FF14 Dawntrail Launches ‘Exceptionally Smooth’, Says Square Enix

Final Fantasy 14 The queues for Dawntrail’s launch have been nothing short of extraordinary. After a perfect storm of COVID lockdowns and unprepared servers when Endwalker launched in 2021, Square Enix has come prepared this time around. The servers may be full, but playing the MMORPG on launch day has never been easier.

The biggest fear for every player heading into Final Fantasy 14 Dawntrail’s launch was the queue times. Everyone expected server disconnects and hours of waiting to get into the MMORPG, but that hasn’t been the case so far. I was in a 450-person queue for five minutes when the servers came back online, and I had a normal queue of 21 players later that night.

Square Enix’s Dawntrail congestion plans have paid off, despite incredibly high demand. “Since Early Access began on Friday, June 28, 2024, we’ve seen extraordinary player numbers, but connections have been exceptionally smooth so far thanks to our data center expansion, additional worlds, and improved server performance,” Square Enix writes.

“Login queues are stable, and while they may appear to be moving slowly or countdowns may not appear to be progressing, we have confirmed that the queue is moving steadily as expected.”

The success of Dawntrail’s server is surprising, as just a few years earlier, the previous expansion, Endwalker, struggled mightily at launch. Final Fantasy 14 still had long queues a week after Endwalker’s release, and the game was so busy that Square Enix had to stop selling it. Dawntrail may struggle during the Early Access launch weekend, but if the first day is any indication, the servers are much improved.

Data center travel played an important role in this success. New worlds designed specifically for congestion overflow have eased the burden, and there are more servers than ever before to accommodate the 30 million players in addition to those playing on Xbox for the first time. Dawntrail’s launch could have been a disaster due to server instability, but it was miraculous.

Steam statistics confirm this. Dawntrail’s launch day peak is 92,039 players, just a few thousand behind Endwalker’s record of 95,150. Despite the minor difference, Dawntrail did not experience the same number of problems. Sure, Endwalker released at the height of the COVID lockdowns, but in 2024 we have more players than ever, and FF14 is holding up.

But everything didn’t go as planned, as the Syrcus Tower alliance raid suddenly became impossible to complete due to a bug in Dawntrail and 7.0. The Amon boss fight doesn’t spawn in ice blocks to hide behind, resulting in an impossible-to-overcome group kill. Square Enix is ​​aware of the bug and is currently implementing fixes for it, but some determined groups have managed to beat Amon in the meantime through sheer brute force.

I started playing Final Fantasy 14 after Endwalker and I’m totally amazed by how well Dawntrail launched. I had heard stories of devastating queues where you wait all day and expected the new expansion to be similar. So far there is nothing like this and I was able to enjoy all the new content easily.

With Tural finally here, our Final Fantasy 14 Viper and Final Fantasy 14 Pictomancer job guides fully detail the new classes. There’s also a free Final Fantasy 14 Fantasia to grab if you want to change your character’s appearance.

You can also follow us on Google News for daily PC gaming news, reviews, and guides, or grab our PCGN deals tracker to take advantage of great deals.