Update July 6th 7:52AM: Square Enix has confirmed that the Final Fantasy XIV data center travel system is back online. In a post on the game's official Lodestone website, Square Enix says the feature is currently available on all worlds, but that there might be travel times of up to 30 minutes "during peak login hours". Square Enix also says it may need to temporarily suspend data center travel again if traffic starts to creep up, and that it will continue working to lower server loads so travel is possible even when traffic is high. Original story follows below.
Original story: The new Final Fantasy XIV data center travel feature, which was added in the recent 6.18 patch, has been taken offline after being flooded with overwhelming traffic. Square Enix says it's unable to keep up with the load being put on the travel system and is thus temporarily suspending it.
Why has the Final Fantasy XIV data center travel system been taken offline?
In the latest Final Fantasy XIV update (which isn't the big 6.2 patch coming in late August), Square Enix added a data center travel system in which you can travel to other worlds within your area. However, it seems that Final Fantasy XIV's servers weren't prepared for the sheer number of players who would try to use this system. According to Square Enix, more than 15,000 visit requests were being logged per minute, a figure with which the game's servers were unable to keep up. As a result, the feature has been temporarily suspended.
Square Enix says that the sheer number of data center travel requests made it hard to look into the issue while keeping the system online, which is why the feature had to be disabled. The company says it will "gradually open this feature" as it monitors the situation. Sadly, we don't have a time frame for exactly when we can expect the Final Fantasy XIV data center travel system to come back online, so if you were hoping to hop across worlds today, you might have to wait a little while longer.
This isn't the first time Final Fantasy XIV's servers have struggled to cope with overwhelming demand. Back in December 2021, when the Endwalker expansion launched, players were experiencing queues of several hours as they waited to enter the game's highly congested servers. The situation caused Square Enix to remove the game and its expansions from sale for an extended period of time and to gift affected players with free game time as compensation for the wait.
What's coming next for Final Fantasy XIV?
Final Fantasy XIV's epic, branching storyline, which began back in 2010 with the release of the original game, may have reached its conclusion, but Square Enix is just getting started. The aforementioned Patch 6.2 is due in late August, bringing with it new Pandaemonium raid bosses, more story content, and a new dungeon to tackle, as well as weapon enhancement quests that will involve everyone's favorite wacky detective Hildibrand. FFXIV has also recently received updates that added tribal quests for the Arkasodara people and made the housing system a little more accessible for players. It seems Yoshi-P and company weren't content simply to take a victory lap after the resounding success of Endwalker.
You can check out Final Fantasy XIV right now on PC and PlayStation consoles. If you do start playing it and manage to make it through the mammoth storyline, be sure to take a look at our guides for unlocking the new Aglaia 24-man raid and the easily-missed Excitatron 6000 treasure dungeon. Just make sure that if you download the game, you aren't using any third-party tools, as unlike other MMOs, they're frowned upon by Yoshi-P and the dev team. Don't ask about ACT, whatever you do.
