Well they clarifiedFollow

Not to mention preorder numbers could just be thrown out the window due to people preordering to get the EA codes and then cancelling their orders

Thought they added servers during p4 those got up pretty fast. Again I think it is more financial with all the losses and layoffs. they simply dont have the people to pull off a launch like this. They should have pushed off for a bit instead of having this much chaos. Too bad it had to go down like this because it dont matter how good the game is this will overshadow that for a long time to come. Most will eventually forget if the game is successful.




Edited, Aug 28th 2013 11:04am by Nashred

I truly don't understand the logic of people wondering why this won't alleviate the problem on ovepopulated servers.

It's not like people are just going to want to stay on a server they can't log into. My guess is entire linkshells and Free Companies will move to other servers for their mains. This will not only have the sum gain of putting the servers at max population but also may actually de-populate a couple in the process.

When I'm able to log in, I don't that many afkers, to be honest. All I see are thousands of other people running around like me.

Guess they all afk'd inside the inn.

I don't find buying a game and expecting to be able to play it to be unreasonably entitled

also, as an internal technical consultant and software developer, I can say that getting new servers up and running with the necessary software isn't very hard at all, single day process depending on who your supplier is (our company buys parts and constructs and installs software ourselves) it is only difficult when you outsource your servers (but why would a major company do that)

Cost control. You rent hardware, get SLAs in place and then when the population goes down after the intial "boom" you aren't sitting on a mountain of hardware you can't do anything with.

<--- Business consultant

Edited, Aug 28th 2013 11:30am by Lefein

We're not talking about commercial off the shelf software, here, where you can just turn on the installer and let 'er rip and "next, next, next" through all the menus. At best, they can clone a recovery from their backup onto the new hardware, but then they have to spend several hours or even days manually configuring all the settings required to get a new world server (which is, in all likelihood, a cluster of servers, not just a single machine) up and running.

Then they have to add in all the support hardware for it - switches, routers, battery backups, backup systems. (Let's not forget that you have to buy two servers for every one server you use in production. Modern day backup systems are clones that can run the software just like the primary servers, albeit more slowly, with about 10-15 minutes notice.)

Then they have to test each server individually. Bring them on, one at a time. If you try to bring up all ten new servers or whatever they are adding all at once... one mis-configuration could take out the entire data center, and you won't know which server it is if you turned them on together.

Then they have to test the actual game on the server internally. Does character creation work, does the data store? That kind of basic QA testing will take another full day. Sure, a lot of that testing will be automated, but a lot of it still has to be managed by a human being, too.

So no, this is not a one day project. Once the hardware comes in (which will take 2-3 days once an order is placed since servers are usually built to order), that's another two or three 16 hour days between the hardware, software, network, and QA teams, since little can be done concurrently.

They're finally addressing the problem at its root instead of fooling around with ineffective 3 hour down-times, w00t. It's always been a hardware issue.

I'm in the camp that hopes they offer the first world transfer free of charge, as I wanted to play with friends on another server but was unable to and I won't be making a new character at this point.

Edited, Aug 28th 2013 12:12pm by Thodne

We are already getting 30 days free trial not sure 7 days makes much difference... I am not looking for anything really except fixing the issues. Getting back to me on Tesee issues just so she can log on. I had to buy a retail copy to get here back to her original account and now she has lost all her early access stuff. The whole no service account issue should have been handled by now. We have a holiday weekend coming up and having the servers working by then would be nice since Tesee is out of town and I wont have a ton to do....

I dont want anything other than be able to play the game but they should make it up to people and make it free to play to those who bought till the issues are straightened out and the free trial should start once they resolve everyone's issues. That is just good business sense because it really is hard to charge if you can not provide the service people are paying for even if they technically are not due to free trial. You cant charge people for something they cant use.


For me it is not about the money. I just want to play and I want to play on the same world as Tesee.



Edited, Aug 28th 2013 12:31pm by Nashred

During NA primetime when I can't get in, I go to my char on a JPN server. During JPN primetime when I can't get in, I go to my char on a NA server. So short of maintenance/work/sleep, I'm currently playing as much as I can. If this changes with the increased capacity that's cool. But so far I'm not complaining about just being able to play the game. Obviously, it would be better if everyone could join up/buy a copy/create chars with friends/progress their chars in a more concurrent manner. But considering it just launched, I'm not overreacting just yet.

LOL

Yeah in Gran Tourismo 5 you can cheat easily by doing that one endurance race that is on the oval track and just set your controller joystick to always steer your car into the wall, rubberband it in place (map your other joystick so up is accelerate, rubber band that in place too), and then walk away and do something else. In about 2 hours you'll have won the race since you never had to pit stop for tires