Although Final Fantasy 14 released a hotfix update on Christmas Day to squash some bugs and address some issues, players still experienced disconnections from the game’s North American servers. However, some Final Fantasy 14 players have since discovered a few workarounds to keep players connected while the problems persist.
Final Fantasy 14‘s 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 toward the game’s upcoming 8.0 expansion, and included the final chapter of the fan-favorite Arcadion raid series. The 7.4 update also made some Job balance changes, with the Gunbreaker receiving 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 key changes. The Red Mage also saw a Manafication update, and the ranged physical DPS role saw some buffs to their core abilities to keep up with other damage-dealing Jobs.
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Final Fantasy 14 Fixes Some Issues, Though Server Issues Persist
At 11:00 PM Eastern on Christmas Eve, Final Fantasy 14‘s servers were temporarily taken offline to implement some hotfixes. Once the servers came back online at around 3:00 AM Eastern on Christmas morning, Final Fantasy 14 players had a small update to download onto their game clients. As of the Christmas update, Final Fantasy 14‘s “MissingNo” glitch that saw a nameless level 1 deer wander around the Coerthas Western Highlands was fixed, meaning the deer that had captivated players had been returned to its rightful place. Final Fantasy 14‘s new patch also addressed some glamour issues for the Summoner and Scholar jobs, along with some glamour window fixes for specific outfits.
Some critical fixes to Final Fantasy 14‘s new Strategy board feature, the new Worqor Chirteh (Triumph) Frontline PVP mode, and the patch 7.4 main scenario quest line were made with the December hotfix patch. Despite Square Enix’s recent efforts, Final Fantasy 14 is still reeling from server issues that have caused several players to disconnect from the game at seemingly random intervals. While the Christmas hotfix patch also fixed issues with retainers and Cosmic Exploration that could potentially cause a server to crash, the ongoing server issues and disconnection problems are largely isolated to Final Fantasy 14‘s North American data centers. The problem has been intermittent on Final Fantasy 14‘s California-based servers since November, just before Patch 7.4 went live on December 16.
FF14’s Ongoing Server Issues May Have Potential Workarounds
Despite initial reports that Final Fantasy 14‘s North American servers were once again experiencing DDoS attacks following Patch 7.4, some players stated that this may not entirely be the case. When a mass disconnect event occurs on the Aether, Primal, Crystal, or Dynamis data centers, not every FF14 player is booted from the game’s servers. Although Final Fantasy 14‘s North American data centers are located in the Sacramento, California area, each user connects to the servers via different nodes that are maintained by NTT, a Japanese telecommunications company with whom Square Enix has partnered. Final Fantasy 14 players on PlayStation consoles have reportedly been unaffected by these issues compared to PC and Xbox players. However, that has not stopped players from keeping track of when a server problem arises.
With Final Fantasy 14: Dawntrail’s final raid tier launching on January 6, some players have been looking into potential workarounds and seeing what can be done to alleviate the server issues. On Twitter, Final Fantasy 14 content creator iTrolledU posted a thread that showed how effective VPNs like NordVPN and ExpressVPN were in keeping players connected to the game whenever server issues occur. Additional re-routing services like ExitLag, Cloudflare WARP, and Mudfish were also listed in iTrolledU’s post, which is being updated daily as of this 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 fully address the ongoing server problems in North America.
Final Fantasy 14 Patch 7.4 Hotfix Update Notes (December 24, 2025)
- In Frontline campaigns, the time to return to the landing point after incapacitation has been reduced from 5 seconds to 0 seconds.
- In the Frontline campaign Worqor Chirteh (Triumph), the maximum number of triumphs appearing within the first 10 minutes of the match has been increased. Accordingly, the appearance rates of triumphs for each rank have been adjusted.
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The following issues have been fixed.
- The cutscene for the main scenario quest “Into the Mist” contained incorrect text in certain scenes.
- The cutscene for the main scenario quest “Into the Mist” contained incorrect text in certain scenes.
- In the cutscene for the main scenario quest “Into the Mist,” ambient sounds were played in sections where they should not.
- In the Skyrise Celebrations “Toy Hunter” and “Presents of Mind,” as well as the main scenario quest “In from the Cold”, the player character could appear in the carrying state even after the carrying status is removed.
- In AAC Heavyweight M3, the floor became invisible in certain situations after the party was defeated while the boss is casting Arcadion Avalanche.
- In Frontline Seal Rock (Seize), when information on an occupied tomelith was depleted, the next tomelith immediately became active.
- Crystals could be gathered at the legendary gathering nodes added in Patch 7.4.
- Certain monsters that should not normally spawn were appearing in Coerthas Western Highlands.
- When a male Roegadyn or Hrothgar equipped with the Alternative Shirt draws their weapon as a Black Mage, part of their left arm appeared to clip through the clothing.
- For certain equipment featuring emblems or logos, the emblem or logo was displayed incorrectly depending on camera distance.
- In the “Try On” and “Cast Glamour” menu windows, the following outfit sets were displayed with Dye 2 applied when stored or being stored as outfit glamours, regardless of the number of pieces added to the outfit. Wayfarer’s Attire／Mirage Attire／Phantasmal Attire／Alpha Wolf Attire
- Equipment added to an outfit glamour could not be used for glamours until the player character moved to a different area.
- Under certain conditions, summoning retainers caused server outages.
- In Cosmic Exploration, the server would crash in rare instances when completing Mech Ops under certain conditions.
- In the Strategy Board menu, the “Import” and “Close” buttons were reversed on the Share Code import window.
- When using gamepad controls with the Strategy Board, the cursor would sometimes jump to the Strategy Board List even when it is not displayed.
- When using gamepad controls with the Strategy Board’s display lock enabled, the cursor would sometimes jump to the Strategy Board window in situations where it normally should not.
- When a blacklisted player shared a strategy board using the real-time sharing feature, the display confirmation window was not displayed and the strategy board would disappear.
- Under certain conditions, the name of a strategy board on the Saved List was incorrectly displayed as the name of a different strategy board.
- Under certain conditions, the Strategy Board Settings window may could not be opened or closed.
- Under the following conditions, Adventurer Plate portraits could not be saved due to an error stating that “requirements have not been met”:
- Having a scholar’s arm glamoured over an arcanist’s grimoire while playing as a summoner or arcanist.
- Having an arcanist’s grimoire glamoured over a scholar’s arm while playing as scholar.
- Having job-exclusive equipment that cannot be equipped by classes while playing as a class
- Under certain conditions, when the resolution 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)
- An issue with a voiced cutscene during AAC Heavyweight M3 (Savage) wherein a specific line of NPC dialogue erroneously plays twice in an overlapping fashion.
- 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.
