Last month we reported that Square Enix has halted the sales of its smash hit MMORPG, Final Fantasy XIV. This was done as the servers were being overloaded thanks to component shortages and COVID. There were simply too many people wanting to play the game, and Square Enix wasn’t in the position of simply adding more servers. Now, Square Enix has mentioned they are preparing to welcome new players, starting January 25, 2022. However, they are being cautious and have warned that if congestion and massive queues start to happen again, then sales will be suspended again.
In addition to reopening the game to all, Square Enix has some major plans that are underway. Plans that will hopefully prevent the recent issues from occurring again.
Get ready for more worlds
Square Enix will be adding new servers in multiple data centers, which will provide for the influx of players. They’ll be adding five new worlds for players to choose from at the start. This will ensure there should be more than enough room for everyone in Oceania to transfer over. This will also take some load off of the Oceania servers, and hopefully provide a better experience. They’ll over free servers transfers for anyone looking to migrate from the Oceania servers.
There are also plans to expand the North American, Japanese, and European data centers. The NA and EU data centers are part of a massive server upgrade that will be conducted in two phases. Phase one will see a new logical data center established, adding four new worlds. Phase two will see that four more worlds will be added to the logical data centers. The North American phase 1 will start August 2022, phase 2 has been planned for Spring/Summer 2023. While the European phase 1 will begin July 2022, with phase 2 starting Summer 2023.
As for the Japanese Datacenters, Square Enix has stated they aren’t able to do what they plan for NA and EU. Meaning more drastic measures will need to be taken. Instead, an extra logical data center, and lower the number of worlds per logical data center. This would increase the number of logical data enters to four, and moving several worlds from the existing data centers over to the new one.
It sounds like Square Enix will have its hands full. Yet, it goes to show that they are committed to ensuring everyone playing the game will be a better experience.
Source – Final Fantasy XIV blog
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