Square Enix has addressed one of Final Fantasy 14's biggest problems – overpopulated servers. To do so, it has added an idle timer that will kick you for inactivity after thirty minutes.
If you've played the game, you've do doubt – at least once – booted it up to unwind after a long day only to find that you're somewhere in the 100th or, for some, even the 1000th position in a queue. With that, Square Enix has made a few adjustments "in an effort to ease server congestion."
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It doesn't stop at the idle timer. Square Enix has also made an alteration to the worlds themselves. Some are being labeled as "Standard" while others will be changed to "Congested." The difference between the two is that you cannot create a character in a Congested World whereas you can in a Standard one. This will push newer players into the Standard worlds while keeping slots free in Congested ones.
Final Fantasy 14's idle timer is fairly standard among the MMO genre. For instance, in The Elder Scrolls Online, you can go AFK for 20 minutes. Star Wars: The Old Republic kicks you after 15 minutes and then you're booted from the character select after another 10 minutes. That's a total of 25.
The only exception to the rule is World of Warcraft. It is much harsher with a five-minute timer. Even Minecraft's is longer with a ten-minute waiting period.
It's not surprising that servers are starting to fill up en masse, causing long-winded queues and waits like you're stranded in the Alton Towers theme park, waiting to ride the Oblivion rollercoaster.
Final Fantasy 14 broke its Steam concurrent player record. The large surge of players was so much that the game stopped being purchasable on the Square Enix store.
This boom in popularity in the US spread to Europe and, rather quickly, the worlds began to fill up. Square Enix hopes that these changes will help to alleviate some of that congestion.
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