Final Fantasy XIV North American Servers Suffer Major Outage; Power Issue Suspected
Final Fantasy XIV experienced a significant server outage affecting all four North American data centers on January 5th, shortly after 8:00 PM Eastern. Initial reports and player accounts suggest the cause was a localized power outage in Sacramento, possibly due to 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, cause high latency and disconnections. While Square Enix employs mitigation strategies, DDoS attacks remain a persistent challenge. Players often utilize VPNs to mitigate connection issues during these attacks.
This recent outage, however, appears unrelated to DDoS activity. Reddit discussions on r/ffxiv cite eyewitness reports of a loud explosion or popping sound in Sacramento, consistent with a blown transformer, preceding the server downtime. The Europe, Japan, and Oceanic data centers remained unaffected, further supporting the theory of a localized power problem.
Following the outage, Square Enix acknowledged the issue on the Lodestone and announced an ongoing investigation. While the Aether, Crystal, and Primal data centers have returned to service, the Dynamis Data Center (the newest addition) remains offline at the time of this writing.
The server problems represent another challenge for Final Fantasy XIV, which has ambitious plans for 2025, including the launch of a mobile version. The long-term effects of these recurring server issues remain to be seen.
