Final Fantasy XIV North American Servers Suffer Major Outage; Likely Caused by Power Failure, Not DDoS
Final Fantasy XIV experienced a significant server outage across all four North American data centers on January 5th, shortly after 8:00 PM Eastern. Initial reports suggest the cause was a localized power outage in Sacramento, potentially due to a blown transformer, rather than a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack. Service was restored within an hour.
This incident follows a year of persistent DDoS attacks targeting Final Fantasy XIV servers throughout 2024. These attacks, which flood servers with false information, caused high latency and disconnections. While Square Enix implemented mitigation strategies, completely preventing DDoS attacks remains a challenge. Players have sometimes found using a VPN helpful in mitigating connection issues.
However, this recent outage appears to be unrelated to DDoS activity. Reddit users reported hearing a loud explosion or popping sound in Sacramento, consistent with a blown transformer, around the time of the outage. This aligns with the timing of the server disruption and subsequent restoration. Square Enix acknowledged the issue on the Lodestone and confirmed an ongoing investigation.
The European, Japanese, and Oceanic data centers remained operational, further supporting the theory of a localized power issue. Restoration proceeded gradually, with Aether, Crystal, and Primal data centers coming back online first. The Dynamis Data Center, the newest addition, remained offline at the time of this writing.
These server problems present a challenge for 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.
