Final Fantasy XIV’s Botched Empyreum Opening

The Opening of the Empyreum district was supposed to be a cause for celebration! But due to a server-side error, not everyone was able to snag a new house. We have a summary of the weekend's events here.

The Winning Number is… 0. You may have better luck in the future!

Players were able to bet on plots in the Empyreum district as soon as the servers went live after the release of 6.1. The much ‘beloved' cookie clicker system had now given way to a lottery  (we've detailed how that system works here). The plan was to give everyone a fair chance at the plot they wanted, without having to camp it for several hours. And in theory it worked, but when the lottery was drawn this Saturday, numerous players found themselves losing to the lottery ticket number 0. Means no one got the house, and even worse, some can't even get their money back.

This wasn't the only cause for uproar. It turned out, on Tuesday, only the last six wards (19-24) would be open for individual housing. The other 18 wards were reserved for free companies only. Of course, free companies get a lot more use out of a house. Besides being a popular gathering spot, there is the company workshop. Which allows free companies to craft and deploy airships and submarines for materials. Which is also needed to craft the Tier 3 free company buff's that you can't require anywhere else. But even with the Island Sanctuary on the horizon, this proved to be unpopular with a number of players.

Players on the OCE region were hit especially hard by this. Since the launch of the Materia Datacenter back in January this year, housing had been completely disabled there. The reason is that people who might make new characters or are transferring would have enough time to gather money and level free companies. And the free company leaders of Materia gathered together to make sure everyone got the plot they wanted.

And the Helm of the Realm states…

Besides server instabilities at the launch of new expansions and the disaster that was 1.0. This might arguably one of the biggest blunders in Final Fantasy XIV's history. So it's no surprise that Director and Producer Naoki Yoshida has released several statements since then talking about the issue. First, apologizing for the trouble all of this has caused and affirming that they are looking into the issue. The problem is only that they couldn't yet nail down what exactly the issue is. According to Yoshida, all the lotteries had been drawn correctly on the server responsible for it. And the issue seems to be the server communicating with the housing system to display the results properly.

While they are looking into the issue, Naoki Yoshida affirms that all the results have been stored properly and there should be no need for a roll-back. He also stated that players who have obtained a plot, don't have to worry about it being taken away from them. And asks players who won the lottery to confirm their results, so they don't have to look over those processes as well.

This proves to be a rocky start for a system that was supposed to make housing more accessible. But if history has taught us anything, then it's that the Final Fantasy XIV team is dedicated to fixing issues like this one. For now, the lottery has been completely halted until further notice and a hotfix should be coming soon. We'll of course keep you updated on the situation here on ESTNN