Square Enix promises extra free game time for those long Final Fantasy 14 Endwalker queues
"I am truly sorry."
Final Fantasy 14 producer and director, Naoki Yoshida, has promised to compensate players seven free days of game time following a weekend of disconnects and long queues.
In a blog posted earlier today, Yoshida said congested server queues have persisted since the start of Endwalker's Early Access period, acknowledging it has been "the cause of many inconveniences to our players".
"Currently, all Worlds across all regions have been hitting the login cap for extremely long periods of time, and the progression of login queues is being slowed dramatically," he explained. "Across the FFXIV service as a whole, the number of simultaneous logins has reached the hardware limit, and as a result, logging in has required an extremely long time, especially during 'peak hours' when we tend to see increased player activity. For this, I am truly sorry.
"Considering that we are asking players to wait in queues for extremely long periods of time and the ongoing situation making it difficult to play normally, we have decided that during the official release of Endwalker on December 7, we will be granting 7 days of free game time to all players who own the full version of the game and have an active subscription," he added. "This also includes players who are currently playing on the 30-day free play period included when registering the full version of the game and those with multiple accounts."
Yoshida further added that additional free game time may be awarded "depending on further developments on the congestion situation".
The post also detailed the peak times for the game's servers, and explained several error codes that may be plaguing some players, especially after a long login queues.
Square Enix warned Final Fantasy 14 players that there would be long queues ahead of the Early Access period and release of new expansion Endwalker, having seen similar congestion earlier in the year due to a massive increase in its playerbase, many of whom will be jumping back in for Endwalker.
The publisher acknowledged that due to the global shortage of semiconductors, Square Enix has been unable to add new Worlds, meaning long wait times as current Worlds reach maximum capacity.