Final Fantasy 14 has seen the most-ever concurrent players since A Realm Reborn's release over a decade ago.
Final Fantasy 14 Dawntrail launched in full earlier this week, bringing about the MMO's next overarching adventure. Writing on the Lodestone, game director Naoki Yoshida reveals that Dawntrail's launch has seen Final Fantasy 14 "able to reach a record number of concurrent users we've not seen since the release of A Realm Reborn in 2013."
This was seemingly even with server congestion during Dawntrail's early access period, which commenced last week on June 28, which only makes the feat even more impressive. It's entirely acceptable to view this as Final Fantasy 14 having achieved its biggest-ever concurrent player record, thanks to A Realm Reborn basically being a full re-launch of the MMO.
However, this obviously does need certain caveats. Final Fantasy 14 was only available on PC and PS3 when A Realm Reborn launched in 2013, and has also seen numerous more servers released for players in new regions like Europe since then, so the MMO simply couldn't reach as many concurrent players as we're seeing now with Dawntrail's release.
Unfortunately, Yoshida also reveals there are issues in Final Fantasy 14 right now. "We've already announced on the Lodestone that a number of these issues are presently under investigation, but rest assured we will be doing everything in our power to address them as quickly as possible," Yoshida writes, adding that players can expect a follow-up announcement when fixes are ready for launch.
These issues, as per a previous Lodestone post from Square Enix, include freeze mechanics in certain Duties currently not working. These include the Ultimate version of Dragonsong's Reprise, The Minstrel's Ballad: Shinryu's Domain, and the Savage version of Delubrum Reginae. The freeze mechanic issues in these Duties might even prevent players from progressing, in some cases.
Xbox Series X/S players are also facing some problems exclusive to their platforms. Apparently, some Xbox players are finding Final Fantasy 14 just straight-up stops working when they change areas or travel via the Aethernet, which sounds pretty frustrating.
In other Final Fantasy 14 news, Dawntrail is sadly drawing Stormblood comparisons due to how underwhelming some are perceiving the expansion's storyline to be. Plenty of players out there are definitely hoping Dawntrail fully hits its stride during the eventual post-launch patches that Square Enix rolls out after expansions like Endwalker and Shadowbringers.
