FFXIV ARR Early Release Fail

MMO launches are a tricky business. I think all reasonable players understand the difficulty and odds of pulling off a smooth launch. My issue is the lack of planning for player load ON TOP OF technical issues that have persisted since Beta 3, prevented the vast majority of my access to Beta 4 and are still present in Early Access. 

We can all give Square Enix a pass on under estimating player demand. However, too many games have come along in recent years equipped with queuing systems to deal with gating player demand. No one wants to be in a queue for hours. But it’s far better than what is happening on FFXIV, where your log in was being rejected with a message to “wait for more room noob then try again later” lulz. As if we’d know when it was a good time to try again. WTF

New Square Enix Mini Game

I find fault with the log-in sequence as well which drops you back at the Start screen instead of the character select after it tells you to piss off. This requires you to use Start again, which in turn pings the world server lists to show what worlds/chars you have available. Huh? Really?? Doesn’t that seem like it’s creating additional unnecessary load? Between being told to piss off and having the EU/NA world server list down, it was a real fun mini game of frustration. NOT.

 

 

 

Played More Reddit than FFXIV

I spent way more time on Reddit looking for updates than playing during the last two events. I understand, to a degree, people saying to keep your shorts on when it was Beta 4, even knowing that Early Access was only a few days away. After multiple 2-hour maintenance windows many of the same issues were present. What will they do in the same amount of time to prevent this from happening on an even larger scale for launch? I personally don’t hold out much hope of an improvement. Even WOW managed queues back in its day.  And we have Aion's handling of monsterous queues and people not logging out to avoid them AND YET I didn't miss a single day of game play over it.  I waited my turn in a long ass queue, along with friends and family.  Sorry, FFXIV, you have no acceptable excuse!

It’s 2013 and while few launches will be flawless, the inability to manage player log-in with a robust queue systems is unacceptable. I’d rather be in a queue for 5 hours than being told to try again on and off for 5 hours, with no idea of when I’ll hit the lottery and be placed into the elusive FFXIV queue.

Shame on SE for this debacle when they have so much riding on this re-release. Shame on them for making it sound as if it’s just the restriction of access that is the problem. No sirs, it’s how that restriction is playing out in real life versus CM/PR speak land.

Comments

[Chris]

I, too, hope they sort things out quickly because any goodwill they've built up will rapidly be demolished if players can't readily log in and play!

For what it's worth, I've found the problems to be intermittent. I've levelled one character to 17, started a couple of other characters, and have queued up for a half dozen groups using the (broken) Duty Finder. So while I may be lucky, the game's not irredeemable.

[Alysianah]

The game content is actually pretty good. It's very old school compared to the last few MMOs I've played but enjoyable. It's unfortunate that getting into the game is such a hassle.

A friend who was luckier than I was in getting on and staying on over the weekend was NOT so lucky today. I logged in before work and left my char there all day. So sorry but a girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do to play. Hence I was able to play all evening while my friend was ass out. :-(