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FF14:ARR Breaks world records, game sales suspended.


Sky

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I think everyone, except Square Enix saw this coming when the game broke the world record for most concurrent users in a beta:

http://www.gamingrea...orn-breaks.html

 

 

Now, they've broken the record for the most sales in an MMO at launch, which has resulted in digital game sales being suspended:

http://na.finalfanta...d1308da98f95947

 

 

 

 

I, myself, was outraged when I was dumb enough to log out when I went to bed and couldn't log in during the next day; I've simply resorted to logging in late at night, where there's still a login queue, but I can at least get in. I'm still upset, but I'll be honest here; I don't think anyone expected the game to do this well, let alone break records. Square is working head over heels to fix the problem, and while I do recommend everyone to grab a copy of the game, I'm saying wait until next week when the data centers are upgraded.

 

How many people are logging in, you say?

Last night around 11pm, they opened a new world on the NA/EU side called Siren. About 5 minutes later, the world was full. Ten minutes later, Square locked the world for character creation. They've been adding new worlds to try to keep up, but aren't able to. Ultimately, their goal is to increase the amount of concurrent players that can be logged into each server at any given time.

 

Yoshi-P explained the game engine uses what they call their "mega shard" system, which uses multiple servers to present as one giant server, allowing a larger than previously possible amount of players to play concurrently on a server. I'll post a screenshot of one of the major cities later tonight on the Excalibur server (the server has a 10 hour wait for connections right now, so I don't bother attempting to connect until around 12am EST, at which point there is no line) and show you the number of players in that one specific area.

Edited by Sky
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Create a character on a JP server, and there are no wait times; all NA/EU servers are currently locked, but starting next week, servers will be unlocked again. That's why I'm doing something else until the upgrades go in. Yeah, I didn't think it was this highly anticipated after how few people played v1.

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So, another heavily anticipated MMO has launch issues? I'm shocked.

Here's a secret, every MMORPG has launch issues and it's on purpose. When an MMORPG is launched the first day is going to see the most people attempting to connect at a single time in the history of that MMORPG. The amount of cost associated with having enough servers at launch to NOT have launch issues isn't worth it. Not even Blizzard does it. It is much more cost effective to have your servers hammered, not have enough, and bring them up over time than have tons of servers running from the start. In few days to a few weeks less people will be logging on concurrently and they will add some more servers to meet expectations. The longer it takes to get stable the longer SquareEnix is thinking about how many long term servers they need.

 

People should be more worried if they play an MMORPG at launch day and they don't have connection problems. It means the number of players is below what they anticipated, which is never a good thing.

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Square has actually done a much better job with the launch of v2 than any other company in the history of the MMO's that I've tried. Each day this week, they've launched a set of new servers, they've filled up, and then based on the number of overflow that exists, they add more the next day. They aren't actually sitting around waiting the few weeks companies like Blizzard have done. Their goal is to let all of the people log on, instead of waiting a few weeks until those players stop playing (likely from the frustration) and we've seen this. Jykri mentioned today that she saw a large list of new servers go online today.

 

 

Also, I used to work in the industry, and I've contributed to the development of a few MMO's, and your pessimistic, i-know-all attitude aside, no, launch issues are not on purpose. It's always based on numbers. However, in the case of this particular mmo, even with breaking the world record on players in an open beta, there was no way anyone could have predicted it would break world records on launch day as well as continue to break them throughout this week. It's been a very large discussion on the official FF14 forum where none of us expected this. We expected numbers like the open beta, because we all figured everyone wanted to see how the game did before they bought it. Square shared recently that, unfortunately, the majority of preorders came in the day before early access began, and that it was a much higher number than they could have anticipated. The actual servers were tuned after phase 4, and before these other preorders came in.

 

There's never any way to predict exactly how many players will be playing a game. The goal in an MMO is to try to fill up as many servers as you can, but fill them as completely as possible, because a low population server struggles in many ways, from economy to community. Unfortunately, the only way to make sure servers are properly populated is to simply wait and see how many players you have, but it's not some secret, hidden scheme by a company. Also, this is a factual representation from someone who actually did this stuff for a living =)

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There's never any way to predict exactly how many players will be playing a game. The goal in an MMO is to try to fill up as many servers as you can, but fill them as completely as possible, because a low population server struggles in many ways, from economy to community. Unfortunately, the only way to make sure servers are properly populated is to simply wait and see how many players you have, but it's not some secret, hidden scheme by a company. Also, this is a factual representation from someone who actually did this stuff for a living =)

Yeah, that's exactly what I said... you just confirmed it's done on purpose. They don't buy tons of servers expecting to meet demand on day one, they ramp them up over time... ON PURPOSE.

 

Most people act like when an MMORPG has connection issues at launch that the people in charge are complete idiots. Instead of considering how much it costs they just want more servers.

Edited by VooDooPC
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They don't ever purposely bring in too few servers. They try to bring in exactly what they need, but it's impossible to tell. Being surprised and having way more players than was ever expected doesn't come close to supporting a claim that they purposely want login queues. Developers don't want queues.

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They don't ever purposely bring in too few servers. They try to bring in exactly what they need, but it's impossible to tell. Being surprised and having way more players than was ever expected doesn't come close to supporting a claim that they purposely want login queues. Developers don't want queues.

I'm sure they love the press though. :) "Look how popular our game is!"

 

Don't they have numbers on preorders they've received or digital downloads they were getting?

 

I forgot what game recently did it, maybe you remember, but they did their release in waves. I think that's a pretty good idea.

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  • 3 weeks later...

 

^this? ive played my share of MMO's. and then a certain company was like "yo lets do pandas" in i started focusing entirely on killing zombies, minecraft, dota(recently), and quake again.

