Final Fantasy 14 Servers Experience Major Issues

Final Fantasy XIV North American Servers Experience Major Outage: Power Outage, Not DDoS

A significant server outage impacting all four North American data centers of Final Fantasy XIV occurred on January 5th, shortly after 8:00 PM Eastern. Initial reports and social media discussions strongly suggest the cause was a local power outage in Sacramento, California, potentially resulting from a blown transformer. Service was restored within an hour.

This incident differs from the numerous distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks that plagued the game throughout 2024. DDoS attacks, which flood servers with false information, caused high latency and disconnections. While Square Enix implemented mitigation strategies, completely preventing DDoS attacks remains a challenge. Players often utilize VPNs as a workaround to improve connectivity.

Evidence supporting the power outage theory includes eyewitness accounts on r/ffxiv describing a loud explosion or popping sound in Sacramento, consistent with a blown transformer, preceding the server downtime. The geographically limited nature of the outage—Europe, Japan, and Oceanic data centers remained unaffected—further points towards a localized power issue.

At the time of this writing, the Aether, Crystal, and Primal data centers have returned to service, while the Dynamis data center is still undergoing restoration. Square Enix has acknowledged the issue on the Lodestone and confirmed an ongoing investigation.

The server problems represent another hurdle for Final Fantasy XIV, especially considering ambitious plans for 2025, including the launch of a mobile version. The long-term effects of these recurring server issues remain to be seen.