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

[ermagherdberbles]

people are mad they cant play but as soon as they can play you wont hear a word from them. hopefully tomorrow

[Matty86]

Yes GW2 did have this issue. It crashed the first two days and they stopped digital sales, just like FF 14 has. And it wasn't fixed in 20-30 minutes. They fixed the login issues rather quickly, but at the sacrifice of taking The trade post down for over a week.

http://www.inquisitr.com/312183/guil...tivity-issues/

And guess what, it happened about 4 hours after headstart....just like FF 14.

You just said Diablo 3 was unplayable for ten days...but said this game was worse....when it's only 7 days old.....How is your math that bad.

This game is out from 10 days 24/08, 04/09.
I said: "Diablo III sold 10x what this game will ever sold, still it wasn't unplayble for 10 days" Diablo III had problems for days/a week, but not this long, also I was there at the release of GW2 and Diablo, I don't need an article, GW2 release was flawless, you could log in any time, any day and play, some server crash happened, but you could log back in minutes.
Again, GW2 have 2x the concurrent users of FF.
This is not how MMO releases are, this is the worst release I ever seen.

[Raist]

While you have solid points, I only have an issue with a few.

1. These problems did not arise in the open beta. Meaning that Square was on the right track.
2. These problems arose in EA. Now, you may say, they should have known their numbers. They did. But I didn't pre order my copy till open access was well... open. They had no number for me. No data. I did not particpate in the beta. I work in the game retail world. Pre-order numbers were very low, until EA. And then, at my store at least, we had to stop pre ordered because they went over what we had already got in shipment. See, games like this ship about a week before release. I know I had copies of this game in my backroom the Wednesday before launch. At this point, SE did not have the data for the extreme spike that EA brought.

I also now that when it did finally release, every store in my area sold hard copy wise. Including the Wal marts and best buys. This game literally blew up by word of month during the weekend of EA. At this point, they can't just push release back by a week. This would cause more problems.

So we went from open beta, no problems, to ea, one week later, blowing up the servers. This was unexpected not only on SE end, but retailers end as well.

I would also point out that Diablo III, another game with modern tracking, had the same issues. Guild Wars 2, another game with modern tracking, had the same issues. And those two games had the expectations MONTHS in advance. FF 14 blew up within a week.

Ummm... what beta were you in?

Instance/Duty servers crashed on SATURDAY in Beta4... and we've suffered from their inablilty to handle their projected load ever since.

ALL of this stems from them not having enough capacity on the BACK END servers to support each world. We were able to run around our worlds just fine, so long as we didn't trigger any instanced content. This was all discovered within at least the first 36 hours of Beta4 (may have been less, I didn't get locked out until late Saturday night, but some got locke don Friday I think).

[Bindy]

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

There is an article saying over 750,000 copies of FFXIV have been sold to date, but that includes 1.0 (sold in 2010) which seems to be a little over half that number. SE said they were experiencing 300,000 to 350,000 concurrent log ins, while they were prepared to handle about 250,000. Hopefully, they offer free transfers to the new servers for those that want to move, so we can have more room on the crowded servers. Otherwise, our servers will still be full and they will merely be directing new characters to the new servers.

[Matty86]

There is an article saying over 750,000 copies of FFXIV have been sold to date, but that includes 1.0 (sold in 2010) which seems to be a little over half that number. SE said they were experiencing 300,000 to 350,000 concurrent log ins, while they were prepared to handle about 250,000. Hopefully, they offer free transfers to the new servers for those that want to move, so we can have more room on the crowded servers. Otherwise, our servers will still be full and they will merely be directing new characters to the new servers.

Yeah I know about the 750k copy sold counting also 1.0, so it's like 400k counting only ffxiv arr, and that's really far from the 5 milion
Still they manage to achieve the worst release in mmo history.

[BlueStar62]

A larger MMO company, with way more experience then SE, halted digital sales.

http://www.nowgamer.com/news/1565854...e_updated.html

While Arenanet developed Guild Wars 1 and 2, NCsoft published. And NCsoft is one of the largest MMO publishers in the world.

Sim City, another game that requires always online, also stopped digital sales. How long has EA and Sim City been around?

