Final Fantasy XIV's North American servers experienced a significant outage on January 5th, affecting all four data centers. Initial reports suggest the cause was a localized power outage in Sacramento, California, possibly due to a blown transformer, rather than a DDoS attack. Service was restored within an hour.
This incident follows a year of persistent DDoS attacks in 2024, which caused high latency and disconnections for players. While Square Enix employs mitigation strategies, DDoS attacks remain a persistent challenge. Players have sometimes used VPNs to mitigate connection issues during these attacks.
The January 5th outage, however, appears to be unrelated to these cyberattacks. Reddit user reports corroborate the power outage theory, citing a loud explosion heard in Sacramento around the time of the server disruption. The Europe, Japan, and Oceanic data centers remained online, further supporting the localized nature of the problem. While the Aether, Crystal, and Primal Data Centers recovered quickly, the Dynamis Data Center experienced a longer outage.
Square Enix acknowledged the issue on the Lodestone and is currently investigating. This latest setback adds to the challenges faced by the game, especially considering ambitious plans for 2025, including the release of a mobile version. The long-term effects of these ongoing server problems remain to be seen.
