Square Enix reveals roadmap on FFXIV: Endwalker’s online services

Final Fantasy XIV: Endwalker, the latest expansion to Square Enix’s critically acclaimed MMORPG, Final Fantasy XIV, has been through difficult times when it launched on Dec. 7, 2021. The game’s servers endured player congestion so massive that Square Enix had to suspend Endwalker’s digital sales on Dec. 15, 2021, to keep player log-in queues and server stability under control. This is due to the wave of new players migrating to FFXIV during the summer of 2021, the launch of the new expansion, and the global shortage of semi-conductors needed to create new servers to accommodate these players.

Today, Square Enix has released a news post on the official Final Fantasy XIV website, announcing their plans on improving the game’s online services. The first announcement is that the new Oceanian Data Center will be brought online on Jan. 25, 2022. This Data Center will contain five servers (or Worlds as FFXIV calls them) to provide enough space for people living in the Oceania region to transfer to. As a bonus, Square Enix will be waiving the transfer fee players can migrate to the new servers for free. More details on how this free transfer will work will be revealed at a later date.

The next announcement is that the Home World Transfer Service will be resuming operations one day after the launch of the Oceanian Data Center, on Jan. 26, 2022. This service allows players to create or transfer their characters onto servers, but it was temporarily suspended due to the congestion issues. Square Enix then announced that the Data Center Travel System will be implemented into Endwalker in the Patch 6.1 update. This service allows players to visit servers in other logical Data Centers within the same Data Centre.

The third statement from Square Enix is that it plans to add more servers to the Japanese, North American, and European Data Centers throughout 2022 and 2023. Square Enix seeks to accomplish this by adding a logical data center to each regional data center and adding new servers. The Japanese Data Center will be receiving this server expansion sometime in July 2022.

The North American and European Data Centers will be getting their server expansions in two-part operations. The first phase of North American server expansions will begin around August 2022 and the second phase will start sometime in the spring or summer of 2023. Whereas the European server expansions are scheduled to begin in July 2022, and the second phase of the server expansions will begin in the summer of 2023.

The final announcement from Square Enix is that digital sales of Final Fantasy XIV: Endwalker will resume for new players on Jan. 25, 2023 (5:00 p.m. JST, 3:00 a.m. EST, 4:00 p.m. PT). This is due to the fact that player log-ins are slowly returning to normal and with the planned implementation of the Oceanian Data Center allowing more room for players. However, if the servers become congested again, Square Enix will consider suspending digital sales of the game again.

Will these new servers provide enough room for new players and help them experience one of the best multiplayer games on PC? Only time will time tell. We will keep you informed upon future developments as Final Fantasy XIV: Endwalker’s lifecycle continues into 2022.