There is a huge buzz about Final Fantasy XIV: Pre-orders for the new expansion Dawntrail are live and the rush is even crashing servers. So play the MMORPG now, before it’s too late this summer.
What has happened recently in Final Fantasy XIV? Final Fantasy XIV is currently one of the largest and most popular MMORPGs in the world. The game by Square Enix has been captivating players worldwide since its relaunch in 2013 and has now received four expansions.
Recently, there were these news about the game:
- The MMORPG launched on Xbox on March 21
- The release date of the upcoming expansion Dawntrail was announced for July 2
- The pre-orders for Dawntrail went live on March 26
However, there were significant problems with the most recently launched pre-orders.
Pre-order rush crashes the servers
What happened with the pre-orders? The pre-orders for Dawntrail went live on March 26, 2024, at 10:00 AM. There are a few bonuses for pre-order customers:
- You get early access starting June 28
- The in-game companion
Aufzieh-Zidane
- The
Azeyma earrings
, which give XP bonuses
However, getting a pre-order at all seems to have posed larger challenges for many. According to the official X.com account of the game, there were payment issues via credit card in the Square Enix store as early as 12:25 PM German time.
Those who wanted to pre-order via Steam reportedly sometimes just didn’t receive a registration code:
However, those whose pre-order finally went through were ultimately faced with the next problem: the codes for the in-game items that should have been received with the pre-order arrived only very late. Square Enix also commented on this via X.com.
In fact, Final Fantasy XIV regularly struggles with server issues at launch. However, this time, even the servers of the official store were affected, which is new:
Play Final Fantasy XIV now – a launch in summer could really be too late
Why should you play the game now? As briefly mentioned above, Final Fantasy XIV regularly struggles with server issues at launch: Every expansion launch so far has resulted in sometimes hours-long login wait times. The current expansion Endwalker even temporarily halted sales because it was too popular – the servers couldn’t handle the load of new and especially simultaneous players.
The problems also regularly lead to new memes in the community: Those who managed to log in during Stormblood 2017 were immediately faced with the next boss Raubahn EX
.
Most boss fights in the game have a harder version, called extreme (EX) in English. The NPC Raubahn, however, must be approached at the beginning of Stormblood to start a single-player content.
Thousands of players sometimes lined up in virtual character queues to wait for their chance to speak with Raubahn. Just to have the cutscene played and to be thrown out of the game.
Given that the rush for pre-orders has now managed to crash even the website servers, it is likely that a considerable number of players will want to play Final Fantasy XIV simultaneously at launch.
If you want to avoid the expected problems, we can only recommend starting a few days after the official release of Dawntrail. Or you could dive into Final Fantasy XIV right now. Currently, the game is situated between the last Endwalker patch and the launch – so there are still enough players, but not as many as there will be at launch.
If you start now, you also have the chance to complete many of the content of the story-driven sandbox MMORPG before Dawntrail. Even after many years, players still discover content that they did not know or that surprised them. For example, an MMORPG veteran with over 20 years of experience thought he had seen it all and was surprised in the end.
