To anyone who feels the need to take off multiple days of work for the release of any video game:

Please, please please diversify your hobbies to involve more self-care and less enslavement to corporatized media. Go on a hike. Do some yoga. Give cooking a try. Pick up some pop sci book or an instrument. If you already were so obsessive as to take time off from work, do stuff like this instead anyway and develop a more robust lifestyle for the next time your anticipated game is delayed.

FF XIV is great but unless you are making money as a streamer you should not let yourself become this dependent. X Blockbuster will still be available and just as good a week or a month or a year after it releases. Endwalker will assuredly still exist next year from now and be the same experience minus the frenetic hype and probably shorter queue times.

And to anyone like OP who says the delay was a bad idea: you clearly have NO appreciation for XIV's legacy and what made it great in the first place.