FFXIV Servers Encounter Technical Difficulties

Final Fantasy XIV North American Servers Suffer 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 player accounts on social media suggest the cause was a localized 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, cause high latency and disconnections. While Square Enix employs mitigation strategies, these attacks remain a persistent challenge. Players often utilize VPNs as a workaround.

This recent outage, however, points to a different culprit. Reddit users reported hearing a loud explosion in Sacramento, consistent with a blown transformer, around the time of the outage. The geographical limitation of the outage—Europe, Japan, and Oceanic data centers remained unaffected—further supports the power outage theory.

Square Enix acknowledged the issue via the Lodestone and confirmed an ongoing investigation. At the time of writing, the Aether, Crystal, and Primal data centers were returning to service, while the Dynamis data center remained offline.

The incident adds another layer of complexity to Final Fantasy XIV's ambitious plans for 2025, including the anticipated launch of a mobile version. The long-term effects of these recurring server issues remain to be seen.