Launcher Fails To Launch Game

I'm on Lamia, which was evidently recently under emergency maintenance.

Starting a few days ago, after a month of perfectly normal game play (one day into my purchased month!), the launcher suddenly began stalling. After inputting my password in, the launcher simply remains black, and does not launch the game.

I tried reinstalling, opening ports, uninstalling and reupdating IE, disabling my firewall/antivirus, and have had Comcast reset my modem. Nothing.

Any suggestions, please? SE has been incredibly unhelpful with this!

I am having this exact issue, ive been playing with no problems at all for awhile and then this last patch came out and it black screens on the part where the play button should be shortly after I log in. Itll search for the servers then go black and not load anything.

Just had this same issue. I've gone through hell trying to fix it, even tried out various work arounds. This seems like an issue with comcast, everywhere I look people with comcast are being affected by it, mainly in WA. However, I'm in so cal with time warner. I don't know if I'm just unlucky and it's a comcast thing, or it was just a massive coincidence.

Either way, you can try one of the workarounds I did, maybe you'll have better luck.

First, make sure you have IE10.
That may be the problem right there.
go to your control panel > programs and features > Installed Updates
Uninstall the most recent IE update, it'll prompt you for a reboot, check if XIV's working then.
If it's not.
Then go to C:\Users\<user>\Documents\My Games\FINAL FANTASY XIV - A Realm Reborn
Delete FFXIV_BOOT.cfg
It'll send you through the registration as if you had a fresh install of the game, and put you right to the play button.
Like I said, didn't work for me, but it worked for a lot of other people.

Unfortunately none of those worked.

When I ping the servers, I get 100% packet return with latency under 30ms. All my other online games are working (GW2, SC2, PoE, Rift).

Is there anything we can try on Comcasts side?

I am in florida using brighthouse roadrunner, so im not sure its a service provider issue. None of the options you offered worked for me either, ive tried launching it in admin mode and restarting the pc in hopes of it just randomly working but it has not. This has been an issue for me for the past 3 days and its starting to irritate me as I finally convinced 3 of my friends to play and now I cant log on to play with them and they are getting impatient and more than likely quit playing which I do not want to happen.

I'm having the same issues, using At&T U-verse. I have the same issue when using my iPhone's personal Hotspot (T-mobile btw)

sounds like you may be unable to reliable connect to the servers hosting the content for the launcher, or you are unable to handle that content being served.

May want to go through and update the plug-ins/extensions for your browser(s). Last time I ran into this, it resolved after I went through and updated my Java/Flash/Shockwave stuff.

If that doesn't resolve it, there may be a more serious issue at hand. See if you can ping or trace to these addresses:

124.150.158.117 (this is the IP I am connected to while it is waiting for my user/pass)
frontier.ffxiv.com (should resolve to 124.150.157.190--if not, than you may have a DNS issue--this is important because the launcher calls for specific DNS names)

If you try to hit the frontier URL directly in a browser, it should deny you access. But, if you try to load this URL, it should present a blank black page:

http://frontier.ffxiv.com/arr_win/in...?rc_lang=en-us

Here are some addresses that are hard-coded into some of the game files--if you can't ping these reliably by their DNS names (or by IP address), there are some problems affecting your internet access that need to be investigated:

neolobby01.ffxiv.com (should resolve to 124.150.157.158-- again if DNS name doesn't work... this could be part of your issue)
patch-gamever.ffxiv.com (should resolve to 124.150.157.126)
secure.square-enix.com (should resolve to 124.150.158.110)

IF the DNS names resolve properly, but you are still unable to reliably trace or ping to their IP's, then there is something going on either locally or remotely that is driectly affecting your internet/network access that needs to be investigated. It could be malware, it could be security, or it could actually be an issue in route to the servers (a tracert may give some indication if it is an issue in routing).

Good suggestions, thanks for taking the time to help. I updated Java/Shockwave/Unity, to no avail. I have successfully pinged each DNS and IP you provided with 0 packets lost over >20 attempts each.

When I both click on the URL link and load the frontier URL I get just a blank black page. No denied access.

What should I look for with tracert?

I'm getting the same problem as well, I tried Ryugo's suggestions to no avail. I've tried turning the firewall off and restarting the PC multiple times, no dice. I'm using Charter for my internet. I can click on that link from Raist and get the blank black screen like I should, so I'm at a loss. I was playing fine on Wednesday-Thursday morning, then Thursday afternoon to present I have been unable to get the play button to pop up in the launcher.

I tried pinging everything as well, no issues there. Oddly enough Thursday was the first day these issues started popping up for me as well.

hmm.. pretty much everything seems to check out compared to what <normally> fixes it or fingers a networking issue getting in the way.

Anyone done a malwarebyte scan (or other similar tool) that found something to remove? Anything suspicious showing up in any one's add/remove programs list?

This may have to be shifted to the bug reports or support portal if no one else has any ideas... hate to shuffle it over there, but our best chance of getting SE to look at it closer.

Two tidbits of interesting information.

The first being, I tried logging into the ps4 version, with no issues at all. However, I'm not sure that's the same since the beta is a separate server/character list. What it does do, is prove this issue isn't caused by any isp though. I did a system restore, but that changed nothing.

Secondly, I was just informed by my brother, that my character is still logged in and in another world. When this issue started I was in the middle of CT, before being disconnected. On trying to relog in, I encountered this issue. So for whatever reason, my character is still in the instance server.

I'm not exactly sure what either of those mean on their own, but it does seem to be tied together.

It also appears that as Raist has said, this is an issue for the bug forum.

Should I repost to the bug forum?

does everyone have windows 8? im curious if this is a windows 8 issue.

No, I have windows 7, don't think it's a windows issue.

But! I FINALLY got in.
Here's what I did. I beat my face against the keyboard until I decided to take out all my rage on IE.
I put the security at minimum (Since I use firefox anyway) Cleared, my cache, cookies, basically ANYTHING I could clear. After that was done, I turned my firewall off (I use Vipre) and started up XIV

Behold! The play button was there!
After starting the game I turned my firewall back on, and got a notice that my IP had been changed.

So, could be a firewall issue, could be a conflicting IP issue, I'm no engineer.
Either way it's worth a check.
Good luck!

I finally got it working as well. Viper has an additional bad site blocking option that is independent of web browsers and even the firewall. I had to specifically disable that option.

HUH! Bad site blocking seemed to do the trick! How weird!

Anyone know what site specifically we can add to allow? Thanks for posting!

EDIT: I also have Vipre.

I have vipre as well and when I disabled that button it fixed it, thank you all for the help!