FFXIV North American Data Center Expandement Delayed to November
Global trends are slowing the pace of progress in Final Fantasy XIV. The FFXIV team is focused on increasing server capacity due to the popularity of this vast online adventure. Naoki Yoshida, the creative director, and lead producer, presented in January a plan to expand server capacity across all regions.
In January, Oceania added a new data center, giving players from Australia, New Zealand, and Papua New Guinea access to their servers. This not only significantly lowered their ping but also reduce congestion in other areas.
Patch 6.18 marked the beginning of an expansion of existing regions. Meteor, a new data center, was added to the Japanese region. The same patch was used to add four new worlds and servers to the European data center expansion. The expansion of the North American Data Center was set to begin in August 2022. The second expansion phase will take place by the summer of 2023 for North America and Europe.
Unfortunately, the FFXIV team had to postpone those plans. Yoshida’s message this evening stated that the first phase in the North American region’s expansion would occur in November 2022. Yoshida stated that the team is still struggling to source new server hardware due to the continuing shortage of semiconductors.
He explained that even though the first phase was to be completed in August 2022, the vendor of the servers has informed us that delivery will be delayed because of the shortage of semiconductors. “We tried to coordinate with other parties in the hopes of finding a solution. But ultimately, a delay was unavoidable. It will prove challenging to maintain our original schedule, so we have decided to delay the first phase of expansion until November 2022.
Yoshida apologized for the delay and promised that more details would be provided. He said, “We will share additional schedule details as soon they are determined and ask you for your patience in between.”
Yoshida stated that the second phase would continue on schedule, despite the delays in the first phase. The November 2022 phase will add four new worlds to a new data center. Four more worlds will be added in the spring or summer of 2023. There are many things to do in FFXIV while we wait for server expansions. We have the Moonfire Faire in 2022 and patch 6.2, introducing the Island Sanctuary and the new Criterion-dungeons. All-New Tomestones.
