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

[ZombieLover84]

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.

Everything I posted about the numbers were just things I grabbed out of mid air. Now, the average cost of making an MMO is exactly what I posted. Still, 5 million copies, that is 90 million (again, this is assuming every copy made the company 18 dollars. With the PC version being 30, they made way less then that per copy. Probably around 9 dollars, which would give them only 45 million income. If I had to guess, I would suspect this game cost around 75-100 million to develop.)

Now, not sure I have seen the 230,000 only figure, would love a link to that. Even so, this downtime is over 10 hours. I would say they are adding not only more servers, but I know they mentioned they are raising the player concurrent login numbers (basically, how many people can be logged in at one time without there being a que or the world is full.)

I expect that Square is not just going to add servers. In fact I am positive, because that alone wouldn't fix the problem, and also it's the reason they couldn't do this right away this past Tuesday. They are not only going to increase the amount of servers, but the amount of capacity each server can hold. I also assume, because it's just logical when expanding servers, that less worlds will be on a single server. When you log in to see worlds, like say, yours is Siren. Siren isn't the only world on that server. There could be 3-5 other worlds on there. Like say the group was Siren, Cactuar, Balmung. These three worlds run on the single server. Those are the three worlds the duty finder will pull from.

What SE will do will not just add servers, but lower the world amount. So instead of say, five worlds, it would be just Balmung and Siren. This means a larger amount of concurrent users can player on Balmung and Siren, but the duty finder can only pull from those two worlds now. With the increase of the amount of players on each server, it should even out on the duty finder. Even though it's pulling from less servers, it has more people now to pull from.

This would be why, and I didn't go into detail, MMOs can't just flick a switch and add more servers. They need to add more capacity per server, move world groups around. lower or raise them. Add more world groups. Tune the duty finder to the new layout. Make sure the data login servers are connecting properly to the new layout and capacity. Add more data centers for login auth if needed. Then test it all and make sure it works before reopening the service.

Hence the large downtime tonight. And all this had to be planned, and worked out with whatever company they are running their servers through. They had to rent more space, buy more equipment, add more cooling, etc. All this cannot be done in a day. It's impressive they have worked so fast to get all this bought and planned in a week. Not they have all staff working to upgrade, install, test etc. During downtime.

[djrdo]

They reported an extreme increase of sales right before launch.

indeed if u played the beta u qouldent had bought it till las minuite too
all these issues we have had the last 2 weeks were issues that were in the beta but never solved after the beta team protested the game servers where not rdy..
SE must have seen the petition we had to push release back and extend beta because they did the same they have done for 2 weeks and say here is an extra 3 hours of beta time we fixxed the issue .. but it never got fixed.
and in regards to buddy saying the mis calculated .. they should have had back up servers good to go and back up extra worlds gtg if other mmo launches haven't told them anything

wouldent it be standard protocal affter so man failed launches?

[Alaestir]

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

I'd ignore them.. I believe they would be one of those "trolls" that the original poster was talking about.

[Sinayadyne]

tl:dr

Yawn.

[BlueStar62]

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.

[Zangerfain]

The OP's post while well thought out and written also correct in my opinion has only done one thing... Added another thread in which to debate about the issue in.

[Zack85]

Lots of good information here and plenty of informed opinions. Although I can't verify half that mess I can say on general principal I agree with most of it. Which ever side of the fence your on you have to see that this sort of discussion is healthy and good for the market. Will it enact change on a grand scale in the corporate level? Probably not, but it does educate consumers and in some cases force consumers to educate themselves. Education is key, and when conveyed professionally and intelligently this sort of dialogue helps people.

[ZombieLover84]

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.

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.

[Squ7]

/Respect

A well written post. This 'message' was exactly what we needed. Yes, I had my share of frustrations but I've cooled down since.
I guess that, in a couple of weeks/months, we've all forgotten about this login issue and will already be discussing more pressing matters.

[MJFERN]

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.

The duty finder, the main cause for every error that was in world, which in effect caused SE to limit populations was a KNOWN FAULT in beta. So population problems aside, they knew in beta with those limited numbers of players that it was an issue.

That aside, the game was crashing within hours of launch. They didn't have that many people go out and buy it and install it first thing that morning. The game exploded from digital downloads. Not to mention that the downloads and the CD copies still needed last minute updates. So those players weren't live right off the bat.

If you want to say it was the EA population, fine, but remember EA population had to be registered and receive a code to get in. They knew the numbers. Even if it wasn't until EA, they should have pulled the launch by a week to fix the problem.