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

[JamieLee]

While i commend your well and thought out post...

First and foremost any copy bought digitally directly from SE is about 95 percent profit as only a fraction goes to there credit card auth company for use of the service usually 2.5 percent of the transaction.... which is about .25c on the dollar. Most of them don't take a lot of the transaction they just take a little off alot of transactions..

Just as a prospective there was about 1.5 million people that already owned ff xiv that didn't have to go out and buy a new copy but say 500k of them did to get the pets and or just didn't complete the legacy quest line to get early access..

New customers say it sold 5 million pre orders now out of that 5 million pre orders you had 2 million that got the CE at 60.00

you have
3.5 million @ 30.00
and 2.0 million @60.00

Overhead to remake the game aka salleries paid to programmers artists so forth is about 10-15 million for there work
PR promotion is about 4 million for media and hype.
and about another 5-10 million to re overhaul the existing engine + there server back ends... (only new servers would cost money as old servers they had they already own...) Most mmo companies do not rent servers they buy them.

basic Business profit is NP Before Bonus granted were not going to say they get a bonus but were going to use the same filtering so you can see how much came out in the end.

3.5 million * 30.00= 10,500,0000.00
2.0 million * 60.00= 12,000,0000.00
Total Estimate=22.5 million

This is a projection that 5.5 million preordred just the pc version Not even including Ps3


29.0 million In expensese estimated.
22.5 million made on pre orderes
-6.5 million in the hole Thats for just in pre order sales that can be tracked at the time and 0 in physical copies and or people that bougt the game but could not register do to server issues or lack of time..


if this game sells another 5.0 +million copies they already recuped the money spent... without anything in sub fees.

Yes there is over head in running a mmo


Its about 500 million a year to run a game the size of World of warcraft which was 12 million subscribers..
@ 14.99 a month at 1.5 million subscribers =$2,248,5000.00 x 12= $269,820,000.00 in residual income.

110 million a year to keep people updating it and the servers running and bandwith. which leaves 159 million in residual profit if they never gained or lost a user..

While you think there in the Red now that's a ton of money as a revolving income for any compnay hence why mmo's are profitable..

THe moral is its actually in there best interest to get the servers up and running quicker then drag there feet and do it later....

You also state that other mmo's have issues at launch while it is kinda true its now 2013 and issues like this should not be a issue at this scale. You talk about blizzards vanilla launch you realize that was in the early 2000s not 2013... When there really was no way to accurately project a MMO's launch user base. Now sense they can track how many keys they sent out via digital and hard copies Every key should be assumed sold and ready for use when planning your network intake... Servers will be added and removed accordingly and will be on standby as needed. You don't launch a mmo even at a modest projection of 1.5 million users which is about what Beta 4 consisted of with the capacity of not even half a million users... Then launch with that same server load 25 servers per region NA/EU 25x5000= 125000 JAP 25x5000=125000 combined 250 thousand users for a pre order that they already knew before beta 4 and then launching beta 4 was well over the million mark.....

Sorry for the miss spellings. Trying to type this on a mobile device is pita. While i agree the game is good they are working to fix the problem any IT department worth there salt would have got this handled and or had a Network roadmap that wouldn't have taken A as long and B would have had backup servers on standby.

[MJFERN]

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.

See, this argument is hysterically funny to me. I work in an internet environment. And knowing, for certain what the traffic numbers are going to be is never ever what we shoot for. We shoot to be prepared to handle the MOST traffic we can handle, based on what we sold yesterday and what we hope to sell tomorrow. Which in a case of digital & physical media sales for an online game would mean, to plan to have to host a player for every physical copy printed along with a doomsday 'can we handle that much, really?' number of digital downloads. From the looks of things they didn't even bother to be ready to handle the traffic of just the physical copies of the game.

You think most people waited until EA to buy the game? See, that would indicate to me inherently irresponsible spending. By the time I woke up the morning EA began, there were already traffic and login problems. Who in their right mind goes out to buy access to a game they know there are already issues logging into? If I hadn't already preordered, I'd have waited until this was all sorted out. The same with every single person I know out in the real world who I've talked about this game with. Thankfully for me, the two people I'm most likely to play this game with haven't bought their copies yet. So when this all gets sorted out and I know what server I'm on, they can hop on whenever they decide to without having to worry about character transfers or anything.

[MJFERN]

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.

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?

6...Funny, but effin' up a game launch by having capacity grossly under the need is far more likely to get someone fired than someone who buys hardware that can always be returned to the vendor if it's not needed.

7...presales are estimates. but PRELAUNCH sales, with money collected are not. Not to mention every digital copy sold by amazon, or gamestop or walmart is reported in realtime. Last minute sales wouldn't have afforded opportunity to delay launch but even on day one of EA they knew they were screwed on capacity for the Duty Finder servers and they didn't delay launch. RE6 sucked, as a game in whole, it deserved it's crappy sales. And any even remote hint that all Japanese IP is like another is just fail. Why not compare Pokemon and Urotsukidoji? I mean they're both animated and came from Japan.

