Final Fantasy XIV: Heavensward’s launch is bumpy, but it works

Server issues, but not nearly as bad

Well, this is a lot smoother than Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn‘s initial launch, which left some people unable to log in for weeks.

The Heavensward expansion debuted today for early access subscribers (read: pre-orders), on all platforms. As of this morning (5AM EST) the servers were being hammered immediately, which caused many users to see login queues, downed servers, and general game crashes. I encountered all of this intermittently myself, and it took about 30 minutes to actually get into the game. After several hours though, things have smoothed over quite a bit.

For the sake of science, I logged out of the game and attempted to log back in on another platform (my server is Lamia), and was only greeted with a queue of 10 other players, which took 30 seconds to get through. Square has noted that during the first week of launch or so, they’ll be implementing a policy that kicks players who have been idle for 30 minutes. It’s going to be annoying for sure for some, but it’s working.

While the game won’t officially launch until Tuesday, for all intents and purposes this is rather smooth for an MMO expansion debut. I’m working my way through the story as we speak, as well as dabbling in all three new jobs, and will have more thoughts later today, as well as a rundown of any potential issues during the full launch.