Aether server lockdown

[Neno]

Any news about when its going to end? I have some friends that want to play with me but they can't because you can't create a character in the Data Center.

[Mansen]

When players stop playing (i.e. streamer hype dies down) or the servers get the upgrades they need, when SE are able to actually buy some from somewhere.

[Tykero980]

I would bet money on whenever the data center visit gets added is when. Thats not coming at endwalker launch so prolly the first patch afterward would be my guess.

[/dev/pie]

Is Asmongold on Aether?

[Scarsick]

Originally posted by Mansen:

When players stop playing (i.e. streamer hype dies down) or the servers get the upgrades they need, when SE are able to actually buy some from somewhere.

LOL, this game never needed streamers for popularity boost.

OP, all you can do right now is keep checking. This hopefully won't be a problem when they upgrade the world visit system, which unfortunately we won't be getting in 6.0

[Mansen]

Originally posted by Scarsick:

LOL, this game never needed streamers for popularity boost.

Don't see how it relates to the question OP asked, but sure. Fact remains that the streamer fan crowd is filling up servers in general and in particular for "ceremonial" events like entering a new expansion.

[Sunny]

There's no ETA; it's marked as congested until it's no longer congested. The best thing you can do, if you want to play with your friends, is make a character on a server they CAN make one on. Go play with them, if they can't come play with you.

You can also transfer your toon if you don't want to start over, and if you move to one of the ones they're trying to get you to move to, you'll get some benefits/rewards to doing so as well. ALSO, transferring a character from a congested world to a preferred world is free, so you don't have to pay for the ability to play with them.

When you log in to your toon on Aether, there's should be some text in your chat box that talks about the rewards for transferring to a non-congested server.

[Raansu]

Aether is weirdly the default data center, so its naturally way more populated than the other data centers. That said, I wouldn't count on them opening up aether any time soon due to issues like the chip shortage making it difficult for them to do upgrades.

Originally posted by InFlAmEs:

Is Asmongold on Aether?

Yes.

[GeminiEclipse]

It's not really that weird. Games go in waves when it comes to streamers. Someone finds something fun, and then people just follow through if enough big streamers suddenly find interest.

Among Us and Fall Guys are two games that go massive boosts from that factor. FF14 just happened to be in the right spot at the wrong WoW patch.

[Sunny]

Originally posted by Seraphita:

I just checked server status for fun and Aether is entirely congested all across the board. Primal or even Crystal for its preferred worlds are a better choice, now. There's just too many people on Aether. I kinda agree that the whole streamer popularity going on is real weird.

https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodestone/topics/detail/ba568754f4b85880aa3a54d5b58770318d7ad731

There's a section on Aether; Aether has been intentionally marked as congested until further notice.

Relevant text:

"As of the Patch 5.58 Hotfix maintenance, all Worlds on the Aether Data Center have been classified as Congested. Despite expanding the maximum capacity as much as possible and closely monitoring the situation, the number of logins for each World have constantly remained at full capacity, which led to us taking this course of action.

This means players will be unable to create new characters on any World on the Aether Data Center until this classification is lifted. We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience this will cause for those of you who were looking forward to embarking on adventures with friends.

Were the number of characters to increase any further, it could result in login queues taking up to several hours, which is why we needed to take this approach. In the meantime, we kindly request that you consider creating a character on a World within the Primal or Crystal Data Centers, though we’re aware that they are currently quite congested as well.

Once again, we sincerely apologize for the inconvenience this will cause for our players on the North American Data Centers."

[GeminiEclipse]

Originally posted by Seraphita:

Still, it's kinda strange to follow some idol into a game just because they stream it. Okay, it might not sound strange to anyone else but I follow some youtubers too and while I might play games they play, I wouldn't try to follow them wherever they go. That's kinda weird.

But not everyone does follow? If you have a crowd of thousands, let alone tens of thousands, some people are likely going to find interest in the game. It only needs to be a small percent to make an impact on a game.

It doesn't have to be a creepy stalker thing even if there's a very small minority that do that. Maybe it's a game someone was on the fence about. Or maybe they didn't think they would be interested, but seeing someone play it changed their mind.

There's a reason game companies are using streamers to advertise. It's effective.

[Sunny]

I don't think it's particularly unusual if you are looking for a new game and somebody you watch regularly is playing a game that looks fun...to go try it out. I'm not much for watching streamers (tho there is a guy I will watch for No Man's Sky twitch drops), but it doesn't seem too weird that somebody would see FFXIV on a "show" and go 'oh, yeah, that looks really cool'.

Sort of like a cooking TV show, right? You watch it for entertainment, generally, but ALSO for ideas. If a chef makes something that sounds good that your kids will actually eat (LOLOLOLOL, it could happen!!), you're gonna cook it. If a "show" you watch is playing a video game that looks fun, gonna try it out for playing it. And this game? It totally shows well.

[Sunny]

Idk that they did all go to Cactuar. The people who wanted to "participate" in his show did (thus the crowd following him), but Aether is the default datacenter (what you ended up on if you didn't actively choose somewhere else), and Cactuar was already having congestion problems BEFORE any streamers came in.

I don't think we've seen enough evidence that streamers are directly responsible for specific server congestion, just speculation. A couple of hundred people bouncing around on somebody's stream does not a server imbalance make.

[causality]

Why not just play with your friends on a different data center? Seems like the easiest solution.

[Rubzilla]

I dont understand where the streamer hate comes from for so many players tbh. I started playing because i saw asmon playing it on stream, and saw that it was a decent game. The only thing i knew about it before was that it was ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ when it launched, so I never bothered to look at it myself.
I would think enlarging the player base would be a good thing as more money to devs mean longer support, more content and patches.

[Raansu]

Originally posted by Rubzilla:

I dont understand where the streamer hate comes from for so many players tbh. I started playing because i saw asmon playing it on stream, and saw that it was a decent game. The only thing i knew about it before was that it was ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ when it launched, so I never bothered to look at it myself.
I would think enlarging the player base would be a good thing as more money to devs mean longer support, more content and patches.

I'm all for the streamer attention of my favorite game, but if I had to hazard a guess, the FFXIV community tends to be pretty niche and the streamer community (viewers not the streamers) can be uh....well toxic lol. Mix that in with the reputation of the WoW crowd and you get a small section of players that feel like their game is being invaded by the type of players they don't want playing their game.

Course, that's all speculative, but that seems to be my take on it, especially given some of the things I've read about people on twitter trying to get asmon banned from XIV before he even started playing it. Then again, twitter itself is pure cancer and those people probably don't even realize they are acting in the same manner of the "toxic" people they are supposedly trying to prevent from playing.