9....Here, this. OMG did you read anything about Tomb Raider's sales before you posted this? Go google Tomb Raider sales. Just read the title of the IGN article and the first line in the preview. 4 million copies...well, actually only 3.6 million in the first month, but still, fastest selling version of Tomb Raider ever. Now, if someone effed up the sales projection and expected 6 million...well, they should have launched that game the day before Thanksgiving.

The simple fact is that the powers that be at SE have more than once been quoted as saying something to the effect of this launch makes or breaks SE. And the way they've handled it doesn't look good.

[Hibashira]

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.

Nice write up. My compliment on the attempt. I think I belong to your group 2. But you are missing a very big part.

IT is my livelihood. I'm a developer by background and by experience, worked on many software that are used by thousands of simultaneous users doing business that are worth millions of dollars on an hourly basis. Trust me when I say whatever problem SE has, they had been solved over and over and over again by many many many experienced people in the IT field years and years ago.

The problem you asked? Simple: Poor architecture that is not scalable. For as long as it isn't addressed, larger server, more CPU, more memory won't solve the problem.

We did not merely pay money for a product and want what we paid for. We put our faith in SE, trusting that they did not take this challenge lightly, trusting that they brought together those that have the expertise to solve the architectural problems faced (and as I mentioned previously, solved, and solved a long long time ago) by all MMO developers. The fact is contrary. Their "solution" is contrary. Larger boxes, more powerful CPU, etc. never solve scalability problems. Architecture and proper design does. And yet we are being fed the usual blames on infrastructure. That tells me they haven't solve the problem.

200K+ people can play right now. The "solution" might bring us up to 500K. Improvement? Yes. Solution? Far from it. What happens when FFXIV turns into a run away success, WoW style? Know that this scaling problem (matching players in 3+ dimensions, a la tank-healer-dps) is compounding logarithmically, not at all linear. The largest servers in the world can't solve these problem unless the architecture has changed.

You say we should be glad that they resolve the problem so quickly within a week. They haven't done anything of the sort. They bought themselves a little bit of time. And we are to be gracious? Trust me, we will be after they solved the problem. But trust me, they haven't.

[Bloodwillow]

Is there a synopsis of this? Reading huge posts at 4.30 am is kinda brain taxing

[kamuimac]

I know a lot of people that stopped considering buying this game when they heard about all the problems going on - from when they stopped selling the game to when they disabled character creation, not to mention the myriad of login problems. SE lost a lot of money on that, and there are 3 new big title MMOs coming out. Some people may "endure" playing this game right now, but it will not be many, and many yet will leave for one of the new upcoming MMOs when the time comes. If SE even tried to bring up the EULA in regards to delivered game quality, then that would piss off even more people and they would be finished, if they aren't already.

This so much this - many people got cheated into buying this piece of shit (me included) cause we very overhyped greedy and didn't thought calmly about purchasing this - in my case its mainly cause i still remeber FF from its prime time during FF X , but by now i realised that it was 20 euro thrown into mug , well happens ill be back here when they sub numbers gonna drop down like flies in few months and they gonn switch to f2p like all other payment mmorpg had to do with expetion of wow -_-

[Astralen]

Well done! Hope this prevents people from posting useless posts on the Tech forums.

[Matty86]

While i commend your well and thought out post...

First and foremost any copy bought digitally directly from SE is about 95 percent profit as only a fraction goes to there credit card auth company for use of the service usually 2.5 percent of the transaction.... which is about .25c on the dollar. Most of them don't take a lot of the transaction they just take a little off alot of transactions..

Just as a prospective there was about 1.5 million people that already owned ff xiv that didn't have to go out and buy a new copy but say 500k of them did to get the pets and or just didn't complete the legacy quest line to get early access..

New customers say it sold 5 million pre orders now out of that 5 million pre orders you had 2 million that got the CE at 60.00

you have
3.5 million @ 30.00
and 2.0 million @60.00

Overhead to remake the game aka salleries paid to programmers artists so forth is about 10-15 million for there work
PR promotion is about 4 million for media and hype.
and about another 5-10 million to re overhaul the existing engine + there server back ends... (only new servers would cost money as old servers they had they already own...) Most mmo companies do not rent servers they buy them.

basic Business profit is NP Before Bonus granted were not going to say they get a bonus but were going to use the same filtering so you can see how much came out in the end.

3.5 million * 30.00= 10,500,0000.00
2.0 million * 60.00= 12,000,0000.00
Total Estimate=22.5 million

This is a projection that 5.5 million preordred just the pc version Not even including Ps3


29.0 million In expensese estimated.
22.5 million made on pre orderes
-6.5 million in the hole Thats for just in pre order sales that can be tracked at the time and 0 in physical copies and or people that bougt the game but could not register do to server issues or lack of time..


if this game sells another 5.0 +million copies they already recuped the money spent... without anything in sub fees.

