Square Enix has suspended sales of Final Fantasy XIV and made a change to a few key elements. Players will simply not be able to jump into the Endwalker content. Starting with this change, until it’s undone, new players will not be able to join up and buy the expansion. And yes, this applies to other versions as well. New gamers to the MMO will not be able to get either the Starter or Complete options of the game. Also, the older expansions have been pulled as well.
In a post on the official Final Fantasy XIV blog on Dec. 16, game producer and director Naoki Yoshida outlined why this change is being made. The simple reason is that there are too many players. There’s just no room on the servers for new players. Why? Well, it’s a mix of reasons. Aside from the massive demand increase, the supply constraints for new server hardware are making it much harder to bring new servers online. And rather than spending money and time bringing on more servers that will very quickly become obsolete, Square Enix made the call to shut down new players joining into Endwalker.
This is actually something that has been done before. The idea makes sense, but it takes some thinking to understand. Players hate having to wait for the new games, and they aren’t very patient. And with all of the ongoing queue issues in Final Fantasy XIV, players are fed up. All these efforts have been made to attempt to try and undo the damage. Player counts in FFXIV have hit an estimated 2.7 million active users over the past month.
Square Enix has also halted trials of the game to try and reduce the incoming flow of new players. The adverts for the new expansion have also been paused.
It’s important to note that this is not permanent, but it will likely last a while. We don’t know exactly when this process will end, but we do know that it will take some time to roll out. “These temporary suspensions will be phased in over the next few days as we work with our retail partners. We will be coordinating with them as swiftly as possible, but please bear in mind that this will be a gradual process,” said the announcement.