Final Fantasy XIV North American Servers Suffer Major Outage, Likely Due to Power Failure

A significant outage affecting all four North American data centers of Final Fantasy XIV occurred on January 5th, shortly after 8:00 PM Eastern Time. While the game has faced persistent DDoS attacks throughout 2024, initial reports and player accounts suggest this incident stemmed from a localized power outage in the Sacramento area, potentially caused by a blown transformer. The servers returned to service within an hour of the initial disruption.

The disruption impacted only North American servers; European, Japanese, and Oceanic data centers remained operational, supporting the theory of a localized issue. Restoration was gradual, with Aether, Crystal, and Primal Data Centers coming back online first, while Dynamis remained offline initially.

Square Enix acknowledged the problem via the Lodestone and confirmed an ongoing investigation into the cause. This latest event adds to the ongoing challenges faced by the game, particularly concerning server stability, as Final Fantasy XIV prepares for ambitious projects in 2025, including the anticipated launch of a mobile version. The long-term effects of these recurring server issues remain to be seen. While DDoS attacks have plagued the game previously, causing high latency and disconnections, this outage appears to be a distinct issue unrelated to malicious cyber activity. Player reports of a loud explosion in Sacramento, coinciding with the outage, further strengthen the power failure hypothesis.