Imperial Nuisance

Just a friendly reminder that roleplaying with me is no pressure. It doesn't matter if your response takes days, weeks, or even months. I understand that life comes first and this is a hobby that's meant to be fun.

Not to doomsay, but just putting it out there now: Please be respectful and understanding of the devs and Squeenix team during Endwalker launch. Right now we are in a "perfect storm" situation and I'm sure they're already expecting a lot of stress during launch week. Shadowbringers was regarded as one of the best FF titles in many ways, and its success combined with Covid lockdown meant a major uptick in active playerbase. The free trial meme, WoW Shadowlands' flopping, general distaste towards Actiblizz due to recent events, and one of the biggest WoW streamers switching to FFxiv has meant that within the short span of time since the last major patch, the playerbase has grown even more. The entire Aether datacenter is now "congested". This is the first time a whole datacenter has been given this tag. Previously, this happened with Balmung due to it being the primary RP hub, and overflow went to Mateus before the Crystal DC split and cross-world travel. All crystal worlds are currently "Preferred". Most importantly: The semiconductor shortage due to Covid-borne factory and harbor shut-downs on top of poor decisions from the auto industry, on top of Japanese factory fires and the Texas storm means its incredibly difficult for Squeenix to get a hold of the hardware they need to expand servers. Taiwan is where chips for most of our gaming tech comes from (like Ps5's and GPU's) and severe drought conditions have impacted production. Squeenix has a little less than 3 months to get a hold of what they need in order to expand servers in the US. This means that even though they have the money and experience to combat something like this, and were likely monitoring their playerbase before the sudden unexpected "WoW refugee" uptick, they aren't easily able to get the resources to prepare for it, and this player surge happened so close to expansion release. When Endwalker drops, you're going to see another surge as players currently unsubscribed return as they usually do for new content. Should Endwalker release be rough: Please, PLEASE do not put any long queue times, disconnects, "Raubahn (Ultimate)" or any other issues purely related to server strain on Yoshi-P and the dev team. They are doing and will do all that they can, but the surge in players and semiconductor issues are things they can't control. I would also advise being cautious of any social media you interact with during release. This includes Facebook groups, comment sections on official FFxiv social media posts, r/ffxiv, and larger non-insular Discords. There's bound to be uproar from people who need someone to blame and get angry at: save your emotional energy.