Square Enix has revealed in a statement that it is temporarily pulling the sale of its highly popular MMO, Final Fantasy XIV due to high demand.
Final Fantasy XIV director and producer, Naoki Yoshida apologize to players in a blog post where he revealed the great number of people trying to play the Endwalker expansion has far exceeded Square’s server capacity.
“To those who have been invited by their friends and family who have been considering joining, as well as our retail partners, we sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this may cause, and ask for your understanding and cooperation in order to reduce congestion,” Yoshida said once again apologizing for the circumstances.
“We will continue to monitor the situation as we consider the timing around resuming sales.”
To help with the issue the MMO team has announced that it is “suspending delivery of package versions and temporary suspension of digital version sales” of Final Fantasy XIV. The temporary sale suspension for both retail and digital versions of the MMO including the Starter Edition and Complete Edition as well as suspending new Free trial registrations.
“Players are currently experiencing extremely long wait times due to the dense concentration of play hours which far exceed our server capacity, especially during the peak times, and so we have decided to temporarily suspend the sale and delivery of Final Fantasy XIV Starter Edition and Complete Edition,” Naoki Yoshida said in a statement
“Additionally, although those with an active subscription are prioritized to log in, Free Trial players are unable to log in outside of late night and early morning hours, and so we will also temporarily suspend new registrations for the Free Trial.”
Yoshida emphasizes that the suspension is only temporary and will be phased out over the next few days as the publisher works with its retail partners as they are currently coordinating with them “as swiftly as possible”. Square Enix is asking players to understand the situation as this will be a gradual process. It isn’t just halting sales but advertisements as well but Yoshida says “it will not be possible to suspend some of the advertisements due to the nature of how they were set up.”
Yoshida says it is looking into the possibility of upgrading Final Fantasy XIV’s server infrastructure so this isn’t a continued problem in another expansion. The plan was apparently held up by the ongoing global hardware shortage. If it works out, Yoshida says a Final Fantasy XIV server roadmap will release by the end of January 2022.
“We are considering adding servers to each region, especially plans for a large-scale addition in North America and Europe, and will be looking at the number of servers, infrastructure construction time, power issues, and server rack situation to see if we should do this sequentially or in one big push,” Yoshida said detailing server upgrade plans
“Either way, the plan is to introduce a large number of additions, which we intend to carry out quickly and safely with as minimal inconvenience to our players as possible, and we will follow up regarding this matter as we progress.”
