrifice more profit for the sake of their consumer base.

2. They are offering a quick solution. Within a week of launch, they are going to add more servers and data centers. That is pretty fast, all things considered. Other games that have had this issue at launch, like Diablo 3 and World of Warcraft, had login issues for weeks before they were able to properly balance and get the servers right. So they are spending more money to fix the problem that while it is their fault, even if it was because of unexpected demand.

3. They are giving away exactly the amount of free time (7 days) that the customers may have lost because of this issue. So while you couldn't play correctly on August 27th until tomorrow, they are giving you those 7 days for free. (You get them added to your account at the end of tonights scheduled maintenance).

4. All of this information is being presented on the main FF website and on the login screen of the game itself.

So now that you know the problems, the why's, and how's, here are my solutions for the different groups.

Group 1. Square Enix is giving you compensation for your loss of play time. However, if you still are not satisfied, you can still get a full refund on your purchase. Now that you know this, you have no need to make any more posts regarding this issue. You know it is getting resolved, you are being compensated for it, and even if still left unsatisfied, you can get a full refund. You lose nothing, the problem is being solved, not need to make any posts about it, in the technical forums at least.

Group 2. You wasn't at the point of demanding compensation, but you are upset. Now that you know you are getting compensation, and have options for even a full refund, and now that you know the problem is getting fixed tonight, you have no reason to post about this in the Tech Support forums.

Group 3 and 4, you weren't really upset, or you understood the situation from the business standpoint, or you are being patient. Again, with the issue being solved tonight, you have no reason to post in the Tech support forums about this particular issue.

And that's that. If you see someone that is making a new post about this issue, do what the forum is designed for: Tell them the problem is solved, and give them their options.

If you see our other group we talked about, well there is nothing you can do about that. Ignore and move on. No need to debate or argue with them. You now know the issue is fixed, no more technical support is needed on the matter, and you know every consumer has their options on what to do.

Now if you want to go debate and argue about this in say, the general forums. By all means, go for it. But this forum is for tech support. The login issues from a tech support standpoint are being fixed tonight, and that's all you need to relay to anyone new.

Now, if this issue persists after tonight's downtime, or if a new technical bug or error comes up, then post away. As it stands now, we know everything we need to so we don't have to make new posts in this particular forum.

Thank you for staying and if you read all of this, that's pretty amazing. I hope you all soon have a wonderful time playing this game.

[Arawn]

however, 5 million copies sold, by the math you used in this point and only 230,000 players can play at any given point, SE stated. So, is their fix going to allow for the rest of that 4.75 million to get a chance to play the game? I hope so.

[gamegal71]

Thank you, very well written.

[Hoveurt]

however, 5 million copies sold, by the math you used in this point and only 230,000 players can play at any given point, SE stated. So, is their fix going to allow for the rest of that 4.75 million to get a chance to play the game? I hope so.

They reported an extreme increase of sales right before launch.

[Brigit]

Bravo! *applauds*

[Holyhunter]

however, 5 million copies sold, by the math you used in this point and only 230,000 players can play at any given point, SE stated. So, is their fix going to allow for the rest of that 4.75 million to get a chance to play the game? I hope so.

you honestly think theres even a slim chance that 4.75 million people will be playing the game at the same time?
Thats more people than wow has actual subscribers

not to mention that 5 million people didnt buy the game

[SarkdenTepes]

however, 5 million copies sold, by the math you used in this point and only 230,000 players can play at any given point, SE stated. So, is their fix going to allow for the rest of that 4.75 million to get a chance to play the game? I hope so.

Your assumption that just because 5 million copies were sold that 5 million people are playing is poor. There is a number of those that are registered to the same account because they are linking the PS3/PC together to use both systems. At that point, how many active subscriptions are there really? I am well aware this doesn't cover the X amount of people above the 230k mark that can't get in, but it significantly lowers the amount of total people trying to get in since you can't log into both systems using the same service account.

[MJFERN]

While I've got major issues with your margin breakdown estimates, I'll table those for a day when I've got the time to do the research to back up what I have to say on that topic.

Here's my problem with the whole situation, lack of planning. In order for this situation to occur, not only did SE have to plan on only a small fraction of the players they ended up with, they had to go with a server solution that was all but non-scalable, completely full racks with no room for quick expansion. One duty finder for the whole game? Ouch, but if it wasn't built maximizing a single set of hardware, the use of expansion hardware and virtual machines could have created the solution we're hoping works right after tonite.

Lack of planning for the player base is simply inexcusable. The modern tracking methods that weren't available on UO, EQ, and WoW's vanilla launch are common now. Digital sales are reported if not instantly, nightly. And most of the games sold in boxes are reported in nightly figures as well, even when they're not tied directly to an install code. So, at the very least on a day by day basis SE had the numbers they needed to know that the launch wasn't going to work the way it was planned. They moved forward anyway.

Lots of people are angry on both sides. Arguably, if they sold 5 million copies they probably have MILLIONS of people who've never been past the character creation screens. Those millions have a legitimate reason for their anger. If you've only been in game once or twice because of the 1017 errors, you've got legitimate reasons for your anger too. And you've got people who've been in game quite a bit with anger about duty finder not working right, or FATE's being too crowded or their friends can't log in because of all the AFK players who won't log out in fear of never getting back in, all with varying degrees of legitimacy for their anger.

But consider this, we all have the SAME reason to be angry with SE, 1 week. One week was all it took to procure the necessary hardware, image drives, fix the duty finder and be ready to implement for tonite's maintenance. This could have all been done with a 1 week delay in launch and all the anger could have been avoided. THAT just plain pisses me off. If I'd known my EA would be worthless, I would have waited a few weeks, maybe that's what SE wanted to avoid, anyone waiting. If they'd delayed EA along with launch I'd still have gotten it, but honestly the way they handled it is just pitiful. The communication they've shared would have gotten customer service managers at companies I've worked for and with fired. And the blatant and obvious disparity in how the JP v NA/EU server issues have been handled...wow. I don't even know what to say about that. They obviously haven't noticed that while they may be a Japanese company, most of their income comes from outside Japan.

[Matty86]

however, 5 million copies sold, by the math you used in this point and only 230,000 players can play at any given point, SE stated. So, is their fix going to allow for the rest of that 4.75 million to get a chance to play the game? I hope so.

5 Million?
Really, where is this data coming from?

[Alaestir]

Best post I've seen in weeks! Bravo!