Square Enix had a great year with the release of the new expansion for Final Fantasy 14, called Endwalker. However, what the studio and the Final Fantasy 14 team did not take into account is the server stability and queue timings amidst the hype of the new expansion. The situation worsened so much that Square Enix had to temporarily stop digital sales of new copies of the game.
Well, it seems the team finally has some news to address both the server stability and resuming of sales for the game. In a post made on the official website of Final Fantasy 14, Naoki Yoshida, the director and producer of the game, addresses the problem. He starts it off by thanking the playerbase for the continued support and acknowledges the issues which crept into the game with the release of Endwalker expansion. The topics covered by him are pretty big, so it is advisable to read the official post in its entirety for a more detailed overview.
One key takeaway from the post is the introduction of the new Oceania server for the game. Yoshida says that the server was in planning for a while and that they are opening it up two weeks earlier than planned. The server will be coming online on January 25, 2022, and will be coming with five worlds, compared to three worlds that were originally planned. Additionally, to incentivize character transfer to the new worlds on the Oceania server, the team will be temporarily waiving the transfer fees.
Additionally, the digital sales of the game will be resuming again from January 25, 2022, at 5:00 pm (JST)- however, Yoshida mentioned that if the servers still experience extreme levels of congestion, they will halt the digital sales once again until the issue is solved.
Apart from the above, the American and European data centers are planned to receive expansions for a more steady online experience. Both the data centers will get their expansions in two phases. The American servers will receive their first data-center expansion in August 2022, following the second one in spring or summer of 2023. For the European data center, its first expansion is slated to happen in July 2022, following the second one in the summer of 2023.
Naoki Yoshida ends the post by apologizing to the playerbase for the delay of the server expansions, citing the worldwide semiconductor shortage as the key reason. He also mentions that the team is currently hard at work on job adjustments, new content for the 6.x series of patches, and planning on the next expansion (with patch 7.0). He closes the letter by mentioning that the team has planned some exciting new announcements in February, and thanking the player base for the continued support once more.
Hopefully, the above changes help in stabilizing the continued server congestion issues the game is experiencing.
