Final Fantasy XIV North American Servers Hit by Power Outage, Not DDoS Attack
Final Fantasy XIV experienced a significant server outage affecting all four North American data centers on January 5th, around 8:00 PM Eastern Time. Initial reports and player accounts suggest the cause was a local power outage in Sacramento, likely resulting from a blown transformer, rather than a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack. Service was restored within an hour.
This incident differs from the numerous DDoS attacks that plagued the game throughout 2024. DDoS attacks, which flood servers with false information, caused high latency and disconnections. While Square Enix employs mitigation strategies, completely preventing DDoS attacks remains challenging. Players sometimes use VPNs to circumvent these issues.
Evidence pointing towards a power outage includes player reports on the r/ffxiv subreddit describing a loud explosion or popping sound in Sacramento, consistent with a blown transformer, around the time of the outage. The localized nature of the outage—Europe, Japan, and Oceanic servers remained unaffected—further supports this conclusion.
Square Enix acknowledged the issue on the Lodestone and confirmed an ongoing investigation. While the Aether, Crystal, and Primal data centers gradually returned to service, the Dynamis data center remained offline at the time of this writing.
This latest server disruption adds to the challenges faced by Final Fantasy XIV, especially considering ambitious plans for 2025, including the launch of a mobile version. The long-term impact of these recurring server problems remains to be seen.
