FINAL FANTASY XIV Online News

Final Fantasy XIV fan shills the free trial in a wrestling crowd

Final Fantasy XIV has a passionate fanbase, to the point where "Did you know that the critically acclaimed MMORPG Final Fantasy XIV has a free trial, and includes the entirety of A Realm Reborn AND the award-winning Heavensward expansion up to level 60 with no restrictions on playtime?" is a very long-winded and inescapable meme. So inescapable, in fact, that you can't even watch pro wrestling without running into it.

A fan at last night's live AEW Dynamite broadcast in Garland, Texas brought a sign advising everyone around him to "play Final Fantasy XIV". (Don't worry, friend, clearly plenty of people are already taking your advice.) The fan was seated just behind incoming title challenger Hikuleo in the crowd, so there were some prominent shots of the sign throughout the show.

This isn't the first time wrestling fans have used signs to profess their love of particular entries in the Final Fantasy series - in fact, it became a bit of a thing recently. Who can blame them though? Even the wrestlers themselves are clearly fans of RPG games, like AEW champion Kenny Omega, whose finishing move is called the One-Winged Angel in honour of FFVII's Sephiroth.

Read the rest of the story...

Final Fantasy XIV is testing higher EU login caps to help ease server congestion

If you're a Final Fantasy XIV fan, you'll no doubt be aware the MMORPG is experiencing a pretty hefty surge of popularity at the moment, which has led to hiccups like server congestion. Square Enix has been busy rolling out solutions to help tackle the issue, such as an automatic logout for idle players and it's also outlined plans for server upgrades and more data centres. Now, the MMO's director has announced SE is testing out increased login caps on EU servers, too.

"We have determined that by rotating some of the high-spec machines that comprise the European data centres into a new configuration and optimising our equipment accordingly, we will be able to increase the cap on simultaneous logins by roughly 500 characters per World server (for an increase of 6,000 across all EU data centres) for the time being," director Naoki Yoshida says. To roll this out, he explains, the studio's going to be taking EU data centres offline for emergency maintenance for about four hours today (July 22).

Following this, the studio's going to be monitoring how things fare very closely to consider whether it can continue to increase this cap even further while still maintaining the stability of servers.

Read the rest of the story...

FFXIV player won't stop streaming until he eats 138k eggs

Some of you may know Ross 'RubberNinja' O'Donovan for his time on 'let's play' web series Game Grumps, but he caught everyone's attention in a big way last year when he ate 999 eggs in Final Fantasy XIV - people came, people cheered, and people walked away very amused. Now, though, he's taking it a step further by consuming an entire inventory of eggs on stream, which is more than 138,000 if you want to put a number on it.

Of course, it's not quite as simple as that, as O'Donovan has pledged to keep streaming until he pulls off the feat. That might seem pretty straightforward, but there are heaps of rules in place that'll draw it out. For every 1,000 subscriptions he gets on Twitch, O'Donovan will add 999 eggs back to the total.

O'Donovan has also vowed only to eat meals with eggs while this is going on, and he's even sleeping on stream, too, only taking breaks to shower. Oh, and if he hits 20,000 subs, he'll shave his head to "[become] an egg". I tuned into his stream while writing this up, and sure enough, he's asleep. There's also an overlay of his character eating eggs while a tired voice repeats the phrase "egg" repeatedly. Egg.

Read the rest of the story...

FFXIV The Great Horn Heist walkthrough

The Make it Rain campaign has returned to Final Fantasy XIV - during this event, MGP earnings from the Gold Saucer are increased by 50%, and the prizes you can exchange them for are reduced in price, too.

There's also a special quest available to play as part of the event, called The Great Horn Heist. The rewards for completing this quest include a new FF14 emote, 'vexed', which conjures a frustrated animated scribble above your character's head when used - useful in a variety of situations, certainly. There's also a 5,000 bonus MGP card in it for you, so it's worth your time to complete.

The Great Horn Heist takes place in the Gold Saucer, so you need to unlock this area in order to participate - here's everything you need to know about The Great Horn Heist, including how to solve the mystery of the stolen horn. The quest involves speaking to several individuals in order to piece together the solution. The Make it Rain season event is only available for a limited time; it runs until August 11, 2021.

Read the rest of the story...

FFXIV devs detail server upgrades and plans for more data centers

Final Fantasy XIV has just enjoyed an explosion of popularity (which is good) that has brought such an influx of players that it's been tough to even log into the game (which is bad). Patch 5.58 introduced an automatic logout for idle players that's one step toward solving the issue, and now director and producer Naoki Yoshida has provided an extensive breakdown of what steps the developers are taking to alleviate the problem.

North American servers were recently upgraded, which has increased capacity to allow for an additional 18,000 simultaneous logins. A similar upgrade is scheduled for EU servers in the "immediate future", but Yoshida warns that until the upgrade is complete, EU won't be able to get the same increases as NA.

The team planned to implement additional servers and data centers for the 7.0 expansion, which likely would not be released until 2023. (The Oceania data center is still on track for the Endwalker release date.) The current congestion has the devs trying to speed up the process, but the ongoing semiconductor shortage and continued travel restrictions has made acceleration difficult.

Read the rest of the story...