Final Fantasy 14 is currently being targeted by waves of DDoS attacks on its servers, causing players to disconnect from the game at seemingly random intervals. The ongoing DDoS attacks on Final Fantasy 14 are primarily concentrated in the North American Aether, Primal, Crystal and Dynamis data centers at the time of this writing.
In short, a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack is a malicious attempt to disrupt normal server operations by sending floods of traffic all at once. This is often done using a network of “bots” consisting of multiple devices, servers or computers that flood a target with fake requests or packets of information. An individual attacker can then control the bot network via a dedicated command server to overwhelm a target with information and cause problems for legitimate users. There is no known way to make a server completely immune to a DDoS attack, even if games like Final Fantasy 14 can reduce traffic from a bot network.
Final Fantasy 14's North American servers targeted by DDoS attack
Although it's not the first time Final Fantasy 14 has faced a DDoS attack, an ongoing wave is causing problems for players at specific data centers. On Final Fantasy 14 subreddit, several users reported that the North American Aether, Crystal, Dynamis, and Primal data centers experienced outages and failures due to the attacks. The attacks started on Monday, November 3rd and were temporarily mitigated before being delayed again late on Tuesday, November 4th at approximately 11:24 PM Eastern. Final Fantasy 14 players took to social media to confirm if other players were disconnected from the game, and some noted the times the outages occurred. These attacks continued throughout November 4 into the early morning hours of November 5. As of this writing, the latest DDoS attack wave hit the North American servers at 1:40 p.m. Eastern.
Players in Europe, Japan and Oceania are seemingly unaffected by the ongoing DDoS attack Final Fantasy 14. Although Square Enix provided a brief response late on November 4th, the situation remains unresolved as of this writing. The attacks came only weeks later Final Fantasy 14 launched its 7.35 content update, which introduced the Pilgrim's Traverse deep dungeon and a crossover event with Monster Hunter Wilds.
However, the DDoS attack has caused players to lose progress in Pilgrim's Traverse, as disconnecting during a solo run will cause it to be lost. With Final Fantasy 14 is gearing up for its 7.4 update in December, it remains to be seen how Square Enix will respond to the attacks going forward.
- Released
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August 27, 2013
- ESRB
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T for Teens – Language, mild blood, sexual themes, alcohol use, violence
- Engine
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Originally the Crystal Tools engine, but currently a custom engine using parts of the Luminous Engine.
