You "Don't Need To Worry" About Dawntrail Queue Times, Says Naoki Yoshida

In what was a shared pain for all Final Fantasy XIV players, those itching to jump straight into the Endwalker expansion on release were met with lengthy queue times spanning hours. For some, the number of players ahead of them rose past 5,000, and this continued long after the early access period. On one hand, the pure enthusiasm for Final Fantasy XIV warms the heart. On the other — let me play the game or so help me God.

But Endwalker is in the rear view mirror, and gearing up for launch is Final Fantasy XIV’s next expansion, Dawntrail. While you can check out our in-depth preview here, what we all really want to know is whether we’ll be hit with the same extreme queue times that we saw previously. Well, in an interview with GINX TV, Final Fantasy XIV Director and Producer Naoki Yoshida says players have nothing to worry about.

“MMORPGs are a business. Of course when the expansion hits there's going to be a peak and many people are going to be logging in. But gradually, when there's been some time after the expansion release, the login numbers gradually drop down and stabilize,” Yoshida said.

“So from a business perspective, there are probably not many other companies that would align the number of boxes that they secure with the initial login rush. Once the server is secured, and once we've gotten past the peak of the logins, it's not an ideal situation that the logins go down on the server and the population becomes low,

However, I myself don't think so much about the numbers from a business perspective but, at the same time, I do want as many people as possible to play Final Fantasy XIV. So I consulted with the president of Square Enix and I asked him if we could buy servers to that end. And these past two years, we have acquired a large number of servers for that purpose.”

Previously the situation was that physically we didn't have the servers, but now that we've acquired a sufficient amount of servers from around the world, players don't need to worry about that.

Yoshida explains that these new servers can be switched on at a press of a button, so to speak, meaning that the team will continually monitor the situation and create more capacity where needed: 

“We have finished all of the preparation of the maintenance on those servers and Final Fantasy XIV is installed on the servers as well. So the only thing that is left is for me to give the ‘Go’ sign and then those servers will become available.”

So what was the problem for Endwalker? Why were Creative Business Unit III unable to react as preemptively to queue times during the last expansion. Well, turns out there was a very global reason. 

“Back during the time of Endwalker, there was a huge inconvenience placed on the players,” Yoshida began. “The fundamental reason was that we were seeing cases where, for example, the capacity for a given hall on the server was maybe 1500 but we were seeing that maybe 5000 players were trying to access that Hall. 

We would need to secure new servers in order to address that, but unfortunately, it was during the coronavirus pandemic. As a result of that, we were not able to secure the servers.”

The state of the world is far different now from the height of the pandemic, and various shortages have somewhat subsided, which is good news for Dawntrail players. “Previously the situation was that physically we didn't have the servers, but now that we've acquired a sufficient amount of servers from around the world, players don't need to worry about that.”

Yoshida did have just one request of Final Fantasy XIV fans, regarding upcoming queue times: “There might be some people who don't like Final Fantasy XIV so much, and they might compare the situation; Previously, at Endwalker launch, there was huge congestion and people weren't able to access the game. But now, for Dawntrail there seemingly isn't that congestion. So it must mean that people have dropped out of Final Fantasy XIV, right? 

Well, I would really appreciate it if you could inform those types of people that it's just down to the fact that we have been putting in a lot of effort and a lot of preparation to help our players.”

Final Fantasy XIV: Dawntrail launches on July 2, 2024 on PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, PC and Mac. Early access begins on Friday, June 28, 2024.