World trends are slowing the pace of progress in Final Fantasy XIV. With the ongoing popularity of this vast online journey, the FFXIV team has been focused on expanding server capacity. In January, creative director and lead producer Naoki Yoshida outlined a plan for server expansion across all regions.
First, there was the addition of the Oceania data center in January, giving players in places like Australia, New Zealand, and Papua New Guinea their own servers. This not only vastly lowered their ping but also alleviated congestion in other regions.
With Patch 6.18, that expansion of existing regions began in earnest. The Japanese region received a new data center, Meteor. The first phase of the European data center expansion started with the same patch, adding four new worlds to the existing servers. The expansion of the North American data center was scheduled to begin in August 2022, with the second phase of expansion for both North America and Europe coming by the summer of 2023.
Sadly, the FFXIV team has had to delay those plans. In a message from Yoshida posted on the Lodestone blog this evening, the first phase of expansion for the North American region is now coming in November 2022. According to Yoshida, the semiconductor shortage continues to make it difficult for the team to source new server hardware.
“Though the first phase was scheduled to take place in August 2022, the server vendor has informed us that the delivery of the equipment will be delayed due to the semiconductor shortage,” he explained. “We have tried to coordinate with related parties in hopes of finding a solution, but ultimately a delay proved unavoidable. As a result, it will be difficult to keep to our original schedule, and we regrettably have to postpone the first phase of the expansion to November 2022.”
Yoshida apologized for the delay and said that further details will be forthcoming. “We will share further schedule details as soon as they are decided, and ask for your patience in the meantime,” he said.
Despite the delay in the first phase, Yoshida said that the second phase will remain on schedule. This means the first phase in November 2022 will add four new worlds in a new data center, with another four worlds being added to that data center in spring or summer 2023. While we wait for the server expansions, there’s still a ton to do in FFXIV. We have the upcoming Moonfire Faire event for 2022 and Patch 6.2, which will introduce the Island Sanctuary, the new Criterion dungeons, the next wing of Asphodelos, and all-new Tomestones.
