Final Fantasy 14 Servers Experience Major Issues

Final Fantasy XIV North American Servers Suffer Major Outage: Power Outage, Not DDoS

A significant server outage impacting all four North American data centers of Final Fantasy XIV occurred on January 5th, shortly after 8:00 PM Eastern. Initial reports and player accounts on social media suggest the disruption stemmed from a local power outage in Sacramento, California, possibly due to a blown transformer. Service was restored within an hour.

This incident differs from the numerous distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks that plagued the game throughout 2024. DDoS attacks, which flood servers with false information, caused high latency and disconnections. While Square Enix employed mitigation strategies, these attacks proved difficult to completely prevent. Players often utilized VPNs as a workaround to improve connectivity.

The January 5th outage, however, appears to be a localized issue. Reddit users reported hearing a loud explosion or popping sound in Sacramento, consistent with a blown transformer, coinciding with the server downtime. The Europe, Japan, and Oceanic data centers remained unaffected, further supporting the theory of a localized power problem.

Square Enix acknowledged the issue via the Lodestone and confirmed an ongoing investigation. While the Aether, Crystal, and Primal data centers have since returned to service, the Dynamis data center remains offline at the time of writing.

This latest setback adds to the challenges faced by Final Fantasy XIV, particularly considering ambitious plans for 2025, including the anticipated launch of Final Fantasy XIV Mobile. The long-term effects of these recurring server issues remain to be seen.