FFXIV: Endwalker Producer and Director Naoki Yoshida released a message explaining the team’s strategies to prevent Worlds from going down due to server congestion, as well as how it reboots them when they do. He also apologized for the inconvenience that comes with this recovery process, as well as how it is difficult for people to login since early access launched on December 3, 2021.
The login servers and Worlds are experiencing a heavy network load. This is due to the sheer number of people who are moving between zones. To combat this, the team is limiting how many players can move between areas at once. You may often find yourself unable to move to another zone, but you simply need to try again. However, if issues persist, the team may further decrease the number of people who can move between areas at once.
In case the World does go down, the FFXIV team essentially troubleshoots what caused it, limits what happened to prevent the crash from happening again, and then reboots the World. After the reboot, you will be able to log into the World again. This process can take between thirty minutes to an hour to complete.
According to Yoshida, this is the largest number of people making simultaneous connections to the servers in the game’s history. Due to the heavy congestion in FFXIV: Endwalker, Square Enix has also temporarily suspended the renaming service. This is an example of a countermeasure in order to reduce the stress on the network.
Final Fantasy XIV is immediately available on Windows PC, PlayStation 4, and PlayStation 5. The Endwalker expansion is in Early Access and its official launch date is December 7, 2021.