Final Fantasy XIV player numbers surge and developers explain plans to ease login congestion

Final Fantasy XIV has truly been reborn: the game that had a disastrous start came back strong and today is one of the most loved and influential MMOs on the market, also being one of the most played. The game recently went through an explosion of popularity, and the increase in the number of players is so large that it surprised even the game’s developers.

Although this surge in popularity has a good side, it also has a bad side… the game’s servers have been struggling with demand, and this shows up as congestion when trying to log in. Players have reported waiting queues at peak times (Americas servers) ranging from 10 to 20 minutes, while on European servers the wait can reach 40 minutes at peak times.

The game team is aware and working on various solutions. Check the official statement from the game’s director:

“Development of our latest expansion pack Endwalker continues as we focus on implementing content and moving into the verification and polishing phase. Expectations for update 6.0 are high and have resulted in increased interest in FINAL FANTASY XIV, especially in North America and Europe, where we are currently experiencing a large number of new players.
Today, I would like to go into detail about the server congestion resulting from this influx and the measures we are taking to resolve it. The message is long, so please bear with me.”

Log out if you are not going to play, instead of leaving your character logged in to the game world:

“When a World server reaches maximum capacity, any additional players attempting to log in will be placed in a queue and must wait until a player already on the server logs out before being admitted. Because character creation requires a player to be logged in to write the newly created data to the database, new characters cannot be created while the server is full.

While we regret having to do this, we humbly ask two things of our players to ensure new players have the opportunity to create characters: first, we ask those who are not actively engaged in the game to log out of their characters instead of remaining logged in while idle… Second, we ask that you avoid creating new characters during peak congestion times.”

Paying users have priority in the waiting queue, meaning that only after everyone (who is trying to log in) manages to enter the game will free-version users be allowed in:

Please also note that, in order to prioritize our paying customers, the login queue is not available to players using the free trial (regardless of whether it occurs due to a surge in logins or a World reaching its capacity). Login will only be possible for these players after the World’s login queue has cleared. Once again, we apologize for the inconvenience, but ask for your understanding on this point.

Automatic disconnection system:

As an emergency measure to combat congestion, we are also planning an early implementation of the automatic logout feature originally scheduled for the expansion launch. With the release of Patch 5.58, if no input is detected from a character for a long period of time, the character will be automatically logged out of the game. This feature will be expanded to handle the increase in logins expected for the Endwalker launch.

Increasing servers and data centers to accommodate the growing number of new players:

We intended to assess the number of users and the content planned after the release of 6.0, and then work to have new servers or data centers prepared for 7.0.

The current situation, however, has forced us to reevaluate this schedule and determine whether the process can be sped up. There are, however, two obstacles in our way.

Issue 1: Insufficient servers due to the semiconductor shortage
The COVID-19 pandemic saw an extreme drop in semiconductor production at factories around the world. This, together with an increase in demand for electronics because more people were working from home, resulted in an international semiconductor shortage, which in turn resulted in a prolonged delay in the delivery of the servers we ordered for our data centers.

We even considered paying above market value to speed up delivery, but without success. We are not giving up, however, and are in ongoing talks with suppliers around the world to find a timely solution to this problem.

To read it in full (in English), go to: finalfantasyxiv.com