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Here’s one you don’t see every day. Final Fantasy XIV is “sold out”, even digitally, as Square-Enix battles a huge surge in popularity.
I recently wrote about the big backlash of the most recent World of Warcraft (WoW) update, which has become a focal point for lingering issues with design, writing, and insistence on the randomness and the time limit to keep players paying. Big WoW influencers like Asmongold have moved to the MMO Final Fantasy XIV (FFXIV) in competition, and this helped spark a wave of refugees from Warcraft in search of greener pastures, myself included.
As reported by YouTuber Skill Up (Thank you @PMS_Jordan for the tip), Square Enix has taken the step of temporarily halting digital sales of the game, declaring that the game is “out of stock” on its website.
I have played the game a lot lately and have noticed that even during off-peak hours I am greeted by queues on the servers. Some of my friends who tried to resume the game were also unable to create new characters on my server, greeted with a “this server is full” message as Square Enix tries to distribute the load between its centers. data. Each server presents itself as “congested” at the time of writing, which effectively implies that the servers have become full. It seems that this surge in popularity surprised the publisher a bit, which isn’t exactly unprecedented, given how overloaded Outriders was at launch.
In the past, Xbox director Phil Spencer has said that FFXIV is also heading to Microsoft’s console, but sadly that never came to fruition. However, Microsoft Store’s relaxed policies regarding content delivery networks are expected to arrive this year. Right now, all content sold through the Microsoft Store must feed updates through the Microsoft Store as well, while Square Enix prefers to manage its game updates manually. There’s also the issue of Sony’s publisher fees for cross-play, which would likely negatively impact Square Enix’s bottom line. Considering the massive surge in players, however, they could just afford it.
FFXIV is set to get a big expansion in the form of Endwalker in November 2021, adding new activities, classes, races and more. While Square Enix halted sales of the game when it comes to an end, you can still grab the PC version on Steam. Square Enix has also temporarily halted sales of FFXIV on PlayStation.
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