This popularity is a real problem.
The Final Fantasy XIV development team is thrilled that players are enjoying the new Endwalker expansion, but they're also cursing that popularity in the same breath. Again, Square Enix has temporarily suspended sales of the Starter and Complete editions of the game to ease the title's current server congestion. Director Naoki Yoshida made the announcement in a new blog post, stating that the company was suspending physical copies and digital sales. Interested players also won't be able to sign up for Final Fantasy XIV's oft-talked-about free trial, at least not for a little while. Ads for the game are also broken in some capacities.
Since Endwalker was released earlier this month, players have been sitting for hours in queues of up to 8 players just to log into the game. If the long wait times weren't enough , players also get randomly kicked in the middle of the wait – if they notice it fast enough and log back in, the game will keep its place online, but whoever notices? At the back of the line they go. A patch to correct this "Error 000" is planned in Patch 2002, which is scheduled for release on December 6.0.1.
The blame for these server issues lies not with Square Enix, but more definitely with the state of the world as a whole. It wouldn't be a problem for such a massive company to invest in new servers, but as supply chain issues and global chip shortages continue, Square Enix is struggling to buy the necessary hardware. Recently, Yoshida noted that the company has "started to see progress" as it tries to increase server capacity, and a roadmap is tentatively scheduled for January 2022.
Final Fantasy XIV: Endwalker was officially released on December 7 on PC, PlayStation 4, and PlayStation 5, with early access starting December 3. Hopefully you were able to catch the pizza emote courtesy of GrubHub last week.
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