FFXIV prepares for Dawntrail player queues with the AFK timer and DC Travel

With Final Fantasy XIV: Dawntrail just around the corner, players may be having flashbacks to the terrible congestion during Endwalker’s Early Access period. If you’re worried, a Lodestone post from earlier today may ease those fears.

After director and producer Naoki Yoshida explained how server congestion shouldn’t be too much of an issue this time around, something which I find difficult to believe, there may be some hope on the horizon. However, if things go as sideways as they did during Endwalker’s release, there’s some advice direct from the FFXIV team. 

Login queues happen when a world is simply too full to accommodate all of the players who are trying to log in at once. As such, Final Fantasy XIV has implemented countermeasures to try and lessen the pain for Version 7.0. From new and probationary worlds on both North American and European Data Centers, to opening up Cross-Region Data Center Travel.

However, if your character is logged in on any other world than their home world once 7.0 maintenance begins on June 26, you may be at a disadvantage. Priority will be given to those who are attempting to log in to their home world rather than those trying to log in to any world other than their own. To prevent being locked out of the game, it’s recommended that all players return to their home world before maintenance begins.

If you do face a huge queue to login during Early Access, it’s advised to at least try to log in on less populated worlds, such as the new North American worlds or probationary European worlds. Failing that, all players will have the option to login on Oceanian servers by using the Cross-Region Data Center Travel option. 

Peak congestion times are expected to be 4 p.m. to 1 a.m. EST for North America and between 12 p.m. to 11 p.m. GMT for Europe, so if you can avoid trying to log in during these times, then it might be for the best. If you do manage to login earlier and hope to stay online throughout the day, you’ll need to bear in mind that you’ll be automatically disconnected after 30 minutes of inactivity. 

It remains to be seen whether the countermeasures will have an impact on login times, or whether Dawntrail’s release will be subject to the same issues faced during the release of Endwalker. I’m hoping for an improvement, however small.