Your AI summary does not state that FFXIV players have been having connectivity issues daily and consistently for months on end since the initial May DDoS attack — just that they experienced some connectivity problems during those attacks, which happened on three separate occasions. That’s quite different to what a number of us have been experiencing here in ESO.
Your AI summary does not state that FFXIV players have been having connectivity issues daily and consistently for months on end since the initial May DDoS attack — just that they experienced some connectivity problems during those attacks, which happened on three separate occasions. That’s quite different to what a number of us have been experiencing here in ESO.
Does final fantasy have one megaserver for all of NA? Or do they have geographically distributed servers/realms? Because that can work as a mitigation tool also.
Edit: the FFXIV community complaints about DDoS sound almost identical to the ESO community complaints about "lag, broken coding, server issues" based on a short search and reading some related articles, Reddit posts, and forum comments.
Lawl, yes I know. I was merely only pointing out that May is also around the time that FFXIV started getting hit with massive DDoS attacks.
I too have dealt with all of the absolutely awful performance and disconnections. (Just look at previous comments I have made. I am not defending ZOS here whatsoever.) Square Enix seems to have handled server stability and communication so much better than ZOS has. Especially over the years of spiralling performance issues here.
Fair enough, but I think that it was likely just a coincidence that FFXIV’s DDoS attack occurred around the same time we started having issues. Again, this all started after a patch maintenance. Things were a-OK pre-patch, with the exception of massive tri-faction fights in Cyrodiil. If all of our connectivity woes over the last year could be attributed to DDoS attacks, why did Rich Lambert post what he posted in this thread several weeks ago? (Not asking you specifically, just putting it out there in general for the people who now want to latch onto DDoS as the cause of all of this).
Rohamad_Ali wrote: »
Are you running starlink?
SaintJohnHM wrote: »@ZOS_Kevin
So is ZOS just giving up and telling us to accept these past months of poor performance and that's what we should expect from now on? It sounds like it's out of ZOS's ability to fix the problem.
No, they aren't giving up. I think the fac thtat Kevin comes into this thread periodically when there is an issue or update about a DDoS and links to the other thread shows that they are trying to staying engaged. This is only the second week since teams have came back from the break and I'm sure they have a TON of stuff to go through.
Communities thoughts on their Jan reveal, handling the DDoS stuff, and then looking at the logs/feedback players put in this thread. That stuff takes time to sift through and then narrow down where problems are.
Has this issue taken forever for us to get to this point - absolutley.
Has the communication dramatically improved over the last month or two - absolutley.
I understand the frustration - shoot - just look at some of my posts throughout this thread. I get it...
But DDoS and then the issues that started this thread aren't the same (unless they are getting hit with an attack literally every single day). There are things they can control.. there are things they can't.
The goal of this thread is to resolve the things they can - or determine that what is happening here is something that is out of their control - then we make a decision deal with it or move onto another game.
SaintJohnHM wrote: »I think ZOS needs to set our expectations about what they can and can't do if these months of massive DCs are from DDOS attacks that they won't be able to resolve. If we're paying for a service they can't provide, we should know.
Agreed. We have a right to know. If the subpar and often terrible performance I had in every ESO game session between May 2024 - October 2024 was indeed due to sustained DDoS attacks (I have my doubts, but let’s go with it), then whatever ZOS has been doing to mitigate these attacks simply isn’t cutting it from a game playability perspective. I’m certainly not going to spend money on an online multiplayer game where my ping regularly spikes between 300-999+ ms for months on end due to the game’s DDoS mitigation strategies or the attacks themselves.
DDoS attacks suck, and I do empathize with ZOS if this has in fact been the issue all along, but I also strongly suspect there’s more going on here. I’ve never played another online game that has been SO crippled by DDoS attacks for so long in all my years of gaming.
Rkindaleft wrote: »
What I’m hoping we can get clarification on, is that if these issues (and this thread) have been going on for nearly 9 months, does ZOS believe that DDoS attacks have been the root of all or most of the issues the whole time? - and if so, are there any additional steps that ZOS can try to do in an attempt to mitigate the effects?
I doubt DDoS would be the root cause of all issues at all times because people have been disconnecting and lagging outside of the times where everyone gets kicked off the servers (like what happened a couple of nights ago.)
If not everyone gets kicked off at the same time but DDoS is still causing people to lag it would also mean that attacks are happening multiple times a week (or even multiple times a day in some cases) for 9 months.
Alinhbo_Tyaka wrote: »
It certainly could be related to the DDoS attacks if it is the mitigation actions taken by ZOS and its service provider that's causing the problem. Are the things they put in place seeing the high activity and server hits from PvP or high level trials as a potential DDoS attack and taking action? It's plausible.
These days I mostly log in for scheduled group content and it's constant freezing and DCs for me and others in the group. Just kinda pointless doing any meaningful content for the past few months. Would be good to have a timeline on a fix because it really drains any enthusiasm for this game.
In the past, the grayhost often saw 999+.But it disappeared after changing the server.So the main reason is insufficient server performance.
Alinhbo_Tyaka wrote: »
It certainly could be related to the DDoS attacks if it is the mitigation actions taken by ZOS and its service provider that's causing the problem. Are the things they put in place seeing the high activity and server hits from PvP or high level trials as a potential DDoS attack and taking action? It's plausible.
Nope. HughesNet. So far Starlink is totally uninterested in providing service to my very back of beyond area.
Rohamad_Ali wrote: »
Thank you for the information. I too live at the very back of beyond.
I know LOTS of people who are STILL having 999+ in Cyro.
Just wanted to follow up here. We just had Studio Director, Matt Firor post a community update about some of the DDoS attacks that have been happening. Link to statement is here.
Recently - especially over the last year - we have had a rising number of malicious network attacks against the ESO service. These mostly fall under the DDOS type of attack. When these happen, depending on the type of attack, we will initiate a mitigation strategy. I'm not going to get into what exactly we do to counter these, but each time the ESO service is under attack, players on the service experience lag, disconnects, etc. We have different types of mitigation to combat this, and some do a great job of protecting the service from DDOS traffic, but they can also introduce additional ping times when they are active, like many of you have been reporting.
Our simple rule is that if a server or other game issue happens due to a bug or other configuration problem within our control, we tell the community what is happening and what we are doing to fix it - the recent datacenter power outage as an example of this. However, if a problem happens that we cannot control - like a partner's network is having problems or if there is a malicious network attack against us, we usually do not post about it.
Part of why we have not publicly addressed this sooner is because by even just talking about malicious network attacks against ESO, we run the risk of incurring more of them. This is why the standard playbook for internet companies is to not talk about them publicly - but this is information that I think you all need to know.