The recent launch of the Endwalker expansion catapulted Final Fantasy XIV to uber popularity once more. The game got so popular, it fried up the servers and caused a myriad of technical issues for players. In response, Square Enix pulled the game from digital stores so that players wouldn’t congest the servers to the point of total collapse.
Players who managed to get Final Fantasy XIV for the Endwalker expansion before December 16 or were playing the game before the expansion’s launch still have access. Those who have been wanting to play it since then have been locked out. So, when will the game be available for new players to buy it?
As of this writing, there is no set date for when Final Fantasy XIV will be up for sale again. Producer and director Naoki Yoshida wrote in a blog post about long queue times associated with the COVID-19 pandemic and offered some insights on how to address the issue. The one point that stood out is that, given how congested the servers are right now, it will take several months for developers to add new Worlds, if not longer.
Basically, the servers cannot be expanded because they’re always at capacity at all hours of the day, rendering queue times for players to log in exceedingly long and Worlds congested. Even if supply chain issues didn’t prohibit it, increasing server capacity won’t clear up queue times and congestion any faster.
The only solution developers have come up with to mitigate congestion is to put players who are logged into Final Fantasy XIV on a strict Away From Keyboard (AFK) timer that will automatically boot players out of the game if they have been inactive for a long while. It’s not a perfect solution, but it does help active players stick around long enough to enjoy the game’s content.
While there are no new updates to patch up server capacity issues anytime soon, Square Enix will be releasing version 6.05 on January 4, 2022. The patch comes with the Savage difficulty for the Pandemonium raids as well as some other content.