GW2 PLANNED to stop their sales ahead of time, giving fair warning and notice, and that was after they had a sizable amount of players. And they ONLY stopped selling digital copies for a brief period, which meant you could still buy retail versions and play just fine! SE has stopped ALL game sales, ALL character creation, and has shitty lagged out servers that even those WITH the game can't even play on. Don't even try to compare this fiasco to GW2.

And Sim City was a joke, one that FF seems to share.

[Raist]

That is not accurate. While you did have to be registered and get a code, I didn't register until 2 hours after EA started. So again, they didn't know my numbers.

And while they knew the pre-sell numbers for digital sales before EA, those numbers increased at an unexpected rate during EA, which is why the duty finder crashed so quickly. Most of the people I currently play with did not preorder this game, hard copy or otherwise, until EA. The point where data tracking didn't mean anything anymore because they couldn't change anything at that point. I myself and around 10 real life friends all registered our preorders the first day of EA. We all did not beta test. I personally don't like beta testing. The majority of MMO players do not beta test. We got on EA because 1. We knew we could cancel if we didn't like it and 2. We knew we were going to be able to keep everything when we moved over to launch if we decided to buy the game. All 10 of us did.

Now imagine how many more people in the world did the same thing we did.

Missed the point. It all blew up during beta4 testing. And someone mentioned in other threads they had stability issues in earlier betas too--it all adds up to them having evidence of a problem well before launch.

Also... as for them getting advanced notice, they've launched multiple online games now, not just XI, XIV 1.0- and ARR, but games that ran on phones, Wakfu, .... this is by NO means their first rodeo.

And a boat load of people were pre-ordering a month in advance.... Beta keys were applied for, approved, and issued BY SQUARE ENIX---so they knew EXACTLY how many were going to be in Beta4, and should have had sufficient evidence as to what to expect at early access. And the datacenters were STILL underpowered during EACH instance.

[SuperDevin]

You know why I don't like threads like this which try to stop people from complaining/getting mad about a big problem? Because it encourages the repeat of the same mistakes. Do you know what happens when enough people get pissed off about a mistake? Those responsible for the mistake get punished, and the mistake doesn't usually happen again.

SE has *no excuse* for making such a stupid planning mistake. They had all the data they needed (being their 3rd FF mmo) for server capacity requirements and all the time in the world to test it during development.

Whoever decided to limit the server capacities to this degree has cost SE a lot of money and made the launch of their new MMO a joke. Those responsible for this should be fired without question, because the same thing would be done in any other industry.

So stop telling people to calm down over something they have plenty of right to be pissed over.

If only you were right... but your wrong. First of all SE could not have accurate numbers for this launch. That's near impossible. Here's why.

1. This is a relaunch of a FAILED mmo. Not many people give things second chances. Plus this is already WAY more popular then FFXI or FFXIV 1.0 ever was.

2. Digital sales are in instantaneous. Meaning prior to launch or early access or in early access people could STILL BUY THE GAME. (Many people wait till the last minute, read reviews and see what people say about the beta and then buy)

3. They gave all of their 1.0 users free access to the game without having to sign up for anything or let SE know.

4. Because the beta is free you generally have far more users that will try it out then actually buy it. Look at iOS apps. The free versions are usually more popular because their FREE. That being said free to play MMO's are all the rage right now so most would expect a paid MMO to not fare as well.

5. Servers take time to set up and prepare. If I set my servers up last month for EXPECTED sales then something changes and my sales are higher I can't get the new servers running in 10 minutes. Shit takes time.

6. If I am in charge of server capacity I am not in charge of sales estimates. Two different departments. If I can save the company money and have just enough servers then I will probably get a bonus. Especially on a game with low sale expectations. Being the guy who has the company buy way more machines (which cost millions) then needed is not a good thing and would likely get you fired.

7. Presale numbers are estimates not actual numbers.

8. SE development group for this game in is Japan not the USA. MMO's are not big in Japan at all (Most of the JP servers were fine until US/EU people started playing on them.) And its hard to gauge the hype for a title a world away. Maybe SE USA should have communicated better I'll give you that.

9. SE has been having a hard time with sale lately. Tomb Raider under sold. FFXIII and XIII-2 both under sold. RE6 under sold (Capcom not SE but still a JP IP). See a pattern here?

