Final Fantasy 14 Endwalker director apologises for login issues, offers 7 free days

The director of Final Fantasy XIV‘s Endwalker expansion has apologised for the game’s Early Access issues and offered seven days free game time to make up for it.

In a blog post on the official Final Fantasy XIV website, director and producer Naoki Yoshida explained that the game’s servers had hit their limits, making it extremely difficult for players to connect.

Although Endwalker doesn’t officially release until Tuesday, players who pre-ordered the game have been receiving early access for the past few days. This has led to a surge in players, hence the connection issues for all FFXIV players (not just those playing Endwalker early).

“Currently, all Worlds across all regions have been hitting the login cap for extremely long periods of time, and the progression of login queues is being slowed dramatically,” Yoshida explained.

“Across the FFXIV service as a whole, the number of simultaneous logins has reached the hardware limit, and as a result, logging in has required an extremely long time, especially during peak hours when we tend to see increased player activity. For this, I am truly sorry.”

Yoshida explained that all players would be getting seven days of free game time to make up for the connection issues.

“Considering that we are asking players to wait in queues for extremely long periods of time and the ongoing situation making it difficult to play normally, we have decided that during the official release of Endwalker on December 7, we will be granting 7 days of free game time to all players who own the full version of the game and have an active subscription.

“This also includes players who are currently playing on the 30-day free play period included when registering the full version of the game and those with multiple accounts.

“Furthermore, we may give additional free game time depending on further developments on the congestion situation. The timing at which the free game time will be provided, as well as any additional extensions, will be announced at a later time. We truly appreciate your cooperation and patience regarding the congestion situation.”

Endwalker is billed as Final Fantasy XIV’s largest expansion pack to date and will conclude the game’s current long-running story arc.

Last month Yoshida, who was visibly upset and at one point moved to tears, confirmed during a livestream that Endwalker had been delayed by two weeks, from its originally planned November 23 release to December 7.

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The producer stated that the short delay was so that the development team could make final adjustments and refinements before launch.

“This is something that we’ve finalised and made the decision on last Friday, so it is very sudden,” he said. “This is the first time not just with XIV but throughout my entire career that we’ve announced a release date and had to delay it, so again I feel really bad about this.”

Wiping away tears, Yoshida added: “I understand that some of you had taken days off for this and I know that people have been preparing… we tried to think if there was any way that we could [make the original release].

“Could we split it up into patches or do we make a bold step and cut some of the elements? But that’s not how our content is made unfortunately so this time we really wanted to prioritise bringing you the best quality. So again, I’m really sorry it came to this.”