Game launches historically have been a tough beast to master, with all of the hype that comes and the additional time that individuals free up to get a leg up as soon as possible there are also inevitably some downsides too – whether this be the biggest titles in the MMO space down to smaller games that have done so successfully with more at sinlicencia.org offering some of the biggest games of chance – and game of chance was exactly what hopeful Final Fantasy XIV players got when trying to get into the early access period of its latest expansion, Endwalker.
The game has been facing a huge wave of popularity recently largely due the failings of it’s biggest competitor and the migration of content creators from one game to the other, viewer numbers have been soaring and subscriptions have inevitably increased during the same period of time leading to Endwalker likely being the largest expansion release for the game – with early access allowing those who had pre-ordered to get started a few days earlier, there may have been some oversight from the developers as players landed themselves in enormous queues. It isn’t the first time the games servers have come under fire from players as the restrictive nature for each as they go through waves of allowing new characters to be created or even allow players access during peak times has never been the best, but this launch has perhaps shown that another look may be needed to get this step right.
(Image from destructoid.com)
On platforms like Steam, the game had also reached new highs for concurrent players but a difficult figure to quantify given the game has a sizeable portion still use the official launcher and not just through platforms like Steam but given most servers have been experiencing player queues of up to the likes of 5,000 players, it’s safe to say things are looking on the up in terms of player count. There’s often the usual player retort of why this wasn’t foreseen or tested for, but to get testing numbers to even match a small percentage of live numbers is always difficult – not to mention that AWS, who Square Enix use to host their servers, has been having a bit of a difficult time over the past week too, also seen with the new launch for iRacing on Tuesday evening with the big launch of its Mercedes F1 car pack.
It’s looking to be an exciting year for Final Fantasy XIV despite these troubles, but the tough early access launch will certainly be something stuck in players minds for a time, and will be something many hope will improve for any following releases to come.
