Square Enix's MMO Final Fantasy XIV has been going through an impressive growth in player base this year, but the cost has been overloaded servers and long login times. To attempt to ease the strain on the servers and make it easier to log in, the game recently announced changes that they hoped will at least mitigate some of these issues.
Although Final Fantasy XIV is eight years old, the game is doing better than ever. Final Fantasy XIV recently broke its concurrent player record on Steam, with over 47,000 players playing at one time. Part of this boost is attributed to streamer Asmongold recently playing the game while over 200,000 followers watched; recent player frustrations with rival MMOs like World of Warcraft may also be responsible, as those gamers look for a new MMO to spend time in. A heavily anticipated expansion, Endwalker is dated for later this year, which may also be spurring players to get their characters ready for the next content drop.
Whatever the reason, Final Fantasy XIV producer and director Naoki Yoshida recently issued an statement about upcoming changes it hopes will alleviate some of the server issues. The easiest solution, of course, would simply be to upgrade the data centers to allow more concurrent players. While a project already in motion allowed Final Fantasy XIV recently to increase server capacity in North America, similar server upgrades for Final Fantasy XIV won't be possible in other regions. This is due to multiple factors caused by COVID-19. The drop in semiconductor production means that additional servers won't arrive for a long time. Final Fantasy XIV claims it even looked into "investing more than market value to speed up delivery," but to no avail. COVID-19 has also severely restricted travel, meaning infrastructure teams can't travel to the server sites to work on the issue.
While Final Fantasy XIV waits for the ability to increase server capacity, it is turning to the player base itself to try and alleviate server congestion. This includes pleas to the community to do things like avoid creating new characters during peak congestion times, as the character creation process takes up a spot on the server, meaning that one person painstakingly customizing their new character in Final Fantasy XIV, is preventing another player from running about the world doing quests. Final Fantasy XIV also asks players to log out instead of idling on the server; those who don't may find themselves kicked from the server by the game's new policy, which will disconnect players who are idle for too long. Lastly, players who are using the Final Fantasy XIV free trial version of the game won't be allowed into login queues; instead, those spots are being reserved for paid players of the game. Free trial version players have to wait until there is no queue to gain access to the game.
Final Fantasy XIV is a bit of a victim of its own success at this point. Server problems may be bad now, but they're likely to only get worse when Endwalker launches at the end of the year. Unfortunately, with upgrading the servers effectively off the table for the time being, Final Fantasy XIV may have to rely on the cooperation of its player base to ease congestion for the time being.
Source: Final Fantasy XIV
Final Fantasy 14 A Realm Reborn, Heavensward, Stormblood, and Shadowbringers are available now on PC, PlayStation 4, and PlayStation 5.
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