Final Fantasy XIV sales to resume January 25th

theverge.com:

Your case of Final Fantasy XIV FOMO is nearing its end. Last night, game director Naoki Yoshida wrote on the Final Fantasy XIV website that Square Enix will resume digital sales of the popular MMO on January 25th.

Final Fantasy XIV grew so popular with the launch of its latest expansion Endwalker that the queues to log into game servers were thousands of people long and took hours to get through. Servers were so congested that in December, Square Enix suspended the sale of digital versions of the game. As more players progress through the content, levels of server congestion are finally starting to even out, permitting sales of the game to resume. Yoshida also acknowledged that FFXIV’s meme-able free trial offering will remain unavailable for now but will return in the future.

Yoshida’s update also included information about the addition of a new Oceanian data center which will give Australian and New Zealand players, who traditionally played on Japanese servers or suffered high ping to connect to American ones, more choices on where to play. In his announcement, Yoshida said the new data center will go live January 25th, and to encourage players to move there, Square Enix will waive the typical $18 world transfer fee.

In addition to a new data center, existing ones in Europe, Japan, and North America are getting expansions. Previously, Square Enix cited the global chip shortage as the reason they could not deploy more servers to assist with congestion. Yesterday’s announcement included a roadmap for when these expansions are to take place with the first phase beginning in summer of this year.