FFXIV is going back on sale and will finally be accepting new players
Square EnixFFXIV director Naoki Yoshida announced plans to put the MMO and its newest expansion Endwalker back on sale, as well as a host of changes including the addition of new data centers to allow for new players.
On December 16, just nine days after FFXIV’s latest expansion Endwalker dropped, Square Enix suspended sales of the game. Endwalker was so popular that the game’s servers couldn’t handle the influx of players, forcing the company to shut down sales entirely.
One month later, FFXIV’s visionary Yoshi-P addressed the future of the game and the company’s plan to put it back on the market soon.
Square EnixWhen is FFXIV Endwalker back on sale?
The blog post from Yoshi-P, posted on January 13, announced the game would go back on sale on January 25.
The MMO and its newest expansion going back on sale wasn’t the only important part of the blog post, as there were a handful of other notable announcements.
FFXIV plans to bolster data centers
Square Enix pulled FFXIV because of the spike in population from the onset of Endwalker. To alleviate this concern, the company is expanding its data centers to support a lot more players after the update.
“Therefore, from a long-term perspective, we are looking to add one more logical data center and lower the volume of Worlds per logical data center,” Yoshi-P said. “Thereby significantly increasing the maximum number of concurrent logins possible by several thousand per World.”
Capacity-wise, this means overall possible simultaneous logins encompassing all Worlds will increase by 50,000 or more.
Yoshi-P also revealed the plan for a two-phase major server expansion for North America, with the first phase to be implemented roughly in August 2022 and the second phase to follow in the spring or summer of 2023.
Europe will be getting a similar server expansion, slated for July 2022, and a second one around the following summer. The Oceania data center will open on January 25, two weeks before its original planned date, and will have five new Worlds available.
Director and Producer Naoki Yoshida finished the announcement off with an apology to fans over the server problems which led to crazy queue times and pulling digital sales of the game.
“Once again, I wish to apologize for the delays to server expansion caused by the global semiconductor shortage,” he said. “The necessity for communities to separate due to the regrouping of Worlds is another inconvenience that may prove unavoidable for some players, and we ask for your understanding as we work to alleviate this issue.”