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Square Enix's MMO, Final Fantasy XIV is experiencing record numbers of players around the world. The game has grown in popularity in recent weeks due to an apparent mass exodus from disgruntled World of Warcraft fans and streamers. Not to mention, Final Fantasy XIV is a really great MMO that deserves more love.
The game has never seen such an influx of players before, not even when new expansions have been released. Speaking of which, the new Endwalker expansion is slated to arrive this November. Thanks to the growing number of players, Square Enix has had to deal with tackling the issue of congested servers and login queues.
Some servers in North America were sitting at max capacity for upwards of seven hours at various points. Over the weekend, average queue times were sitting around 10-20 minutes. In Europe, players had wait times hitting upwards of 40 minutes.
While Square has already upgraded the data centers in North America, they still needed to take additional measures. To that end, Square Enix has implemented a system that will automatically kick players that have been idle for 30 minutes. Now, this system isn't new for Final Fantasy XIV. Square enables this system when new expansions are launched just to help deal with the surge of new players tackling the latest content. This is the first time that they've had to impose this system during a non-launch period.
Square Enix does plan on expanding their server capacity even further. However, the global shortage of hardware has had an impact on how fast they can roll out the upgrades. Yes, even major companies like Square Enix are dealing with this issue, same as you and me.
This automatic kick at 30 minutes of idle was added as part of the just released Patch 5.58 for the game.
