Critically-acclaimed MMORPG Final Fantasy XIV is experiencing so much player population growth that Square Enix has instated a new 30-minute logout timer in order to combat server congestion and extensive queue times. The change will now automatically log out players who have been AFK (away from keyboard, or “idle”) in the game after 30 minutes. Square Enix is increasing its server player caps across the board, allowing more players to log in at the same time.
Final Fantasy XIV has experienced massive player growth around the world over the past few weeks, much of which seems to be a result of a mass exodus of players from other MMORPGs such as World of Warcraft, as well as a greater interest in the game as its final expansion of this current story arc, Endwalker, is set to release later this year. In an official blogpost, FFXIV director Naoki Yoshida stated that the game has experienced an “extreme influx of new players” particularly in the North American and European regions.
In order to support this, Yoshida notes that the team has implemented two changes. First, is that the game will automatically boot players who are inactive for more than 30 minutes, at which point they will have to queue to log in again in order to play. He adds that the team will “further expand” the feature preemptively in order to address the expected surge of logins for Endwalker in November.
Second is an increase in login caps which allows a greater number of players to log in to a server at a given time. Specifically, Square Enix recently upgraded North American data centers to increase their log-in capacities by 18,000; about 750 players per server.
Additionally, while Square Enix is planning a similar increase for European servers Yoshida states that the team is still working to implement changes, and as a result will not increase the login cap for that region just yet.
[Source: FFXIV Official Site]
