Last week, Final Fantasy 14 Endwalker went into early access. The game exploded with new and old players trying to get into the servers, and that caused a huge amount of issues. Basically, so many people wanted to get into the game that the servers couldn’t fit them all in. I’m sure Square Enix were working hard in the background to get the servers working at maximum capacity and get as many players in as possible, but it still wasn’t enough. Honestly, it was a bit crazy, but I really don’t understand why everyone was surprised. Tis happens with every big MMO expansion and launch these days.
I’m not having a go at the developers here. They can’t really predict how popular their game will be. As such, they can only put their game into beta and see how many players sign up and play. That gives them some idea of how many people will be coming to the game at launch, but really it doesn’t mean much because the game might explode in the lead up to launch, leading to so many more players. Servers can only hold so many players, and if the number of players exceeds what’s expected, there are going to be issues.
We saw this with Fallout 76, and even the recent Chapter 3 update to Fortnite. MMOs never have a smooth launch. It’s why I usually wait until the day after an expansion launches in Destiny 2 because I know that the game will be a mess on the day that I’m unable to play. We’ve got to get used to this, because no developer is going to get a tonne of server space if it doesn’t know that the players will be there. It’s much safer to buy more server space once you know the game needs it, rather than work the other way around.
The thing that we should be concerned about is when a game launches in a completely useless state. If a game is broken and buggy, that’s something that should be highlighted. However, if it’s the servers that are suffering because the game is so massively popular, we really need to calm down.
