Final Fantasy XIV broke the Japanese record for most concurrent users in an open beta this weekend, pushing well past Phantasy Star Online 2‘s previous record and reaching the maximum allotment more than once.
Japanese gamers found themselves dealing with similar issues as their North American and European counterparts on Saturday, with server stress reaching its peak. Two new servers, Typhon and Ultima, were added to allow more players into the game once the concurrent user amount reached 120,000 users — apparently far more than Square Enix had anticipated!
With the addition of the two new servers, the concurrent user count jumped up to 150,000 within 24 hours.
If the above number does not impress you, consider that Japan’s previous record holder, Phantasy Star Online 2, saw just over 107,000 concurrent users during its open beta. The game is now one of the most popular MMORPGs in the country.
What about NA/EU?
The concurrent user record announcement was delivered by Yoshi-P himself, but Square Enix does not have a friendly face outside of Japan to communicate with customers and fans. We do not know the concurrent user amount outside of Japan, but we can assume it was just as high if not higher for three reasons:
- The FFXIV Twitter had stated that they were expecting well over 100,000 users as the beta went up early Friday morning.
- Character creation was put on lockdown on nearly every server sometime during the first 24 hours.
- Three new servers: Lamia, Phoenix, and Siren were added late in the day on Saturday and character creation on every non-Legacy server was locked for the rest of the beta.
It is very easy to guess that Final Fantasy XIV’s NA/EU servers not only surpassed the estimated 100,000 user mark, but went far past what Square Enix had anticipated and likely surpassed the Japanese servers in concurrent users. I would bet money on it.
