Final Fantasy 14 suffers from global round of DDoS attacks, Square Enix 'investigating the attack and taking countermeasures'

Final Fantasy 14 has been undergoing a series of DDoS attacks over the last few days, causing players to lag, be logged out at random, and even leaving some data centers inaccessible for hours. 

The attacks started on Monday, May 6, which was when the majority of problems were occurring for players. While North American and European servers appear to have bore the brunt of the issues, Japanese and Oceania servers were also impacted. The initial round of attacks lasted over 24 hours, from around 1pm GMT on Monday to 2:30pm GMT on Tuesday. 

Unfortunately for fishers, gardeners, and raiders, things aren't over yet. A second wave hit the game yesterday, around 11pm GMT. That one is still ongoing, this time primarily affecting European, North American and Oceanic data centers. In a post on the Lodestone, Square Enix said it is "investigating the attack and taking countermeasures," adding that "additional information will be provided as the situation develops."

It's a mighty unfortunate problem for the game to be going through, especially as hype ramps up for upcoming expansion Dawntrail. Many folk, like myself, are probably diving back in right now to do cleanup on missed quests and class levels in preparation, which is kind of hard to do when you're struggling to log into the game. The attacks have also occurred in the final days of the Final Fantasy 16 collaboration event, which goes away later today. Thankfully I was able to jump in during a DDoS-free hour yesterday and nab my rewards, but those who are a little more last-minute might find themselves missing out.

Some were able to find the humour in things on Twitter, with one tweet saying the attacks were simply an early arrival of the "[Dawntrail] log-in experience". Another was (understandably) more concerned that the attacks were going to cause them to miss the window on catching a certain fish, tweeting: "Whoever's causing the ddos attacks in ffxiv, please stop… BRO THERE'S A FISH WINDOW COMING UP AND I DON'T WANNA WAIT 6 DAYS FOR THE NEXT WINDOW OF THAT PARTICULAR FISH IF I DON'T CATCH IT BECAUSE I GOT DISCONNECTED". As someone who did not have the mental fortitude to become a full-time fisher, I feel their pain.

To add insult to injury, European data center Chaos was going through its own bout of trouble among the attacks. Server equipment issues independent of the DDoS shenanigans left folk struggling to log in for 12 hours on Tuesday, May 7. At least there were some kind folk out there offering to water plants for their Chaos brethren.

I dived into European data center Light myself for a little bit this morning, and so far everything seems to be okay. That could change as the day goes on, or maybe Square Enix finally has a handle on things. Hopefully there's not much more ruckus in the coming days—I've got some Yokai FATEs to grind.