Yesterday the early access phase ended and Final Fantasy XIV Endwalker expansion officially began, the latest installment belonging to the crystal saga (or the conflict between Hydaelyn and Zodiarc), a detail that added to the growing popularity of the game has made Square Enix beat all its historical records, reaching a record number of simultaneous users connected since its original launch 11 years ago.
It seems incredible that we talk about a game that literally had to be rescued not to be one of the worst installments of the company, with a rather bumpy start that almost caused its early cancellation. However, far from having followed that trail, the game has not only managed to revive, but has more life than ever.
According to data shared from SteamDB, on December 5 the game reached a peak of 95,150 simultaneous players on this PC platform, almost increasing by 50% compared to its previous record reached in July of this year, with 67,148 players. However, it is worth noting that Steam is only one of the many platforms on which the game is available, in fact being the smallest player base.
And it is that Final Fantasy XIV Endwalker is also distributed separately through the Square Enix store, as well as in a special independent version for Mac, and the console versions for PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5.
Final Fantasy XIV is drowning in its own success
Although the arrival of a new expansion always supposes an increase in the number of players, adding returnees and new incorporations, this time the figures have been further increased by the massive exodus of World of Warcraft players, Arrived by both unhappy with the game and the performances of the company. And it is that without a doubt streamers like Amongold, Rich Campbell or CohhCarnage They have helped to give this community much more visibility.
Unfortunately, this popularity and high demand for Final Fantasy XIV Endwalker has also resulted in one of the most popular releases for this game, causing overcrowding in game check-ins well above what was seen in previous expansions.
Something that has led to long queues to enter the game, some occasional disconnections, and serious saturation problems in the servers. So much so, that in addition to an official apology from Naoki Yoshida (better known to the gaming community as Yoshi-P) in which compensation has been promised in the form of free game time to compensate for the inconvenience.
Although another reason for these long lines has been the global shortage of chips, which Yoshida himself explained, has prevented Square Enix from obtaining enough servers to handle this demand from players.
“When it comes to adding new worlds, we need dozens of ‘server machines’ for each world we add”Says Yoshida. “Server machines are high-performance computers that use numerous semiconductors. However, due to the COVID-19 countermeasures currently in place, many factories around the world that produce semiconductors, have stopped production or have faced labor shortages ».
“We have made a considerable investment, even more than usual, to secure the required hardware, but still, it will take a long wait time to prepare the server hardware”, Yoshida assured,“given the current situation, we anticipate that it may take several months or more to add new worlds»
Thus, it is only a small incidence in what undoubtedly points to be one of the best releases of this month of December, on which soon you will be able to find our own analysis and impressions.
