The launch of Final Fantasy XIV’s latest Savage raid tier in patch 7.4 was disrupted by a sustained wave of DDoS attacks, primarily affecting North American gamers. While European and Japanese regions remained largely stable, players in the US experienced repeated disconnects throughout the launch window, including during the high-profile race to world first.
Community reports and public tracking accounts indicate more than 15 suspected DDoS-related disruptions within a single 24-hour period, with incidents occurring roughly once per hour and, at times, more frequently.
Attack pattern: short freezes followed by mass disconnects
Affected players consistently reported the same failure mode:
- Severe latency or complete world freezes lasting 30–60 seconds
- Followed by mass disconnects across entire data centres
- Login queues and loss of progress once services recovered
This behaviour points to network-layer disruption upstream of the game servers, rather than application-level failures within Square Enix’s infrastructure.
The timing of the attacks aligned precisely with the Savage raid release — a period of highly concentrated player activity — maximising disruption to organised raid groups and competitive teams.
Regional impact and routing-level indicators
The attacks disproportionately affected North American data centres, while European and Japanese regions remained largely unaffected. Oceania servers later reported intermittent issues, potentially as player traffic shifted regions in search of stability.
Some players reported that altering their network routing — for example by connecting via consumer VPN services — allowed them to remain connected while others continued to disconnect. From a network perspective, this suggests the disruptions were isolated to specific transit paths or upstream nodes, rather than Square Enix’s core game servers.
Such behaviour is consistent with DDoS activity targeting shared routing infrastructure or regional aggregation points, creating widespread impact without directly attacking application endpoints.
Impact on competitive play
Savage raids represent Final Fantasy XIV’s highest-difficulty content, requiring long, uninterrupted progression sessions. Repeated disconnects forced many North American groups to pause or abandon attempts entirely.
Despite the disruption, the race to world first concluded with a decisive victory by Japanese team Lucrezia — a result largely insulated from the attacks due to regional separation from the affected network paths.
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