Final Fantasy 14 Hit With New Wave of DDOS Attacks
Final Fantasy 14 players are experiencing server issues once more, as a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack has affected the game’s North American servers. The timing of this Final Fantasy 14 issue could not have been worse, as the game has just launched the final Savage Raid tier of the Dawntrail expansion, where steady connections are mandatory for success.
Final Fantasy 14‘s latest Savage raid tier arrived three weeks after Patch 7.4 went live. The 7.4 update introduced new main story quests and the finale of the Arcadion raid series on Normal difficulty. Plus, Patch 7.4 made some Job balance updates, including some changes to the Red Mage and the Gunbreaker during their burst windows. Future pieces of content, including the next relic weapon update and the Merchant’s Tale variant dungeon, will be available in smaller Final Fantasy 14 updates launching throughout early 2026.
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Final Fantasy 14 Servers Come Under Fire From DDoS Attacks
While DDoS attacks on Final Fantasy 14‘s servers are unfortunately not new, the latest wave of problems has come at an inopportune time for the game’s top raiders. Just as the Arcadion’s final Savage raid tier went live at 5:00 AM Eastern on January 6, players on Final Fantasy 14‘s North American data centers experienced disconnections and lag spikes. This problem is due to a DDoS attack on a connecting node to Final Fantasy 14‘s North American data centers, and has been a recurring issue since November 2025. The problem has largely been localized to North America, as the game’s servers in Europe and Japan have been safe from attacks so far.
In short, a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack is a malicious attempt to disrupt normal server operations by sending floods of traffic at it all at once. While there is no known way to make a server completely immune to a DDoS attack, games like Final Fantasy 14 can mitigate the flow of traffic from a bot network by rerouting it or by taking other countermeasures. The affected pathing node is owned and operated by NTT, a Japanese telecommunications company, with whom Square Enix has partnered to connect Final Fantasy 14 players to its California-based servers.
As of this writing, at least five raiding teams have cleared two of the Arcadion Heavyweight fights on Savage difficulty, with two of them being from North America. However, to get around the server issues affecting the game’s North American data centers, some Final Fantasy 14 raiding teams that primarily play in North America have taken some extra steps to ensure a stable connection. Some players have used a gaming VPN to re-route their connection to the game away from the faulty node and keep some players connected during a DDoS attack. Other teams have opted to use the game’s Data Center Travel system to play on the Materia Data Center in Australia. However, the latter solution comes with added latency due to geographical distance, which can affect the timing of how some battle mechanics are handled. However, the damage may have already been done.
Final Fantasy 14’s Server Issues May Impact The World-First Savage Raid Clears
While FInal Fantasy 14 released a patch on Christmas Day to address some bugs that were introduced with Patch 7.4, the server issues remained an outstanding problem. Given that high-end Final Fantasy 14 raids require a consistent connection to the game’s servers to overcome them, the ongoing server problems in North America have forced players to find workarounds. With the server issues forcing FF14 players to take different actions, it could affect which teams claim world-first victories in the Arcadion Heavyweight Savage Raid tier. While Square Enix released a statement that it was looking into the problems once again, time will tell what solutions will be implemented.
However, the Arcadion Heavyweight Savage Raid battles are not the final piece of high-end battle content that Square Enix has planned for Dawntrail. FF14‘s upcoming Patch 7.5 content update, set to arrive in spring 2026, will add another Ultimate raid for teams of eight players to challenge. Whether Square Enix fixes the ongoing server issues by then remains to be seen.
- Released
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August 27, 2013
- ESRB
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T for Teen – Language, Mild Blood, Sexual Themes, Use of Alcohol, Violence
- Engine
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Originally the Crystal Tools engine, but currently it’s a custom engine using parts of the Luminous Engine.
