Square Enix will boot inactive players from packaged ‘Final Fantasy XIV Online’ servers

sees “a record number of users in all regions” after some popular streamers started playing the MMO. A major expansion is, and players can return or resume play before Endwalkerthe arrival.

However, the game’s servers are struggling to cope with the influx of players. Producer and Director Naoki Yoshida, many gamers in North America and Europe have struggled to log in or create characters recently due to “server congestion”.

Some North American servers hit their maximum capacity of up to seven hours at times over the past weekend, and average wait times were around 10 to 20 minutes. On European servers, players had to wait up to 40 minutes.

Square Enix revealed some measures to tackle Final Fantasy XIV Onlineserver problems. He has accelerated plans to eliminate players who are inactive for too long. This feature is usually activated when a new expansion arrives to help systems cope with an increase in player numbers, such as notes, but Square Enix brings it back early. Yoshida also asked players to log out and free up spots if they are inactive.

The publisher claims that the game’s North American data centers have recently been upgraded. As of this week, the game supports up to 18,000 simultaneous connections in this region – up to 750 players per global server. European data centers are online for a similar upgrade soon.

Meanwhile, Yoshida noted that the global semiconductor shortage has slowed the delivery of servers to some data centers. Travel restrictions related to COVID-19 have prevented the server infrastructure team from visiting data centers as well.

It’s fascinating to see a game that’s been around for eight years have such a massive and sudden surge in popularity, four months away from the next expansion. Yet, this once again underscores the impact streamers have on gaming culture.