Final Fantasy XIV Is Currently Unavailable in North America

[TattersailNightwish]

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/techn...ica/ar-AAM37UN

An interesting read.
"Final Fantasy XIV is currently unavailable from Square Enix's storefront in the North America.
If gamers attempt to buy a digital copy of the MMORPG from the publisher's official website, they will be greeted with an error message. The notice reads: "We are sorry. The amount of items requested exceeds what is currently in stock. We have removed the excess from your cart".
Below the pop-up is an addendum that explains there are currently no PC download copies of Final Fantasy XIV in stock.


Final Fantasy XIV has had such an upsurge in popularity that the game is sold out on the Square Enix storefront so you cannot buy a digital copy and you cannot create new characters on NA servers.
This is absolute insanity. https://t.co/LnZEZFsL0X pic.twitter.com/bJ0zyFCK7K
— Skill Up (@SkillUpYT) July 12, 2021


Fans have taken to the game's subreddit to try and get to the bottom of why this might be, with many attributing it to Final Fantasy XIV's recent surge in popularity. User Kaisos elaborates that "out of stock" for digital items usually means that the supplier has run out of pre-generated codes, due to a sudden influx in demand. Meanwhile,

tormenteddragon theorizes that the problem is more to do with strain being placed on the game's servers, again due to a surge in popularity.
Regardless of what caused the shortage in digital codes, for the time being, it is impossible for new players (or sprouts as they are colloquially known within the community) to join the MMORPG and create a character.
It is worth noting that this only applies to those who are hoping to buy the game through a digital download. If you have recently purchased a physical copy of Final Fantasy XIV then you will still be able to create an account.
Newsweek has reached out to Square Enix for comment on this developing situation

[Vahlnir]

That's odd. If I were to guess it's the sever strain, mainly on the site itself. It doesn't handle stress well. The Endwalker physical CE debacle made that quite clear. lol Still, this could be seen as a good thing.

[Fourbestintoner]

Time for a fourth data center, this time on the east coast (hahahaha).

[Puremallace]

Time for a fourth data center, this time on the east coast (hahahaha).

You joke but people have been pushing for this for awhile. Also you could solve a lot of this with Latin America and releasing the Oceanic servers ASAP. I honestly do not think Square Enix quite understands the flood gates they opened with the free trial expansion coming at the exact same moment of SEVERE weakness with their competition.

[Vahlnir]

You joke but people have been pushing for this for awhile. Also you could solve a lot of this with Latin America and releasing the Oceanic servers ASAP. I honestly do not think Square Enix quite understands the flood gates they opened with the free trial expansion coming at the exact same moment of SEVERE weakness with their competition.

To be fair, the "competition" wasn't quite as vulnerable before as they are now. I think the current situation is blindsiding SE. Heck, it was unexpected for the players.

[Hazama999]

Shadowbringers launch was rather smooth, far as I recall. Not so sure if that'll be the case for Endwalker.

[RyuDragnier]

You joke but people have been pushing for this for awhile. Also you could solve a lot of this with Latin America and releasing the Oceanic servers ASAP. I honestly do not think Square Enix quite understands the flood gates they opened with the free trial expansion coming at the exact same moment of SEVERE weakness with their competition.

They probably didn't think Blizzard was going to be as foolish as they were with Shadowlands.

[Puremallace]

They probably didn't think Blizzard was going to be as foolish as they were with Shadowlands.

Well to be honest Blizzard has gotten lucky with a literal joke of 2 teams with one being insanely incompetent and the other team putting out the good expansions. Belluar said it correctly WoW has worked on a Tik Tok pattern with Tik being good and Tok being bad. Well now you have 1 expansion followed by another expansion that has been released with just completely arbitrary grinds.

Want to know my theory? Releasing Classic and TBC was the worst mistake Blizzard has ever made because FF14 plays like Wrath and TBC. You have gear determination on a calendar, the grinds are voluntary for cosmetic gear, top guilds can show off their achievements. If you go from that back to current retail design it makes sense.

[Sotaris]

Yet classic was very sucessful

[ElciaDeiLinus]

You joke but people have been pushing for this for awhile. Also you could solve a lot of this with Latin America and releasing the Oceanic servers ASAP. I honestly do not think Square Enix quite understands the flood gates they opened with the free trial expansion coming at the exact same moment of SEVERE weakness with their competition.

In fairness, SE could never have anticipated that the release of a new WoW patch/raid, as well as the long awaited release of TBC-classic would happen to be the time when everyone would start fleeing WoW. By all logic- this being a downtime for FFXIV and a huge double release in their main competitor makes this the absolute least likely time for what is happening to be happening.

Especially with Blizz clearly planning their release to coincide with the original Ashes alpha release/ESO xpac because they love to do that to try to smother hype for other games, I love seeing this backfire on them, knowing that it'll be half a year before they can produce anything else.

It really is bizarre for there to be so much attention now, but it's a great thing- FFXIV clearly has a problem of limited resources, I think the cuts and the current state of their store/account system shows that, so maybe SE will see this surge and treat the game with the same respect that the dev team clearly does, as it's impressive what they've managed to pull off.

Hopefully they can get their store problems sorted out, it'd be great to see a massive surge get retained with EW.