If you're trying to join friends on Final Fantasy 14's Aether Data Center, then you may have to wait. The player congestion has forced the North American data center to close its doors to new players while Square Enix works to address the issue.
People seem to enjoy Square's massive MMORPG as this latest message from director and producer Naoki Yoshida acknowledges—once again—that Final Fantasy 14's infrastructure is struggling to keep up. In a new update posted to the Lodestone, Yoshida announced that Aether could no longer house any new Warriors of Light, so Square Enix has marked all of its servers as congested. While it's a bummer for folks looking to join friends, North American adventurers can still create characters on Primal or Crystal. You may want to do that ASAP, though, as Yoshida mentioned they're also exploding in population.
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Aether isn't the only hub struggling, either. Final Fantasy 14's patch 5.58 hotfix hit the game just this week, and aimed to increase the capacity for European servers by adjusting configuration and operating system settings. European players are currently facing long queue times to get into Eorzea, and Square Enix says it aims to upgrade its equipment with "high-performance machines" in later September.
Yoshida again mentioned that there are new worlds, data centers, and infrastructure expansion planned to address the issues in all regions—North America, Europe, and Japan. However, the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has caused supply chain issues and made traveling for its Infrastructure and Development teams unsafe, so progress has been slow. He acknowledges the situation is "far from ideal," and will require more time to remedy, but promises the team will "will continue to persevere in implementing any solutions" they can.
Final Fantasy 14 has continued to face player traffic challenges following the announcement of its Endwalker expansion. While Square Enix works on long-term solutions, it has restored the idle kick timer to Eorzea and planned a stress test for players in Japan this Friday. The MMO will also add an Oceania data center in 2022, so players from the region will no longer face frustrating latency issues.
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