Final Fantasy 14: Endwalker officially released on December 7, and the latest expansion has been met with universal acclaim from both fans and critics. As of today, Endwalker is the highest rated game of 2021 as per the user score on Metacritic.
However, Final Fantasy 14 has been suffering from severe server congestion ever since early access began on December 3. Players are spending hours in a queue and have had to deal with errors that result in being kicked to the main menu. The best possible way to bypass the queue is to login early in the morning, but naturally that is not possible for a vast majority of players. Square Enix just announced it will be taking several measures that should further help with the congestion issues.
Naoki Yoshida, Producer & Director for Final Fantasy 14 has made a new post on the official website, first apologizing for the ongoing server congestion, before discussing some of the reasons as well as steps Square Enix is taking to tackle the problem. First, sales of Final Fantasy 14 Starter and Complete editions will be temporarily suspended. Next, new registrations for the Free Trial of FF14 will also be similarly suspended, though existing players can still purchase expansion packs as well as collector’s editions upgrades.
Yoshida mentions that Square Enix will be giving 14 days of extra game time to existing players, and anyone who owns the game, while having an active subscription as of December 21, is eligible for this compensation. Subscribers of FF14 had earlier received 7 days of additional game time as compensation, making it a total of 21 days. Despite all of the frustrations faced by users, Square Enix has been regularly communicating with the audience, and should be commended for the all the steps it has taken in order to compensate fans.
The development team has also found out the exact cause for the infamous Error 2002 has been plaguing Final Fantasy 14. Yoshida states that a fix for this bug is ready, but it will only be patched when the game client is updated on December 21, which coincides with the launch of Patch 6.0.1.
Square Enix could not accommodate for the significant increase in player base due to the ongoing semiconductor shortage that is plaguing several industries all around the world. Fans can hope that the above-mentioned methods will help with the server congestion and drastically reduce queue times for all players.
Final Fantasy 14 is now available on PC, PS4, and PS5.