Yes there is over head in running a mmo


Its about 500 million a year to run a game the size of World of warcraft which was 12 million subscribers..
@ 14.99 a month at 1.5 million subscribers =$2,248,5000.00 x 12= $269,820,000.00 in residual income.

110 million a year to keep people updating it and the servers running and bandwith. which leaves 159 million in residual profit if they never gained or lost a user..

While you think there in the Red now that's a ton of money as a revolving income for any compnay hence why mmo's are profitable..

THe moral is its actually in there best interest to get the servers up and running quicker then drag there feet and do it later....

You also state that other mmo's have issues at launch while it is kinda true its now 2013 and issues like this should not be a issue at this scale. You talk about blizzards vanilla launch you realize that was in the early 2000s not 2013... When there really was no way to accurately project a MMO's launch user base. Now sense they can track how many keys they sent out via digital and hard copies Every key should be assumed sold and ready for use when planning your network intake... Servers will be added and removed accordingly and will be on standby as needed. You don't launch a mmo even at a modest projection of 1.5 million users which is about what Beta 4 consisted of with the capacity of not even half a million users... Then launch with that same server load 25 servers per region NA/EU 25x5000= 125000 JAP 25x5000=125000 combined 250 thousand users for a pre order that they already knew before beta 4 and then launching beta 4 was well over the million mark.....

Sorry for the miss spellings. Trying to type this on a mobile device is pita. While i agree the game is good they are working to fix the problem any IT department worth there salt would have got this handled and or had a Network roadmap that wouldn't have taken A as long and B would have had backup servers on standby.

FFXIV 1.0 sold 300k copies.
FFXIV ARR sold 750.000 copies, this also counting the 1.0. (so it's 450k copies sold)
Where is this 5 milion coming from again? I really would like to know.

[ZombieLover84]

Hey everyone.

This topic really got popular! I want to thank people that are supporting this topic, even if they are not supporting the information I provided. I slept and played the new Diablo III on my PS3 for a while, so this topic went from 3 pages to 9 pages. There is simply no way I can respond to all of it lol.


Most posts have been very nice. Only a few troll posts. I like seeing posts backed up my others knowledge and experience. Still not sure where this 5 million number is coming from. Diablo III is the current PC holder for selling the most copies in a single day/week, and it isn't that far off from the 5 million number. I would think if that number was anywhere close to being accurate, we would be seeing gaming news websites posting articles about how Final Fantasy XIV was one of the top five launches of all time. But we aren't..... so the 5 million thing...yea not even close to what this game has actually sold. I would be highly surprised if this game has surpassed 1.5 million copes sold across PS3 and PC to date, much less 5 million.

And, to answer a quick problem a few posts are having about my topic: Yes, this post adds another to the Technical Forums. However, the intention is the prevent as many more as possible. If someone can log in and see my post and say "Huh, well I guess that answers that", and they don't post another topic, my goal has been successful.

Also, I have no once defended SE. In fact, I have said this issue is indeed their fault. Now, some of the opinions and data I posted could be seen as making it look like SE shouldn't need to take fault with this, and I apologize if it looked like that.

So let me be clear. This is indeed the fault of SE, regardless if it was lack of preparation, ignoring beta tests, or simply unexpected sales, it is still the fault of SE. Which is why in my first post, I provided a solution to different groups.

Also quickly, to the few that says that what I posted isn't a solution to any customer. That...is not accurate. We currently have no control over any issue the game has. The solutions I provided are not fixes for the issue itself, but rather what steps you as a customer can take during this issue or after this issue. Technical Support forums are to troubleshoot and provide solutions it issues. The only solutions for this issue are:

Wait.
Accept SE's fix and compensation
Take steps to get a refund and move on

That is really it. That is the only thing any customer can do at this point. My original post told this. I provided extra information to try and help customer's decide just which solution they want to utilize on this issue.

So, please, take one of the solutions. Further complaining or coming up with reasons without evidence on why this issue happened or telling everyone it happened in phase four or that SE should have known better, etc., just makes you look like the group of trolls I mentioned. You have your solutions. Take one and move on. Further complaining is like taking a product back to Wal-Mart and after they offer you a refund or replacement you continue to yell and scream and whine, making you look like a crybaby. Sorry but it's true. You have a solution. Pick one, and move on. Don't be the crybaby troll. It doesn't get you anything extra. It doesn't make you look smart. It doesn't offer any extra solutions.

The person in line at Walmart that keeps complaining after being offered a full refund or replacement, they waste the other customers in line waiting their turn. You are doing the same. Wasting space with posts that will not get you anything extra and keeps other customers from getting their other issues (maybe a graphics card issue, sound issues, etc) looked at in a timely manner. So don't be that crybaby. Take your solution, and either go, or continue to support the product. There is no middle option lol.