Ongoing Congestion Situation and Compensation

Hello, this is Naoki Yoshida, Producer & Director of FINAL FANTASY XIV.

The congestion that has continued since the start of Endwalker Early Access has been the cause of many inconveniences to our players. Regarding this, we truly appreciate your understanding and cooperation thus far.

I would like to provide an explanation of the current congestion situation, as well as information regarding countermeasures and the compensation of game time.

■ Regarding the congestion situation

Currently, all Worlds across all regions have been hitting the login cap for extremely long periods of time, and the progression of login queues is being slowed dramatically. Across the FFXIV service as a whole, the number of simultaneous logins has reached the hardware limit, and as a result, logging in has required an extremely long time, especially during “peak hours” when we tend to see increased player activity. For this, I am truly sorry.

■ Regarding game time compensation due to congestion

Considering that we are asking players to wait in queues for extremely long periods of time and the ongoing situation making it difficult to play normally, we have decided that during the official release of Endwalker on December 7, we will be granting 7 days of free game time to all players who own the full version of the game and have an active subscription. This also includes players who are currently playing on the 30-day free play period included when registering the full version of the game and those with multiple accounts.

Furthermore, we may give additional free game time depending on further developments on the congestion situation. The timing at which the free game time will be provided, as well as any additional extensions, will be announced at a later time. We truly appreciate your cooperation and patience regarding the congestion situation.

■ Regarding errors that occur while waiting in login queues

When you are waiting in a login queue, an error may cause you to disconnect. Multiple types of cases have been confirmed for this, and I’d like to elaborate on their causes below.

・ Error 2002

There are two primary causes.

The first occurs when attempting to log into a logical data center (such as Aether or Primal) and there are more than 17,000 players in the login queue. This leads to an Error 2002 occurring, resulting in being unable to enter the login queue.

The other occurs when your internet connection experiences packet loss or a period of network instability, causing the server connection to be momentarily disconnected. At the moment, we are seeing more cases caused by this.

Because the waiting times in login queues are long, we believe this increases the chances of encountering internet issues or momentary disconnections.

As you may expect, resolving this issue on a fundamental level would be to resolve the congestion. However, if you are playing using a Wi-Fi connection and are able to switch to a hard-wired internet connection, that would improve connection stability. We ask that you try this method as well.

If you are playing on the PlayStation®4 or PlayStation®5 version, please check your settings related to power saving. If settings relating to disconnecting from the internet, such as standby mode or rest mode are enabled, please note that these may activate while waiting in the login queue, so you may want to adjust your settings.

・ Error 4004, 5003, and 5006
These errors occur when your connection to the login management server times out as a result of waiting in a login queue for extremely long periods of time. Although we’d secured a considerably long session time with the lobby server; however, there are times this is still not enough to cover the issue, so we are currently working on a process to extend the session time. We apologize for the inconvenience, and ask that you to wait a little bit longer until this process is complete.

■ Peak hours of congestion

Though the congestion status may vary for each logical data center, I’d like to share information regarding the peak hours of congestion we’ve currently observed as of December 5.

North American Data Center: 12:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m. (PST) / 20:00 to 6:00 (GMT)
European Data Center: 3:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. (PST) / 11:00 to 23:00 (GMT)
Japan Data Center: 1:00 a.m. to 7:00 a.m. (PST) / 9:00 to 15:00 (GMT)

With Early Access taking place over the weekend, congestion may also peak around noon, but login queues have typically been longer during the hours listed above. We apologize for the inconvenience and ask that you use this information as a reference when considering when to play. Information regarding peak hours during weekdays will be provided at a later time.

■ Inactivity while using dance emotes or attacking striking dummies

We have received feedback regarding players who are allegedly using dance emotes or attacking striking dummies in order to bypass the automatic logout that occurs after 30 minutes of inactivity. However, these methods cannot bypass the automatic logout. When player characters are left inactive in these states, their status is automatically changed to “Away from Keyboard” before they are eventually automatically logged out for 30 minutes of inactivity. To some, this may appear as though they were successful in avoiding automatic logout, which we believe to be the basis of these rumors.

■ Automatic logout due to inactivity during ending credits

We have received reports of players being automatically logged out during the ending credits of A Realm Reborn, Heavensward, Stormblood, or Shadowbringers due to 30 minutes of inactivity. Upon investigation, we discovered that the procedure for avoiding automatic logout was missing for these ending credits, for which I am truly sorry. As for the ending credits of Endwalker, this procedure is included and you will not be logged out for inactivity during its duration.

We apologize for the inconvenience, but when viewing the ending credits for A Realm Reborn, Heavensward, Stormblood, and Shadowbringers, we ask that you press a button on your controller, press a key on your keyboard, or click with your mouse. By doing so before 30 minutes pass, you will be able to reset the automatic logout timer. Please also note that simply moving your mouse cursor will not prevent automatic logout. This issue will be added to a list of known issues in a separate announcement.

Once again, I would like to apologize for the many inconveniences caused to our players as a result of the congestion that has continued since the start of Early Access. I am truly sorry, and we will continue to do our utmost to address the congestion situation and the errors during login queues as soon as possible.