DF "A party member has withdrawn"

[Andvari2297]

Hey guys.

Keep getting "A party member has withdrawn" when i am queued for AK. Thing is I am by myself.

It's happening every 1 or 2 minutes and I am unable to get into a group....anyone else having this problem? It doesnt even get to the ready check.

[Lordoctothorpe]

Firstly, I understand that this could be possibly people fed up of the queue time leaving the queue entirely. Secondly, I had full groups of FC members yesterday waiting 5-10 minutes for the second objective in the Duty Finder window, the "Reserving instance..." to complete.

AK is, in point of fact, overcrowded because it's the one source currently for Allagan Tomestones of Mythology, or so I'm led to believe.

This situation occurred earlier this evening, I worked on botany for the entire time to pass the time. At the 90-minute mark, I left the queue myself to run two duty dungeons with FC-mates. I had more fun than I would have in AK, but I am disappointed and saddened that I didn't get any progress made by not having been able to run (and clear!) AK.

Too many reasons exist that Amdapor Keep is currently the most in-demand endgame dungeon, next to Praetorium as a means of grinding Philosophy stones. Among these are the GC quest gating your lieutenant-level promotions (and hence your max-level GC weapons!) behind a successful AK clear, the "A Relic Reborn" quest requiring players to make yet another successful AK clear, and the aforementioned 40 Allagan Tomestones of Mythology.

Why is this? Not all this content needs to be gated behind/earned from ONE duty, that's just poor design and planning. Wanderer's Palace (if my memory serves, the only source for Darklight weapons currently) has no such connection to gating, and I have no idea whether its Tomestones are all Philosophy or if some are indeed Mythology. I have heard, although I cannot provide my own opinion on the matter, that WP is just as tricky/difficult as AK and should give concurrent Tomestone rewards in like fashion (80 ATP/40 ATM); not only out of principle but because the load on the instance servers would be balanced instead of "all AKs are full, come again later" which I feel when someone drops out of my queue and "A party member has withdrawn. Finding additional member..." appears.

TL;DR: AK is causing a vast number of instances to be created because of all the content with which it's affiliated. Square Enix, acknowledge this and announce plans to change at least one of the aforementioned content chunks with which AK acts as a gate. Plzkthx.