FFXIV Patch Coming Tomorrow, New Worlds Incoming

Admit it: new worlds/realms/servers are not something you usually find exciting when looking at an MMORPG’s patch notes. That’s normal — but Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn‘s server issues and over-congestion are a special case that has some players (and those waiting in the wings to purchase the game) excited for new worlds.

This patch coming tomorrow (September 11th) will bring some of the infrastructure improvements Naoki Yoshida mentioned in this forum post. A “significant” amount of new worlds will be added to the already hefty roster, an additional Duty Finger group will be implemented, and they will be increasing the amount of instance servers.

Will this patch make the Final Fantasy XIV‘s current long queue times for DD classes less monstrous? Perhaps, but the real priority here is to prevent what has been causing the instance servers to crash as often as they have.

Adding new content?

We are currently in the middle of the Moonfire Faire, an event with a unique FATE and special cosmetic armors (and sparklers!), and we may be getting some more new content to toy with after this next patch.

The Lodestone post announcing the patch mentions states the following:

At the following time, in order to add new content to Worlds, enhance instance Worlds, further enhance Duty Finder performance, and to address several confirmed issues, we will be performing maintenance on all Worlds.

While the Lodestone post does mention this mysterious “new content”, this forum post made by community representative Camate makes no mention of additional content this patch.

Will we see new content so early after release? One might be inclined to say no, but no one expected a festival so soon after launch either.

One thing is for sure–sometime after this maintenance, digital sales will be restored. Though the last patch ironed out many of Final Fantasy XIV‘s server issues, not all were flattened. Should the results of this patch go well (and even the new worlds are not filled to maximum within a couple of days), we could see digital sales resume within a week — again, provided this patch and its improvements go well. Fingers crossed!