Highlights

  • Final Fantasy 14 players will get some free game time as compensation for Dawntrail's launch issues.
  • Xbox Series X/S players will receive 10 days of game time, while those on all other platforms will get 2 days.
  • The implementation of the free game time will start around July 11 at 1:30 AM EST, but the process will take an additional two to three days to complete.

Final Fantasy 14 producer and director Naoki Yoshida has released a statement explaining that players will be compensated with game time as an apology for Dawntrail's launch issues. Yoshida stated that Final Fantasy 14 players on Xbox Series X/S will receive ten days of game time, while players on all other platforms will get two days of game time.

Final Fantasy 14: Dawntrail is the fifth expansion since the game's 2013 relaunch as A Realm Reborn. With the new continent of Tural and the game's first major graphical update as the main features, Dawntrail is billed as the start of a new chapter for Final Fantasy 14. Though login queues and crashes marred its predecessor Endwalker, Dawntrail had a much smoother launch by comparison, thanks to steps taken by Square Enix to alleviate server congestion ahead of Dawntrail's early access window. As a result, the login queues for Dawntrail were mostly isolated to the Aether data center in North America and the Phoenix server in Europe.

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However, Dawntrail's technical issues prompted an apology from Yoshida and some relief for Final Fantasy 14 players. According to a Lodestone post by Yoshida, all Final Fantasy 14 players who had an active subscription before July 4 along with the full version of the game will receive two days of game time. Subscribers with a registered copy of the Xbox Series X/S version of Final Fantasy 14 on their account will receive ten days of game time. The added game time to Final Fantasy 14 will also include free use of additional retainers and other features that players can add to their monthly subscriptions.

Final Fantasy 14 Confirms Game Time Compensation

  • Xbox Series X/S players will get ten days of game time as an apology for technical issues.
  • All other players will be granted two days of added game time.
  • The bonus game time will include additional retainer access.
  • All players will be granted their game time starting around July 11.

Yoshida said that the implementation of game time will start around July 11 at 1:30 AM Eastern, but clarified that the process will take an additional two to three days to complete. The game's producer also stated that the added game time is an apology for the zone transition issues that are currently plaguing the Xbox version of Final Fantasy 14. A fix for the Xbox Series X/S version, as well as other problematic glitches in Dawntrail, is still being worked on, but will likely require a client-side patch and server maintenance to implement. Yoshida also commended players for using the Data Center Travel system to visit the Dynamis data center in North America as a way to alleviate the queues on the Aether data center.

With Patch 7.01 launching on July 16, the Final Fantasy 14 development team is having a busy July. It's unclear when Square Enix will release a bug fix patch to address these pressing concerns.