Square Enix has outlined its plans to combat congestion ahead of Final Fantasy 14 Dawntrail‘s official release – we all know that the launch queues are going to be astronomical. The previous expansion, Endwalker, faced lengthy wait times of up to a week after launch, and sales were eventually halted to alleviate traffic. Square Enix isn’t going to make the same mistake with Dawntrail, however, and it’s taking aim at AFK players to help minimize wait times.
First up, the team says Final Fantasy 14 is prioritizing paying customers for login queues, with free trial users put to the back of the line. To my understanding, FF14 lets people into the MMORPG servers in chunks, so if it doesn’t look like the queue is getting smaller don’t leave, otherwise when you try again you’ll also be put to the back.
Data center travel will be limited up to patch 7.01 (and maybe 7.05 if things continue to be busy). Characters in other worlds can travel home without the restriction, but Square Enix suggests that you do this ahead of 7.0 so you don’t get stuck in a queue waiting. There is also a suite of new server and cloud worlds coming to each data center for the launch of Dawntrail, with some even having the express purpose of managing congested overflow.
If you’re looking to make an entirely new female Hrothgar, you’re also going to struggle, as new characters can’t be made in congested worlds and instead must be made in a period of downtime, but everyone has a full hour to make your ideal Warrior of Light once you’re in.
Perhaps the biggest change during Dawntrail’s launch is how the game treats AFK players. If you and some friends have a penchant for going inactive in Limsa while hanging out, FF14 is going to automatically log you out after 30 minutes of being AFK.
“As we would like to give priority to those who would like to actively play the game, we apologize for the inconvenience, but we ask for you to log out when you are not actively playing,” Square Enix writes.
Once you manage to get into FF14 there’s going to be even more waiting though, as the number of characters that can move between areas in a certain time frame is being reduced according to Square Enix. So if you’re met with a message telling you moving between areas is unavailable, just try again and it should level out.
Traffic for Dawntrail’s instanced quests like dungeons will also be staggered, and everyone waiting for Dawntrail MSQ instances will be given a number. Square Enix has “devised methods to stagger player traffic during main scenario progression, and have also implemented a queue system in case of congestion.”
If you’re reading this as a sprout you’ll want to check out our Final Fantasy 14 new player guide, alongside our breakdown of all the Final Fantasy 14 classes – which is best for newcomers, the ones you can’t access until later on, and what all the roles mean.
You can also follow us on Google News for daily PC games news, reviews, and guides, or grab our PCGN deals tracker to net yourself some bargains.
