Final Fantasy XIV producer and director Naoki Yoshida is so confident in the MMO's stability that he's tempted fate by stating there's "almost no chance" of server congestion on Dawntrail's launch day, 2nd July. That's some tough talk, considering the DDoS attacks that took the mega-popular game offline the last time an expansion was launched.
Speaking to Eurogamer at a preview event for Dawntrail, Yoshida discussed the attack and the improvements made to prevent a similar situation in the future: "It was a source of great inconvenience for our players last time. [DDoS attacks] are very simple in nature, but it's precisely because of that that it's difficult for us to defend ourselves. There is not a zero chance of [an attack] happening, but we would basically work on preparing more defence patterns so that we aren't impacted by that kind of situation. It is, by nature, just defensive, but this is the way that we are fighting and I just hope that everyone can remember that we are putting in the effort to defend ourselves."
Yoshida seems quite confident about server strain and capacity: "Since we are looking towards the future of Final Fantasy 14 and its expansion as well, we have been excessive with planning and preparing servers. Now if we feel it is necessary, we can open up the new servers with a press of a button. So I think there's almost no chance that we would face a situation where we cannot accommodate the number of players required."
Finally, players now can travel to different data servers during non-peak times. "So, with that in mind, I think we should be good in terms of preparation," Yoshida mused