'Players don't need to worry about that': Final Fantasy 14 director says the team is well-armed for Dawntrail's launch rush, no repeat of the Endwalker queue fiasco or day-long DDoS attacks

An image of the first Hrothgar in Final Fantasy 14 smiling as she regards her home, Tural, in Dawntrail. She is a large lioness-like lady with a bright, optimistic expression: sailing under a clear blue sky.

Naoki Yoshida seems determined not to have a repeat of Endwalker's launch woes. Its release in 2021 was a real lightning-in-a-bottle moment: The pandemic was still causing full-blown lockdowns, World of Warcraft players were heading to Eorzea in droves, and the expansion was wrapping up a decade-long story. It was a game suffering from success, causing servers to buckle and the game to be pulled from sale for six weeks as things stabilised.

Admittedly, that can cause a little bit of concern when we're right on the cusp of another expansion launch. But after sitting down and talking with Yoshida, he's confident that things won't be the same this time. "Previously, the situation was that just physically we didn't have the servers. But now we've acquired a sufficient amount of servers from around the world, so players don't need to worry about that."