Breaking: FF14 Servers Face Major Disruptions

Final Fantasy XIV North American Servers Suffer Major Outage; Power Outage Suspected

A significant server outage impacted all four North American data centers of Final Fantasy XIV on January 5th, beginning around 8:00 PM Eastern Time. While the game has faced numerous distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks throughout 2024, this incident appears to stem from a different source.

Social media reports and Reddit discussions on r/ffxiv suggest a power outage in the Sacramento area, where the NA data centers are located, as the likely culprit. Witnesses reported a loud explosion, consistent with a blown power transformer, preceding the server disruption. Servers returned to service approximately one hour later.

Square Enix acknowledged the issue via the Lodestone, confirming an ongoing investigation. The fact that European, Japanese, and Oceanic data centers remained operational supports the theory of a localized power issue rather than a widespread cyberattack.

The restoration of service proceeded gradually, with Aether, Crystal, and Primal data centers coming back online first. The Dynamis data center, the newest addition, remained offline at the time of this writing.

This latest setback adds to the ongoing challenges faced by Final Fantasy XIV, especially considering the ambitious plans for 2025, including the launch of a mobile version. The long-term consequences of these recurring server problems remain to be seen.