Square Enix stops digital sales for Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn

Shocking! Are they stopping digital sales temporarily because it's doing that well!? Let's not get ahead of ourselves. What's really going on is that servers are being congested by the sheer volume of players trying to get in all at once. It's a classic issue most MMO face during launch week, and stopping sales momentarily is a solution for Square to get everything in at least playable levels.

Square Enix released a statement via Facebook regarding the issue:

Due to the overwhelmingly positive response to FINAL FANTASY XIV: A Realm Reborn, we are currently experiencing extremely long wait times for users to be able to log in and play. As a temporary measure, we will halt sales of FINAL FANTASY XIV: A REALM REBORN’s digital download products so we can accommodate all of those wishing to play. We are working to expand our server capacity in the coming days.

We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience this causes.

People might think that this great news for the game. A big success? too early to say anything. Having not enough servers and having every server being pummeled by the huge amount of players attempting to login all at once doesn't show the game's success or even failure. This is simply a growing pain that every online game faces on the first few days. Yes, they were not prepared, but all the preparation and the beta testing won't be enough to get the servers ready for the actual launch. World of Warcraft had a rough start, even Guild Wars 2 (trading post was even down for weeks).

Now, if you really want to know if this will be a success? Check in 3 months if they have somewhat the same amount of players. That amount will be a good reference to see if a new MMORPG is leading to success or failure.

Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn is out now in the Philippines and priced around P1,295 for PC, P1,895 for the PS3 version.

[Source: Kotaku]