Despite Naoki Yoshida's assurance to me—and no doubt countless other journalist and content creators during the Final Fantasy 14: Dawntrail media tour—that servers were jacked and ready to tackle the horde of players coming in at launch, I was admittedly still apprehensive.
Flashbacks to Endwalker's queues that would consume my entire evening, pleading with my housemates to waggle my mouse while I nipped to the shops so my character wouldn't succumb to the 30-minute AFK timer and thus initiate the four-hour wait all over again. Getting oh-so-close to finally playing, only to get the dreaded Error 90002 and realise that maybe the universe doesn't want you to run dungeons tonight. Anyone who lived through it—or some lesser yet equally painful issues like Stormblood's affectionately dubbed Raubhan (Savage)—will remember how much of a massive pain in the arse it was.