 

Pandaren has been in Warcraft lore for some time. A Pandaren helped found Durotar with Thrall and Rexxar.

 

On topic:

The game feels very traditional like WoW but has stuff like FATES which are dynamic events from GW2. Also, You don't need to have multiple toons since your 1 character can be other classes if you choose to level each other class. Combat isn't as fluid as GW2. Even though the launch was pretty tragic the game itself isn't bad. The one problem from what I've played is once you get your class/job that is your role pretty much. It is not like WoW where your class has 3 specs (druid has 4) that have 3 different styles or like GW2 where profession builds are very flexible.

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i understand the panderan lore. I dont know, i played when the cap was 60, and i NEVER made end game then, and I LOVED it. very challenging, very engulfing. People everywhere because they had to travel around. talent trees taht were intricate. turned into a city sitting dungeon grinder raid finder type game. thats my opinion anyway.

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i understand the panderan lore. I dont know, i played when the cap was 60, and i NEVER made end game then, and I LOVED it. very challenging, very engulfing. People everywhere because they had to travel around. talent trees taht were intricate. turned into a city sitting dungeon grinder raid finder type game. thats my opinion anyway.

 

You pretty much nailed it there. Nowadays, ppl just chill in Stormwind or Ogrimmar and wait for dungeons or raids or PVP battles instead of actually flying or running to that location. Might as well call Stormwind "Lobby 1" and Ironforge "Lobby 2", etc. You are right FPS....the game has become soft, hence why lots of people left because the challenge is gone. Blizz made everything TOO EASY to access. The good ol days were when you had to get attuned for higher tier dungeons. Spent many nights in Karazhan waiting outside that tower for the raid invite.

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i understand the panderan lore. I dont know, i played when the cap was 60, and i NEVER made end game then, and I LOVED it. very challenging, very engulfing. People everywhere because they had to travel around. talent trees taht were intricate. turned into a city sitting dungeon grinder raid finder type game. thats my opinion anyway.

 

You pretty much nailed it there. Nowadays, ppl just chill in Stormwind or Ogrimmar and wait for dungeons or raids or PVP battles instead of actually flying or running to that location. Might as well call Stormwind "Lobby 1" and Ironforge "Lobby 2", etc. You are right FPS....the game has become soft, hence why lots of people left because the challenge is gone. Blizz made everything TOO EASY to access. The good ol days were when you had to get attuned for higher tier dungeons. Spent many nights in Karazhan waiting outside that tower for the raid invite.

 

^agreed.

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  • 2 weeks later...

 

 

^this? ive played my share of MMO's. and then a certain company was like "yo lets do pandas" in i started focusing entirely on killing zombies, minecraft, dota(recently), and quake again.

 

Pandaren has been in Warcraft lore for some time. A Pandaren helped found Durotar with Thrall and Rexxar.

 

On topic:

The game feels very traditional like WoW but has stuff like FATES which are dynamic events from GW2. Also, You don't need to have multiple toons since your 1 character can be other classes if you choose to level each other class. Combat isn't as fluid as GW2. Even though the launch was pretty tragic the game itself isn't bad. The one problem from what I've played is once you get your class/job that is your role pretty much. It is not like WoW where your class has 3 specs (druid has 4) that have 3 different styles or like GW2 where profession builds are very flexible.

 

 

 

In Final Fantasy XIV, the weapon you're carrying determines your class; attributes points are customizable for each individual class, and the only time it really becomes an issue is if you play both a scholar AND and arcanist, as these two jobs both stem from the same class. I'm confident that you have not reached end-game; hard-mode primals and binding coil of bahamut (the only current raid dungeon in the game). In end-game, white mages for instance do not simply heal. For example, white mages have an inherited ability from scholars called Virus, which places a debuff on the target for 10 seconds, which reduces strength and dexterity by 15%. White mages also have the single, most powerful AoE damage ability in the game, which also stuns every mob it hits for 4 seconds (diminishing returns of course alter this value). White mages also have an inherited ability from their conjurer base class which lets them slow the movement speed of targets they strike with stone. Cleric stance lets them swap their intelligence and mind values, allowing them to become dps power-houses.

Warriors are a job that stems from the Marauder class; they can either tank (they're sponge tanks, as they don't have shields and rely on a lot of health and the ability to regenerate health on damage dealt, as well as receiving additional healing from items and spells) and can also be built as dps classes.

 

As opposed to games like swtor and WoW, different stances and passive abilities, as well as your rotation determine the role you fulfill in an encounter. It means players don't rely on skill trees, instead relying entirely on player skill and knowledge of their class. These are just two examples of some of classes and jobs that can perform multiple roles in an encounter. The great part is they can switch on the fly, during an encounter, to perform the function that's necessary, depending on how they choose to gear themselves out. Builds are extremely flexible in Final Fantasy XIV; players aren't limited to skill trees or specific gear to determine their roles. The developers have left it in the hands of the player of how they want to play - and allow them to change that play-style even in the middle of a raid encounter.

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  • 2 months later...
  • 3 weeks later...
Sky
(edited)

If you can, you should definitely roll on the Excalibur server. It's home to a few of the world's top static groups; Statics in final fantasy are essentially static raid groups, not always from the same faction of players. It's a solid game, not without its problems, of course. I've streamed the game in eyefinity over skype to a few people in the past to show them some of the higher-end content, since the lower end content can often be... well, boring, like lower end content usually is.

 

Square Enix has also announced that FFXIV will be coming to Steam later this year (I'm assuming March) sometime around the launch of the PS4 version.

Edited by Sky
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