There absolutely is a worldwide shortage of semiconductors. I don't know where you've been.

And Warcraft didn't see a MASSIVE exodus until just recently: Within the past 4 months. When Asmongold came to FFXIV: That's when everyone else started to follow suit.

The company also has a fixed limit as far as what they can pay for what goods. FFXIV doesn't have Square Enix's entire budget. FFXIV has FFXIV's budget. SE doesn't just hand them a blank check to pay quadruple the price for used servers. That's not how that works: That's not how any of this works.

FFXIV has seen an influx of hundreds of thousands (If not millions) of players just in the last 5 months. NOT enough time to prepare for such an increase in players and still get the expansion polished in time.

-- As for the audio crackling issue? That's not a FFXIV issue. I have one headset that uses different drivers than my wireless headset. The other headset doesn't crackle at all: But since the last audio driver update, my wireless one crackles in XIV quite frequently.

That's a me issue, not a FFXIV issue. I'll be updating my drivers again today and hoping it fixes it. Either way, my other headset is fine.

Try another headset, or uninstalling your audio driver completely and then downloading the updated driver.