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Final Fantasy XIV North American Servers Suffer Major Outage: Power Issue, Not DDoS
Final Fantasy XIV experienced a significant server outage affecting all four North American data centers on January 5th, around 8:00 PM Eastern. Initial reports and player accounts on social media suggest the cause was a local power outage in Sacramento, likely due to a blown transformer. Service was restored within an hour.
Unlike previous widespread disruptions attributed to distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks throughout 2024, this incident appears to be a localized power problem. DDoS attacks, which flood servers with false information, caused high latency and disconnections. While Square Enix employs mitigation strategies, these attacks remain difficult to completely prevent. Players have sometimes used VPNs as a workaround.
The theory of a power outage stems from player reports on the r/ffxiv subreddit. Users described hearing a loud explosion or popping sound in Sacramento, consistent with a blown transformer. This aligns with the timing of the outage and subsequent restoration. Square Enix acknowledged the issue on the Lodestone and is currently investigating.
The European, Japanese, and Oceanic data centers remained unaffected, further supporting the hypothesis of a localized Sacramento power failure. At the time of this writing, the Aether, Crystal, and Primal data centers are gradually returning to service, while the Dynamis data center remains offline.
This latest setback adds to the challenges facing Final Fantasy XIV, particularly given ambitious plans for 2025, including the launch of a mobile version. The long-term effects of these recurring server issues remain to be seen.
