Beginning 2/11/24, my game will "soft" freeze, meaning I can still move my character around, but everything else in the environment will be frozen. Other PCs will not move, NPCs will not be interactable, I can use spells and the animation plays but nothing else happens. Curiously, chat seems to still function 100% normally. I cannot even log out or exit the game without force closing the game from the task manager (I play on PC), because trying to click those buttons from the menu does nothing. I've waited up to 30 minutes seeing if it would unfreeze on its own, but it never seems to, so I have to force close the game.

This has happened to me in alliance raids, in the open world, in limsa, and in my FC's housing ward. Sometimes it seems stable when I am only standing in my FC's housing ward and accessing my retainers or crafting but then freezes when I leave to try doing a duty or going out in the world, and other times it has frozen immediately upon logging in, while in the housing ward and elsewhere.


- Error messages (If any): No error messages
- Type of connection (wired or wireless): Wired
- Has this been a long on-going issue or has this only been occurring very recently: This began very recently, on 2/11/24, and never happened to me before that in over 2 years of frequent playing.
- Frequency at which error occurs (If this occurs during specific hours, please provide the date(s), time and timezone): All times of the day. Has happened to me at 8 AM CST, noon CST, 3 PM CST, 5 PM CST, 8 PM CST, 10 and 11 PM CST, and midnight.
- Are there other programs being used when running FFXIV?: Firefox, but that has never caused any issues before.
- Re-Confirm what data center and server/world were you trying to connect to?: Primal/Excalibur
- What is the ISP and what region/country are you connecting from?: ISP is Metronet, and I am connecting from the Midwest, USA (Iowa).

Here is my traceroute data, in case this is related to packet loss.

Tracing route to 204.2.29.122 over a maximum of 30 hops

1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms 192.168.1.1
2 * * * Request timed out.
3 * * * Request timed out.
4 * * * Request timed out.
5 * * * Request timed out.
6 14 ms 13 ms 13 ms 10.192.208.213
7 13 ms 13 ms 14 ms ae-53.a05.chcgil09.us.bb.gin.ntt.net [128.241.9.232]
8 15 ms 14 ms 14 ms ae-4.r23.chcgil09.us.bb.gin.ntt.net [129.250.4.239]
9 65 ms 64 ms 64 ms ae-1.r24.snjsca04.us.bb.gin.ntt.net [129.250.5.17]
10 67 ms 68 ms 66 ms ae-4.a00.scrmca03.us.bb.gin.ntt.net [129.250.7.57]
11 67 ms 67 ms 67 ms xe-0-0-5-0.a00.scrmca03.us.ce.gin.ntt.net [128.241.2.18]
12 67 ms 68 ms 68 ms 204.2.29.241
13 67 ms 68 ms 68 ms 204.2.29.122


This issue is extremely frustrating, and renders the game completely unplayable. The longest I have gone without the issue occurring is about 5 minutes, sometimes much less.