UPDATE* Server fixes 09/03 5:00PM-3:00AMFollow

The difference is that EVE's one server was engineered to handle 60K+ connections, whereas the XIV servers were deliberately capped at 5K.

Here's why: One of the chief complaints at the height of FFXI was over crowded on servers. Odin was locked down to new character creation for almost a year, because the existing players were unable to complete content. Dynamis was constantly clogged, competition for exp camps was miserable, and there was just an insane amount of drama because there were too many people trying to do too many of the same things.

Later in FFXI's life we actually warned people against going for the most crowded servers, because a server with a lower population meant you had a better chance of standing out amoung the crowd and claiming NMs and such. Bismarck, my current home, is not very well populated, but I know almost everyone in NA endgame. (Every other week or so I get an "gee Cat you really do know everyone!" from someone seeing me wave to someone else...)

The hard cap of 5K concurrent players sucks for people who aren't in the chosen 5K. But from a programming standpoint, it makes sense.

EVE is a completely different game and having 60,000 players logged into one mega server works for it. For one thing, there are far fewer real time data points being transmitted aside from battles.

Edited, Sep 2nd 2013 9:43pm by Catwho

QFT

Let me tell you this better make thing significantly better because if they don't people are going to go ballistic. For those that sat and said wait for Wednesday and defended SE if its not better, you better go hide in the corner because you think it was bad before, just wait.

And if it is better you probably never hear anything again from anyone... LOL

Edited, Sep 2nd 2013 10:34pm by Nashred

Guild War 2 boasted 3.5m sales and 400,000 concurrent users peak. Let's not forget there are free weekends for GW2, but probably that 400,000 peak was way prior to them giving free weekends.

To be honest I think they've capped it much lower right at the moment to avoid everything turning into a melted heap.

Originally cap was much higher and the instance server kept crashing. I remember back when every time I clicked to enter an instance of the main quest, the game crashed and I got a 90k error. Either that or the game locked and I had to Ctrl+Alt+Del out.

So they limited cap to 5,000 - instance servers are fine because of the control over the number of people hitting them.

Fix the instance servers to take more capacity, and SE can release the cap.

Totally different beasts when you compare EVE to a normal mmorpg.

You wouldn't want one server technology for FFXIV. There would be thousands of character all jam packed across the land, it would be a sea of people with some trees sticking out. Mob spawns would be impossible to farm ect. Not to mention you would need a supercomputer to get acceptable FPS.

When you are talking about tiny ships with no animations, and a sort list to manage multiple targets...as well as an easily expandable world since its more or less just a backround of space and a few objects (rather than highly detailed and unique vegetation)

It makes sense for eve...FFXIV would be unplayable with the same set up. Also they choose a number like 5k per server because any more and the world will be more packed than a Japanese subway car (see what I did there?)

Edited, Sep 2nd 2013 11:20pm by Strangerous

This is exactly why I interpreted the earlier statement as a fix for 1017. Some people just don't see it that way I guess.

No disagreement from me. As someone who spent over 12 hours intermittently spamming the log in screen, I was fuming and ready to rage quit.

Then I remembered how good the game is. First I was like "RAGE" and then I was, like "THIS IS AWESOME".

I wouldn't count on being able to log in at any time, but happy birthday anyway

I'm posting for no other reason than to rant, I started trying to log in at 9:00 AM on Monday all the way till 10PM and never got in. Just tried again at 6AM, server is STILL full.

Grumble.

Attempted logging in from 4am until 1130pm yesterday with no luck. Tried again at 630 this morning and I'm not even going to bother again until tomorrow.