Square Enix has temporarily halted sales of Final Fantasy XIV due to the game’s server congestion problems in the wake of Endwalker, its latest expansion. According to a post from Producer/Director Naoki Yoshida on The Lodestone, the move comes as part of the company’s ongoing actions to address the issues. Deliveries of physical and digital editions of the Final Fantasy XIV Starter Edition and Complete Edition packages have been suspended. It also suspended new registrations for the Final Fantasy XIV free trial, which includes all of A Realm Reborn and the Heavensward expansion up to level 60.
According to Yoshida, though players with an active subscription receive priority for logging in, even free trial players were unable to login outside of late night and early morning hours. The team is working on the addition of a new logical data center and additional world servers. They hope to provide a roadmap for these additions by the end of January 2022.
The sales suspension of Final Fantasy XIV will take place gradually “over the next few days,” as Square Enix coordinates with its retail partners. Similarly, all new advertisements for the game will be suspended, though some already scheduled ones will launch as planned. Yoshida did not give a schedule for when sales would resume, but pledged to continue monitoring the situation. He also apologized for the inconvenience and asked for understanding and cooperation.
Besides the halt of Final Fantasy XIV sales, Yoshida’s post provided updates on actions being taken and compensation for affected players. Square Enix will grant 14 additional days of game time to players with an active subscription as of December 21, 2021. This is on top of the 7 days of game time granted earlier.
The post had an update regarding the now-infamous “Error 2002” issue affecting players in login queues. Error 2002 occurs when players in a login queue are kicked out of the queue. Most occurrences were related to connection instability, or when there were too many players in the queue. However, the latest update revealed that the development team discovered a login-related bug dating back to Final Fantasy XIV version 1.0. They’ve prepared a fix for the bug and will deploy it in the next scheduled patch, version 6.01. The patch will release on December 21, 2021.
Yoshida also clarified plans around the upcoming patch schedule. Barring major issues, patch 6.05 will launch as planned on January 4, 2022. Patch 6.05 will add new elements such as a new tomestone currency, the Pandæmonium: Asphodelos (Savage) raid, and the Excitatron 6000 dungeon.
Final Fantasy XIV is, at the time of this writing, unavailable to buy on PS5, PS4, and PC. Check out the team’s clarification on error codes 90002 and 90006.
Published: Dec 16, 2021 06:30 am