Final Fantasy 14 Servers Experience Major Issues
January 5 brought a major server outage for Final Fantasy 14. All four North American data centers went offline. This happened shortly after 8:00 PM Eastern. The event was brief. The cause of the server issues was likely a power outage. It happened in the Sacramento area due to a transformer blowing.
This incident happened before online. It was within an hour after initial reports. This is not the first time Final Fantasy 14's servers have experienced major technical issues. Throughout 2024, Final Fantasy 14's servers were continually targeted. Distributed denial of service attacks were coming. They sent false packets of data to the servers, overloading them.
During a DDoS attack, players of Final Fantasy 14 would experience much higher latency than usual. This made the game unplayable. It also led to server disconnects. Mitigation techniques were used by Square Enix. These deterred the impact of the DDoS attacks. But there's no surefire way to stop these attacks. Players can work around the issue. A virtual private network is what they use to improve their connection.
Final Fantasy 14 has been targeted by DDoS attacks. However, this recent server problem had a different cause. It was based on posts found on the r/ffxiv subreddit. Users shared their activities in-game before the servers went down. Responding to a post by Reddit user dunphy_Collapsable, another user known as Sarikitty mentioned a loud exploding sound. It was heard in Sacramento. This is where Final Fantasy 14's North American Data Centers are located.
Further Reddit users confirmed the sound. It was definitely from a blown power transformer. It could have caused a power outage nearby, which affected the Final Fantasy 14 data centers. The outage was reported just after 8:00 PM Eastern. The servers came back online an hour later. Square Enix issued a statement on the Lodestone. It confirmed the issue and said they are investigating the matter.
Europe was unaffected. Japan was unaffected. Oceanic data centers too were unaffected. This adds weight. This adds weight to the likelihood of a localized server outage. The writing took place at that time. This is when the North American data centers of Final Fantasy 14 were starting to come online. It began with the Aether. It began with the Crystal and Primal Data Centers. But the Dynamis Data Center, the youngest of Final Fantasy 14's data centers, remained out of reach.
Ambitious plans are in place for Final Fantasy 14 in 2025. It includes the launch of Final Fantasy 14 Mobile. Server issues represent the game's newest test. It has yet to overcome. How these ongoing issues will affect the game is uncertain. Only time will reveal the fallout.
