Currently, I believe the most frustrating cases are when you’ve been waiting in the queue and get disconnected by an error when your turn comes around, forcing you to line up in the queue again. These disconnects are often happening as a result of Error 4004 and 3001, and here I’d like to provide the details and statuses of countermeasures against Error 4004.
To prevent servers from going down as a result of mass logins or overloading, the process of logging into a World that has reached the login cap involves waiting until the World can admit 100 players, then admitting the first 100 players in the login queue, a process that is constantly being repeated.
We have confirmed an issue during the process of admitting these 100 players, which can occur if certain conditions coincide while the servers are experiencing extremely high loads, which will cause up to 25% of these players to receive an error. This issue is not guaranteed to occur even when the servers are experiencing extremely high loads, and the number of players who experience the issue varies. However, considering login queues can take up to several hours and this error can cause players to have to return to the back of the queue, we currently recognise this as the most frustrating issue.
This fix has been implemented, but I would like to clarify some things in relation to the on-screen display. Worlds that reach the login limit will be checked for 100 available positions, and 100 new logins will be executed sequentially. However, since the maximum number of characters that can log in to a World in the space of one minute sequentially is limited to 75 in order to reduce the load, the number of people in the queue will often appear to decrease by 75 in the on-screen display. (This is how it will appear when there is a clean overlap in the update timing of the displayed number of players waiting.) This has been the way the system operates from before, and even if the processing is carried out properly with the fix this time, the maximum count will decrease by 75 each in the dialogue, making it look as if the aforementioned fix has failed. Due to the coincidental overlap in the numbers, I apologize for any confusion my choice of words may cause.
We have been able to locate the cause of this error that occurs due to extremely high server loads and are currently fixing the source code for the lobby servers. Although the fix itself is finished, the process of checking whether the fix has actually resolved this issue requires time as it is an extremely complex process. In addition, due to the complexity of the conditions of occurrence itself, it is possible that we have not yet addressed more detailed conditions, but we will reflect the fixes and continue to monitor the situation. As soon as our preparations are ready, we will carry out the work through the aforementioned lobby server maintenance. We ask that you wait a little longer until the fix is made.
These errors occur when your connection to the login management server times out as a result of waiting in a login queue for extremely long periods of time. Although we’d secured a considerably long session time with the lobby server; however, there are times this is still not enough to cover the issue, so we are currently working on a process to extend the session time. We apologise for the inconvenience, and ask that you to wait a little bit longer until this process is complete.
■ Peak hours of congestion
Though the congestion status may vary for each logical data centre, I’d like to share information regarding the peak hours of congestion we’ve currently observed as of December 5.
North American Data Centre: 12:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m. (PST) / 20:00 to 6:00 (GMT)
European Data Centre: 3:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. (PST) / 11:00 to 23:00 (GMT)
Japan Data Centre: 1:00 a.m. to 7:00 a.m. (PST) / 9:00 to 15:00 (GMT)
With Early Access taking place over the weekend, congestion may also peak around noon, but login queues have typically been longer during the hours listed above. We apologise for the inconvenience and ask that you use this information as a reference when considering when to play. Information regarding peak hours during weekdays will be provided at a later time.