Square Enix Confirms that FFXIV DDoS Attack Hits North American Servers
Final Fantasy XIV had a difficult time with server congestion and login problems from frequent disconnections and errors when Endwalker was launched last. The game was eventually stable and had a very short login queue. These memories were brought back to mind on August 2, at 5:00 p.m. PST, when North American servers suffered a temporary mass shut down due to an FFXIV DoS attack.
Square Enix acknowledged the problem by posting on The Lodestone’s FFXIV website. They also confirmed that DDoS attacks were responsible.
Players might be having the following problems:
- Disconnected from North American Data Center Worlds
- Logging in to North American data centres Worlds is difficult
- It isn’t easy to access, send, and receive data from North American data centres
The blog post acknowledged technical difficulties and said that “we will continue to monitor and work with ISPs to develop countermeasures.” If you use NA data centres (Primal Crystal, Aether, or Aether) and experience unexplainable disconnections, this could be the problem.
DDoS is distributed denial of service. These attacks target servers and floods them with bandwidth or other resources, causing them to shut down. DDoS attacks can be malicious and difficult to track as it originates from different sources.
North American servers are an easier target for an FFXIV DDoS attack since they have yet to expand their planned server network. With Patch 6.18, Japan received a new data centre to help it reorganize its servers and make more room for players. Europe also received four new servers from its existing data centres. The addition of North American servers was delayed until November. These servers had been originally planned for this summer. Although server expansion may help to mitigate problems like these, it will be a long-term solution.
For players in the middle or final stages of content play, the FFXIV DDoS attack was extremely disappointing. Sudden server crashes could have caused problems for players progressing in difficult raids or at crucial points in the story. Square Enix has yet to resolve the issue. However, the game remains online. Many players will return to FFXIV with Patch6.2 just around the corner. We hope the matter will be resolved by then.
