game does not launch

[MinOfForest]

Exact same issue here. Log in just fine, click "Play", game screen starts to launch, but disappears along with the Launcher while it's still black. I was able to play just fine until the servers went down for patching.

I've tried: Removing and reinstalling the game, updating Windows fully, "Reset System Settings" x3, "Restore Game Data" x4, updating graphics drivers, restarting the computer a million times, copying /boot folder from a friend, disabling "Game Bar" since that was in my Event Viewer logs, temporarily deactivating Windows Firewall and Defender (apps are whitelisted anywho). I'm at a loss of what to try next. I've been doing the Restore on loop in case that gets lucky, but so far no dice.

Windows 10 64-bit, NVIDIA GeForce 680, Windows install (not Steam)

Since this I tried doing a full copy of the /boot and /game folders from someone who has the game working (in case a clean install didn't work somehow) and still had the same issue. Ran dxdiag and sfc scan, neither came back with issues. One of the first things I tried for this failure was updating my graphics drivers (to 475.06), but several people had it work to roll those drivers back (474.82). No luck for me. I double checked to make sure my GPU was not overclocked (it wasn't and isn't).

Next steps are to try a different GPU and/or I'm about one cup of coffee of motivation away from reinstalling Windows 10 + FFXIV from scratch on my other drive and trying over there.