In the wake of Final Fantasy 14’s critically acclaimed Endwalker expansion, Square Enix hoped to continue the process of expanding its servers to support more players. Unfortunately, Final Fantasy 14's plans to establish a new logical data center have been postponed due to equipment shortages.Final Fantasy 14 producer and director Naoki Yoshida recently shared the news with a heavy heart. Though the tech industry is slowly recovering from the global shortage of semiconductors from the last several years, the shortage still continues to plague game developers.Final Fantasy 14 originally planned to roll out the first phase of the two-step process in August. The North American Data Center currently houses three logical data centers. The first phase of the plan was to add a fourth data center, thus increasing the server total for North American players. This phase is now scheduled to take place in November instead of August.
According to Yoshida, the second phase of this plan–the establishment of additional worlds on the forthcoming logical data center–should be unaffected by the shortage, and is still scheduled for spring or summer 2023. Additionally, Final Fantasy 14 is still considering another huge upgrade to data centers and servers before the next expansion pack releases, though it has not commented on what this might entail past the original announcement back in January.
Obviously, many Final Fantasy 14 players are disappointed the new data centers are being delayed, but understand why. FF14’s population is steadily growing, meaning more servers are almost always welcome, and with the new Data Center Travel system, players from the same physical data centers can play with one another regardless of their home. Other players outside of North America who don’t yet have a physical data center, such as South America, hope Final Fantasy 14 will establish one in their homeland like it did with the Oceania Data Center.
Nevertheless, this summer is not a total bust for Final Fantasy 14 players. The Moogle Treasure Trove event is currently underway until Patch 6.2 launches in late August. The new Final Fantasy 14 patch, titled Buried Memory, promises a new dungeon, trial, and Main Scenario, as well as a continuation of the Pandaemonium raid. If that were not enough to look forward to, the Moonfire Faire summer event is right around the corner, with the Rising anniversary event not far behind it. Between these new events and releases–and an expansion pack announcement likely somewhere within the next six months–Final Fantasy 14 players have a lot to look forward to.
Final Fantasy 14 is available now on PC, PS4, and PS5.