The Final Fantasy XIV development team is thrilled that players are enjoying the new Endwalker expansion, but they’re also cursing that popularity in the same breath. Yet again, Square Enix has temporarily suspended sales of the game’s Starter and Complete editions as a way to ease the title’s current server congestion. Director Naoki Yoshida made the announcement in a new blog post, stating that the company is halting physical copies and digital sales. Interested players also won’t be able to sign up for Final Fantasy XIV‘s oft-memed free trial–at least not for a little while. Ads for the game are also being halted in certain capacities.
Since Endwalker was released earlier this month, players have been sitting for hours in queues of up to 8,000 players just to log into the game. If the long wait times weren’t enough, players are also randomly getting kicked in the middle of waiting–if they notice quick enough and log back in, the game will hold their place in line, but those who walk away from the computer without noticing? To the back of the line they go. A patch to address this “Error 2002” but is scheduled in Patch 6.0.1 scheduled for release on December 21.
Blame for these server issues falls not on Square Enix, but more definitively on the state of the world as a whole. It would be no problem for such a massive company to invest in new servers, but as supply chain issues and the global chip shortage continue, Square Enix is having a difficult time buying the necessary hardware. Recently, Yoshida did remark that the company has “started to see some progress,” as it attempts to up server capacity, and a roadmap is tentatively scheduled for January 2022.
Final Fantasy XIV: Endwalker was officially released on December 7, for PC, PlayStation 4, and PlayStation 5, with early access beginning on December 3. Hopefully, you were able to snag the pizza emote courtesy of GrubHub last week.
