Final Fantasy 14's pesky disconnection issues should be getting fixed this week
But it will take "several more months or more" to obtain servers to handle the exploding player base.
Final Fantasy 14: Endwalker released in early access on December 3 and the launch weekend proved to be pretty damn popular. Like, 'six-hour queues and countless errors' popular. Despite Square Enix's best attempts to batten down the hatches in preparation for what has been the game's most successful weekend ever, logging into the servers has been a downright nightmare.
Square Enix is hoping to fix some of the bigger login issues this week—namely, the one that errors you and boots you out of the game mid-queue—with maintenance on all servers. A post on the game's website from director/producer Naoki Yoshida explained the cause of some of the errors, as well as apologising for a second time since the expansion launched.
"Since the start of Early Access, we have been seeing an unprecedented number of active players, the highest ever seen since the launch of FFXIV, as well as record numbers of simultaneous logins," Yoshida wrote. "But along with this, the number of connections has far surpassed the scale of our services which has resulted in long wait times when attempting to log in."
Our #FFXIV Producer and Director, Naoki Yoshida, would like to provide some information regarding World login errors and resolutions. https://t.co/f8i56NqZrADecember 7, 2021
The maintenance is due to kick off in "the early hours" of December 8 and will take approximately four hours. The exact time is getting shared closer to the maintenance itself. Everything will be offline during this time, but it sounds like Square Enix plans to do it when most people are asleep anyway. The data center login cap is also being increased from 17,000 to 21,000 to try and reduce instances of Error 2002 happening, along with additional resources being pumped into Japanese server Tonberry, which has been experiencing the highest level of congestion.
Yoshida has warned that the maintenance may not fully put a stop to the main disconnecting problems. "Although the fix itself is finished, the process of checking whether the fix has actually resolved the issue requires time as it is an extremely complex process," he wrote. "In addition, due to the complexity of the conditions of occurrence itself, it is possible that we have not yet addressed more detailed conditions, but we will reflect the fixes and continue to monitor the situation."
While the easiest solution on paper would be to simply obtain more servers, it's not as easy as it sounds right now. The ongoing semiconductor shortage has proven to be a big hurdle, and Yoshida said that it will take "several more months or more" before the team can obtain the necessary hardware to add new servers.
Free game time is being handed out to those with active subscriptions as compensation, which should be getting tacked onto player subs in the next two to three days.