Final Fantasy XIV Post Prepares Players For Potential Server Issues As The 1.0 Trailer Appears On YouTube

By this point, I think most veteran MMO players are prepared for a little bit of turbulence whenever a new expansion hits. People decide to join for the first time or come back after a long time and queues tend to be longer – partially because some people just refuse to log out.

We all know how it goes, but it looks like Square Enix is preparing for things to be a little bit rougher when it comes to the launch of Endwalker. The Final Fantasy XIV dev team dropped a sizable post addressing the potential for server congestion last night – of course covering the typical stuff but also noting some issues unique to our times. These include things like the global shortage of semiconductors preventing them from adding more Worlds to the game. That’s not to say more Worlds won’t be added as time goes on, it's just all dependent on them being able to get server machines in order for it to happen.

Of course, another area of concern they mentioned is the fact that the game is “experiencing a record number of active users”, meaning they figure there’ll be a lot more people trying to jump into the expansion than in previous ones. This isn’t necessarily a bad problem to have, but it is compounded by the hardware shortage.

The good news is that they’ve got some systems in place to work around things. One of these is the ability for players to log into less crowded Worlds on their Data Center. This was implemented in 5.57 and can be accessed by selecting “Visit Another World Server” in the character selection menu. The system will also prioritize paying users over free trial users.

Of course, character creation will continue to be limited whenever a server is congested, but that’s not really new. Oh, and the auto-logout system has been updated to do a better job of kicking people who aren’t actually playing the game.

As noted, last night’s post is pretty sizable, so there’s a bit more information there than what we’ve covered here – although, these are the highlights. If you want to read over the whole thing, it can be found on the XIV site.

On a more fun note., the Final Fantasy XIV team uploaded the Version 1.0 trailer – that’s the original game launch, pre A Realm Reborn. No, we don’t know why, but if you’ve never seen it – or just want to see how far XIV’s trailer graphics have come since then, or… I don’t know… make lore comparisons between it and the Endwalker trailer – you can watch it below.