Lastly this is a good thing. Yeah you can't play whenever you want for the first week, so what? MMO's many last years if not a decade. Ones with a strong player base last longer. The more money SE gets the for this title the better SE will be. 1.0 broke SE, this could fix it. You will be able to play soon. Think of this as a rain delay. ^_^

[Zun]

Not to sound negative, but I have a couple of problems with the OP's post.

Firstly, you shouldn't take it upon yourself to "educate" anyone else, to criticize anyone else as being uninformed, and stating people should have facts to support their opinions, when you yourself have no knowledge as to what causes people to form the opinions they do, and have stated yourself that you've pulled numbers out of thin air. As well-intentioned as you may be, this can, and likely will, be seen as arrogant and insulting to many of the people you're addressing.

Secondly, while it is true that SE is currently in the red with this game financially, especially considering its been stated that they've used no third-party investor revenue and have paid for the game completely independently, the developer of a game typically gets more than just 20% of the box price. Retailers also commonly make less than 5% of the box price on new games, which is why most of the gaming specialty stores have failed, and why GameStop NEEDS used game sales to stay in business unless they branch out into other non-video game products.

No I'm not just making these numbers up. I've worked in media retail in the past, and have also learned a bit about the financial side of the industry in college. However, I also don't care enough about this issue to bother with finding/citing sources myself. If you're so inclined, however, I welcome you to do the research yourself if you so choose. By all means please post it here if you do.

[Raist]

If only you were right... but your wrong. First of all SE could not have accurate numbers for this launch. That's near impossible. Here's why.

1. This is a relaunch of a FAILED mmo. Not many people give things second chances. Plus this is already WAY more popular then FFXI or FFXIV 1.0 ever was.

2. Digital sales are in instantaneous. Meaning prior to launch or early access or in early access people could STILL BUY THE GAME. (Many people wait till the last minute, read reviews and see what people say about the beta and then buy)

3. They gave all of their 1.0 users free access to the game without having to sign up for anything or let SE know.

4. Because the beta is free you generally have far more users that will try it out then actually buy it. Look at iOS apps. The free versions are usually more popular because their FREE. That being said free to play MMO's are all the rage right now so most would expect a paid MMO to not fare as well.

5. Servers take time to set up and prepare. If I set my servers up last month for EXPECTED sales then something changes and my sales are higher I can't get the new servers running in 10 minutes. Shit takes time.

6. If I am in charge of server capacity I am not in charge of sales estimates. Two different departments. If I can save the company money and have just enough servers then I will probably get a bonus. Especially on a game with low sale expectations. Being the guy who has the company buy way more machines (which cost millions) then needed is not a good thing and would likely get you fired.

7. Presale numbers are estimates not actual numbers.

8. SE development group for this game in is Japan not the USA. MMO's are not big in Japan at all (Most of the JP servers were fine until US/EU people started playing on them.) And its hard to gauge the hype for a title a world away. Maybe SE USA should have communicated better I'll give you that.

9. SE has been having a hard time with sale lately. Tomb Raider under sold. FFXIII and XIII-2 both under sold. RE6 under sold (Capcom not SE but still a JP IP). See a pattern here?

Lastly this is a good thing. Yeah you can't play whenever you want for the first week, so what? MMO's many last years if not a decade. Ones with a strong player base last longer. The more money SE gets the for this title the better SE will be. 1.0 broke SE, this could fix it. You will be able to play soon. Think of this as a rain delay. ^_^

All of the debate over questionable numbers is rendered almost moot when you look at what happened in Beta4, and then later in EA.

They've established their capacity at 5k per world. The number bounced around was 150k people initially in Beta4. At 5k cap per server, that would fill 30 servers, and about half of them were locked out from new character creation... so we were pretty much on the mark there with that number.---and we KILLED the servers by Saturday night. They g ave us a 3 hour extension, when many didn't get access again until the last minute, in the middle of the night for most of the world. It basically rendered Beta4 virtually pointless after Saturday night.

How many servers did they put up and carry into EA? How many servers did we wind up with in the end that were locked from new account creation (ie, hit/exceeded 5k cap)?

Wait for that to sink in folks.......