As if breaking its own concurrent record on Steam and completely selling out of digital copies of the game wasn’t enough, Final Fantasy XIV has made headlines again as it pushes forward release dates on player capacity updates for the game.
All over the world, players are anxious to get back online and experience Final Fantasy XIV once again. Although the game was released more than ten years ago, recent updates and expansions have brought this game back into the spotlight. With a new free Free Login Campaign lasting until August 23rd and the release of the Endwalker Benchmark software, fans are excited to have this popular MMORPG making a comeback. Last week Final Fantasy XIV broke its own concurrent record on Steam, with 47,000 players online at the same time, and the game even sold out of digital copies. And, while all of this news seems positive for Final Fantasy XIV developers at Square Enix, there’s one problem that still seems to be on the rise.
Fans are too excited to get back online.
Recently, Final Fantasy XIV has been faced with an increase in players across global and local servers, which caused several problems when servers reached their capacity last week. Most notably over the weekend of July 17th and 18th, simultaneous player login capacities were reached, leading to login wait times of 10-20 minutes in the United States and 40 minutes in Europe. Likewise, character creation was unavailable during peak times due to the continuous influx of players.
Not all is grim for Final Fantasy XIV players, though. On July 20th, Square Enix Director Naoki Yoshida released an announcement that broke down the server issues for players and laid out a plan of action that Square Enix plans to take to combat these issues.
The first action that Square Enix has taken is increasing the simultaneous player login cap by nearly 18,000 logins, or around 750 per World server, in the United States region. Square Enix is also planning to release a similar upgrade to the Europe region soon, and until then, they are still working hard to continue optimizing servers.
“That said, the team is currently working hard to optimize existing servers in an attempt to increase the caps, if by a smaller amount, and will endeavor to make continued adjustments and improvements while maintaining game stability.”
Square Enix has also addressed the issue of character creation, explaining that the problems arise in the fact that players must be logged in to create new characters. Because of this, when servers are maxed out, character creation becomes unavailable until the login queue clears up. To address this issue, Square Enix has asked players to take two pieces of advice to heart when playing the game. First, Square Enix has recommended that players not sit idle in the world, and instead log out when they are not actively playing. Second, they ask players to consider making characters outside of peak congestion times, so as to prevent clogging up the server.
The final step Square Enix has taken is what they consider to be an ‘emergency measure.’ Square Enix has pushed up the release of an automatic logout system for idle players, in hopes that it will help reduce player capacity on World servers. This update was supposed to arrive alongside the Endwalker expansion launch but instead has been included in the 5.58 Patch.
To read more about Square Enix’s explanations and updates, you can read the full announcement here.
While the many (and I do mean many) Final Fantasy XIV players have experienced some drawbacks with the game’s recent spike in popularity, several changes are on the way to improve the player experience. So, in the meantime, go ahead and get ready for your adventure as Final Fantasy XIV gets ready for you.