Square Resolves Final Fantasy 14 Server Problems Following “Surprising and Unexpected” Rise in Popularity • Eurogamer.net

Final Fantasy 14 producer and director Naoki Yoshida has addressed recent server congestion issues that have plagued the long-running MMO following a “staggering and unexpected” increase in the game’s popularity.

“Final Fantasy 14 is currently experiencing a dramatic increase in its player base,” Yoshida explained in an article posted to the game’s website. quantity of new players starting their adventures. ” Indeed, the game successfully broke its record for simultaneous players on Steam earlier this month, reaching 47,542 simultaneous players against the previous record of 41,200 set in June 2019.

While no doubt a boon to the potential longevity of the ten-year-old MMO, this “extreme influx” of new players, as Yoshida puts it, has put a strain on Final Fantasy 14’s servers, with bottlenecks causing congestion. long wait times and preventing players from creating new characters.

Yoshida explains the technical reasons behind the two issues in much more detail in her article, noting that resolving Final Fantasy 14’s congestion issues if the current player count persists will ultimately require additional global servers and data centers.

Yoshida says that due to the renewed interest in the MMO, Square is currently reassessing its previously announced server and data center expansion plans to see if there is a way to speed things up. Unfortunately, a decrease in semiconductor production and travel restrictions caused by the coronavirus pandemic are hampering these efforts, but Yoshida insists Square will continue to do everything possible “to ensure that this goal is met as soon as reasonably possible. possible ”.

Until then, the team will continue to increase connection caps on global servers where possible (although Yoshida admits that the recent increase on North American servers was still not enough to handle smoothly. how many people want to play this weekend) and “humbly” ask two things of existing players to ensure that newcomers are able to create characters when the game starts: that they log out of their characters when they are inactive and avoid creating new characters during peak periods.

Yoshida also notes that, as an “emergency measure to combat congestion,” the development team will implement an auto-logout feature in patch 5.58, booting players from a server after a long time. period of inactivity.

“We are aware of the burden that we have placed on our player base,” concludes Yoshida, “and we are working diligently to alleviate it in the weeks and months to come. We will continue to develop measures to combat congestion. of the servers and will keep you updated with any developments in this area. Thank you again for your continued support! ”.