Where’s the queue? Dawntrail Surprises Jaded FFXIV Fans With Reasonable Wait Times

With the release of Final Fantasy XIV’s latest expansion, Dawntrail, fans were excited for a lot, but dreading one thing: The queue. That’s because in December 2021, for the release of Endwalker, FFXIV ground to a full halt as queues spiraled into the hundreds of thousands, and players waited hours to get in-game.

But perhaps to the shock of all, for Dawntrail, there have been no complaints of huge queues, no mysterious disconnections, and no mass panic about login times. So what gives? Where are the queues?

In our experience, queues have rarely gone over a few thousand, which equates to around a few minutes wait. Browsing Reddit and Twitter, there’s no huge complaints of queues. No screenshots of queue times with five and six digits. 

The queues for Dawntrail are surprisingly reasonable. Image Credit: Esports.net

Similarly, when it kicked us for AFK, the return queue to get into Dawntrail was sub-100 people. This might have to do with playing on a smaller World on the European Data Center, but largely it appears to be the diligent work of Naoki “Yoshi-P” Yoshida and the rest of the FFXIV development team to avoid the issues.

For months Yoshida has been talking about measures Square Enix will take to avoid queues this time. What’s more, they’ve been aggressively managing congestion using methods to prevent players from hopping around Worlds and limiting each data center’s login amount. This has been pretty transparently covered by the FFXIV team, who’ve also posted updates on social media throughout the launch.

Image Credit: Esports.net

But also, it may just be that less people are playing Dawntrail. A quick glance at Steam Charts and SteamDB suggests yesterday’s peak player amount was 92,039, around 3,000 less than the same time for Endwalker’s release. 

If you scale that up for all platforms (an estimated active player base of around 250-350,000 players) and we’re looking at around 10,000 less players than Endwalker’s launch. And that’s with more servers, upgraded capacity, better infrastructure, etc. It seems like Square Enix were just ready this time, and we’re all reaping the benefits.

Well, almost all of us. I for one could use a queue now and then to give me some extra time to write, check emails, and, you know, do my job. Although we have managed to put out a few guides. 

What’s more, we’re likely past the worst of it with any login queues. As mentioned, Dawntrail fell just short of Endwalker’s peak player numbers (at least on Steam) and will likely not see a bigger number on full release come July 2. 

So far Dawntrail is a triumph of logistics and practicality. The graphical update looks stunning, and the queues and access has been uncharacteristically easy. Depending on whether it sticks the landing on the story (there feels like there’s less emotional weight behind it so far), and whether Viper and Pictomancer remain as fun at 90 (and post later-patch nerfs) as they are right now, this another fantastic entry into the series. 

Now, let’s hope I haven’t jinxed it for the rest of the launch…