The fourth expansion for the online game, Final Fantasy 14 Endwalker has proven to be so popular that Square Enix has decided to halt sales until the ongoing server congestion issues have been resolved.
The director and producer of Final Fantasy 14 Naoki Yoshida recently wrote in a blog post outlining the current state of the game, and announcing the suspension of both physical and digital editions. Final Fantasy 14 new registrations for legendary free trial have also been halted until further notice.
Many players have been complaining and said that they are currently experiencing extremely long wait times due to a dense concentration of play hours that far exceed their server capacity, especially during peak times, meaning that the sale and delivery of the FINAL FANTASY XIV Starter Edition and Complete Edition has been temporarily suspended.
As they work with their retail partners, the temporary suspensions will be phased in over the next few days. They said that they will work with them as soon as possible, but asked everyone to understand that this will be a gradual process.
But it’s not all bad news. All players who own the full game and have an active subscription will receive an additional 14 days of free game time from Square Enix. This is in addition to the previous week’s addition of 7 days of free game time, it is a thoughtful gesture, especially for players who are unable to play outside of peak hours and may have to queue for several hours.
Finally, there’s some good news about the dreaded “Error 2002,” which has been randomly booting players from the login queue when it reaches a certain number of players.
The bug, like Endwalker’s story, has its origins in the game’s original 1.0 version, but Yoshida stressed that the team has pinpointed the source of the issue, and a fix will be released alongside patch 6.01 on December 21, 2021.
Everything else appears to be on track, for better or worse, including the release of the high-end Pandemonium Savage raid tier with patch 6.05 on January 4, 2022. Yoshida seemed to recognize the inconvenient nature of the patch’s release window, but insisted that it was for the best, as any further delays would jeopardize Endwalker’s long-term plans, including the upcoming major patch 6.1 update.
