Square Enix has shared its plans to ease congestion in Final Fantasy 14 ahead of the launch of its new expansion, Dawntrail.
A new blog post explains login caps could be reached quickly resulting in longer login queues, although the maximum capacity of servers has been increased by “roughly 50 percent” compared to the launch of Endwalker.
During a preview for Dawntrail, producer and director Naoki Yoshida told Eurogamer there was “almost no chance” of server woes for the launch of the expansion – now we can see specifically the measures in place.
Login queues are expected to be longer than usual, but Square Enix said the queueing process is still functioning even if it does not appear to be counting down. Cancelling the queue will send players to the back when reattempting to log in. Further, players on the full version of the game will be prioritised over those on the free trial.
Data Center Travel and World Visit systems will be limited from launch until the release of patch 7.01 (or patch 7.05 at the latest) to alleviate congestion. However, Square Enix does suggest players consider travelling to less-crowded worlds outside of peak times.
Players who are inactive for over 30 minutes will automatically be logged out, plus new characters cannot be created on a world experiencing congestion (but can still be created outside of peak times).
Two error messages may also be seen frequently. The first is “Error 2002”, which occurs when login servers experience high traffic and is a measure to prevent servers from crashing. Square Enix recommends attempting to log in at a later time.
The second is “Error 90002” and “Error 90006” during gameplay, both caused by network connection errors.
Lastly, new areas as part of Dawntrail’s main scenario are expected to receive heavy traffic, so several instances of these areas will be implemented to ease congestion.
More information on these measures can be found on the Lodestone blog.
The release of previous expansion Endwalker resulted in major server issues, to the point the game was pulled from sale altogether. Square Enix is aiming to avoid similar issues this time and has added a number of new data centres and worlds globally.
Dawntrail will release on 2nd July (or 28th June for those with early access) across PC, PlayStation and Xbox Series X/S.
I recently went hands-on with the expansion and described it as “Final Fantasy 14 at its most colourful“.