FFXIV Servers Hit by Technical Woes

Final Fantasy XIV North American Servers Experience 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 Time. Initial reports and player accounts on social media suggest the outage stemmed from a localized power failure in Sacramento, California, potentially due to a blown transformer. Service was restored within an hour.

This incident contrasts with the persistent Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks that plagued the game throughout 2024. DDoS attacks, which flood servers with false traffic, caused high latency and disconnections. While Square Enix employed mitigation strategies, these attacks proved difficult to completely prevent. Players often resorted to using VPNs to improve their connection stability during these events.

The January 5th outage, however, appears to be unrelated to DDoS activity. Reddit users reported hearing a loud explosion or popping sound in Sacramento, consistent with a blown transformer, coinciding with the server disruption. This, coupled with the unaffected status of European, Japanese, and Oceanic data centers, strongly points towards a localized power issue as the root cause. Square Enix acknowledged the problem via the Lodestone and confirmed an ongoing investigation.

Server Recovery and Future Outlook

As of this writing, North American servers are gradually returning to service, beginning with Aether, Crystal, and Primal Data Centers. The Dynamis Data Center, the newest addition, remains offline.

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