Even if Final Fantasy 14 released a hotfix update on Christmas Day to remove some bugs and resolve some issues, players were still experiencing outages from the game's North American servers. However, some Final Fantasy 14 players have since discovered some workarounds to keep players online while the issues persist.
Final Fantasy 14The Christmas hotfix update came over a week after Patch 7.4, Into the Mist, went live globally. Patch 7.4 saw the story of Final Fantasy 14 shift towards the game's upcoming 8.0 expansion and included the final chapter in the fan-favorite Arcadion raid series. The 7.4 update also made some job balance changes, with Gunbreaker getting a minor rework. As of 7.4's changes, Gunbreaker's burst window is now on a one-minute rotation, with Bloodfest and Gnashing Fang receiving some important changes. The Red Mage also saw a Manafication update, and the varied physical DPS role saw some buffs to his core abilities to keep up with other damaging jobs.
Final Fantasy 14 fans fear that their favorite character may have been recast
One of the most popular characters in Final Fantasy 14 sounds a little different in Patch 7.4, and fans fear they may have been reworked.
Final Fantasy 14 fixes some issues, although server issues remain
At 11pm Eastern on Christmas Eve, Final Fantasy 14s servers were temporarily taken offline to implement some hotfixes. When the servers came back online around 3:00 a.m. Eastern on Christmas morning, Final Fantasy 14 players had a small update to download to their game clients. As of the Christmas update, Final Fantasy 14s “MissingNo” bug that saw an unnamed tier 1 stag wandering around the western highlands of Coertha was fixed, meaning the stag that had imprisoned players was returned to its rightful place. Final Fantasy 14s new patch also addressed some glamor issues for the Summoner and Scholar jobs, along with some glamor window fixes for specific outfits.
A few more critical fixes Final Fantasy 14s new strategy board feature, the new Worqor Chirteh (Triumph) Frontline PVP mode, and the patch 7.4 main scenario questline were made with the December hotfix. Despite Square Enix's recent efforts, Final Fantasy 14 still having server issues that have caused several players to disconnect from the game at seemingly random intervals. While the Christmas hotfix also fixed issues with retainers and Cosmic Exploration that could potentially crash a server, the ongoing server issues and disconnection issues are largely isolated to Final Fantasy 14s North American data center. The problem has been intermittent on Final Fantasy 14s California-based servers since November, shortly before Patch 7.4 went live on December 16.
FF14's ongoing server issues may have potential solutions
Despite initial reports that Final Fantasy 14s North American servers once again experienced DDoS attacks after Patch 7.4, some players said this might not be entirely the case. When a mass outage event occurs on Aether, Primal, Crystal, or Dynamis data centers, not all FF14 the player is launched from the game's servers. Even if Final Fantasy 14s North American data center is located in the Sacramento, California area, each user connects to the servers through different nodes maintained by NTT, a Japanese telecommunications company that Square Enix has partnered with. Final Fantasy 14 players on PlayStation consoles have reportedly been unaffected by these issues compared to PC and Xbox players. However, that hasn't stopped players from keeping track of when a server problem occurs.
With Final Fantasy 14: Dawntrail's final raid tier launched on January 6th, some players have been looking at possible solutions and seeing what can be done to alleviate the server issues. On Twitter, Final Fantasy 14 content creator iTrolledU posted a thread showing how effective VPNs like NordVPN and ExpressVPN were at keeping players connected to the game when server issues occur. Additional redirect services such as ExitLag, Cloudflare WARP, and Mudfish were also listed in iTrolledU's post, which is being updated daily at the time of writing. Given that high-end Final Fantasy 14 raids require players to have a smooth connection to the game's servers, time will tell when Square Enix will address the ongoing server issues in North America.
Final Fantasy 14 Patch 7.4 Hotfix Update Notes (December 24, 2025)
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In Frontline campaigns, the time to return to the landing site after incapacitation has been reduced from 5 seconds to 0 seconds.
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In the Frontline campaign Worqor Chirteh (Triumph), the maximum number of triumphs that appear within the first 10 minutes of the match has been increased. Accordingly, the triumph levels for each rank have been adjusted.
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The following issues have been fixed.
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The scene for the main scenario mission “Into the Mist” contained incorrect text in some scenes.
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The scene for the main scenario mission “Into the Mist” contained incorrect text in some scenes.
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In the cutscene for the main scenario mission “Into the Mist”, ambient sounds played in sections where they shouldn't.
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In Skyrise Celebration's “Toy Hunter” and “Presents of Mind”, as well as the main scenario mission “In from the Cold”, the player character can appear in a carrying state even after the carrying status is removed.
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In AAC Heavyweight M3, the floor became invisible in certain situations after the party is defeated while the boss casts Arcadion Avalanche.
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In Frontline Seal Rock (Seize), when information on an occupied tomelit was exhausted, the next tomelit immediately became active.
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Crystals could be collected at the legendary gathering nodes added in Patch 7.4.
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Some monsters that normally shouldn't spawn appeared in the Western Highlands of Coertha.
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When a male Roegadyn or Hrothgar equipped with the alternate shirt draws their weapon as a black wizard, part of their left arm appeared to cut through their clothing.
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For some equipment with emblems or logos, the emblem or logo was displayed incorrectly depending on the camera distance.
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The “Try On” and “Cast Glamour” menu windows displayed the following outfit with Dye 2 applied when stored or stored as outfit glamour, regardless of how many pieces were added to the outfit. Wayfarer's Attire／ Mirage Attire／ Phantasmal Attire／Alpha Wolf Attire
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Equipment added to an outfit glamor could not be used for glamor until the player character moved to another area.
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Under certain conditions summoning retainers caused server crashes.
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In Cosmic Exploration, the server would crash on rare occasions when conducting Mech Ops under certain conditions.
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In the Strategy Board menu, the “Import” and “Close” buttons were reversed in the Share Code import window.
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When using game controls with the strategy board, the cursor sometimes jumps to the strategy board list even when it is not displayed.
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When using game controls with the strategy board screen lock enabled, the cursor would sometimes jump to the strategy board window in situations where it normally shouldn't.
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When a blacklisted player shared a strategy board using the real-time sharing feature, the confirmation window did not appear and the strategy board disappeared.
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Under certain conditions, the name of a strategy board on the saved list was displayed incorrectly as the name of another strategy board.
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Under certain conditions, the Strategy Board Settings window could not be opened or closed.
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Under the following conditions, Adventurer Plate portraits could not be saved due to an error saying “requirements not met”:
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Having a scholar's arm glamorized over an arcanist's grimoire while playing as a summoner or arcanist.
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Having an arcanist's grimoire glamorized over a scholar's arm while playing as a scholar.
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Having job-exclusive equipment that cannot be equipped by classes when playing as a class
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Under certain conditions, when the aspect ratio in system configuration was set to wider than 16:9, taking a photo in Group Pose's portrait mode without “Remove Aspect Ratio Limits” enabled would sometimes cause the game client to freeze. (Windows®/Mac version only)
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An issue with a fading cutscene during AAC Heavyweight M3 (Savage) where a specific line of NPC dialogue is accidentally played twice in an overlapping fashion.
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- 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.
