History Trivia / FinalFantasyXIV

** Averted at the end of the MSQ of ''Endwalker'', thanks to some DevelopersForesight. TheStinger of 6.5's MSQ shows a character just from the waist down as Erenville speaks to them. When datamined, the character model for this NPC was just their bottom half, to prevent the character's identity from being leaked early. The character would only be introduced in patch 6.55 as Wuk Lamat of Tural, though she garnered the nickname "Legs" from the community because that was all anybody knew about her until the proper reveal.

** The release of ''Shadowbringers'' began a period of steady growth and the 2020 pandemic caused a big jump in server populations, as the overwhelmingly positive reviews to the expansion and very positive community reception lead to a lot of buzz that appealed to people stuck inside and looking for a way to keep occupied and social.

** As seen at GDC 2014, [[https://twitter.com/gamasutra/status/446418234632192000 Naoki Yoshida thinks pretty low of the 1.0 version of the game]]. The aforesaid GDC panel was also dedicated in part to why he thought it failed. Yoshida cited three main problems: an unhealthy obsession with graphic quality over gameplay, a surprising lack of MMORPG knowledge amongst development team members, and the mindset that the solution to every problem could be fixed or patched in a future update. When developing ''A Realm Reborn'', Yoshida and his team threw almost everything out, using what happened in 1.0 as the basis for a new story but otherwise starting from scratch. During E3 2019, a fan asked if there was any way Naoki Yoshida would create a "Legacy" server similarly to what Blizzard was doing with ''World of Warcraft Classic''. [[https://youtu.be/gmffV4oKZu4?t=266 Yoshida responded with "Nightmare!" in English]], showing that Yoshida has no plans to bring it back.

** Yoshida has openly stated his disdain for the questing required by players to get into ''Heavensward''. This is because, while at the time it was a good way to get players invested (because players have to do them to get into the expansions), it means players are stuck doing ''several'' patches' worth of quests that were more evenly spread out at release, back to back -- the 2.1 through 2.5 cycles added a hundred main-story quests in total, on top of the nearly ''two'' hundred from the beginning of the game to The Ultimate Weapon. It's one of the primary things he wants to fix still, with patch 5.3 promising to finally start work on that by streamlining the pre-''Heavensward'' main story quests.
** Square Enix would rather not talk much about the 1.0 version of the game, and with good reason. It was a massive CreatorKiller, thanks to how poorly it was received by both fans and critics. When 1.0 ''is'' talked about, it's less about how it was created and more on how it helped lead to the creation of ''A Realm Reborn''. When a fan asked if there was any way Naoki Yoshida would create a "Legacy" server similarly to how Blizzard was doing with ''World of Warcraft Classic'' during E3 2019, [[https://youtu.be/gmffV4oKZu4?t=266 Yoshida responded with "Nightmare!" in English]], showing that he has no interest in trying to bring it back. While the original trailer for 1.0 was [[https://youtu.be/Vg6yutR3AG0 eventually uploaded to the game's official YouTube channel in November 2021]], the developers and Square Enix themselves have made it clear that the original version of the game is something they'd rather forget about.
** The team have admitted that they regret the handling of the lead up to ''Heavensward'' in ''A Realm Reborn'' due to the massive number of required Main Story Quests the player is forced go complete to unlock it. You need to complete almost two hundred quests for 2.0, and another hundred or so before you can start ''Heavensward'', with no way to skip it except by paying money to do so. At various points, the team admit they ''want'' to trim some of the quests and streamline it, but each expansion makes it hard to go back and do so. It wasn't until roughly patch 5.3 in ''Shadowbringers'' that this could be done, as the team were able to trim around twenty percent of the 2.0 quests.

* OldShame:
** Square Enix would rather not talk much about the 1.0 version of the game, and with good reason. It was a massive CreatorKiller, thanks to how poorly it was received by both fans and critics. When 1.0 ''is'' talked about, it's less about how it was created and more on how it helped lead to the creation of ''A Realm Reborn''. When a fan asked if there was any way Naoki Yoshida would create a "Legacy" server similarly to how Blizzard was doing with ''World of Warcraft Classic'' during E3 2019, [[https://youtu.be/gmffV4oKZu4?t=266 Yoshida responded with "Nightmare!" in English]], showing that he has no interest in trying to bring it back. While the original trailer for 1.0 was [[https://youtu.be/Vg6yutR3AG0 eventually uploaded to the game's official YouTube channel in November 2021]], the developers and Square Enix themselves have made it clear that the original version of the game is something they'd rather forget about.
** The team have admitted that they regret the handling of the lead up to ''Heavensward'' in ''A Realm Reborn'' due to the massive number of required Main Story Quests the player is forced go complete to unlock it. You need to complete almost two hundred quests for 2.0, and another hundred or so before you can start ''Heavensward'', with no way to skip it except by paying money to do so. At various points, the team admit they ''want'' to trim some of the quests and streamline it, but each expansion makes it hard to go back and do so. It wasn't until roughly patch 5.3 in ''Shadowbringers'' that this could be done, as the team were able to trim around twenty percent of the 2.0 quests.

** Averted with ''VideoGame/EldenRing''. An expansion for that game called ''Shadow of the Erdtree'' was scheduled to be released on June 21, 2024. Yoshida could have released ''Dawntrail'' on the same day, but not wanting to compete with ''Elden Ring'', pushed the release date for ''Dawntrail'' back one week to June 28.

** Averted with ''Dawntrail''. It originally was going to released on June 21, 2024, but Yoshida decided to delay the release by one week to June 28 instead since DLC for ''VideoGame/EldenRing'' would be releasing on the 21st, and he knew fans would want to play it. [[SuspiciouslySpecificDenial Yoshida also insisted that it had nothing to do with him wanting to play it as well.]] However, since the release date of June 28 for ''Dawntrail'' was announced in March 2024, there was no actual delay.

** ''Dawntrail'' originally was going to released on June 21, 2024, but Yoshida decided to delay the release by one week to June 28 instead since DLC for ''VideoGame/EldenRing'' would be releasing on the 21st, and he knew fans would want to play it. [[SuspiciouslySpecificDenial Yoshida also insisted that it had nothing to do with him wanting to play it as well.]]

** ''Dawntrail'' originally was going to release around the last week of June, but Yoshida decided to delay the release by one week since DLC for ''VideoGame/EldenRing'' would be releasing at that time and he knew fans would want to play it. [[SuspiciouslySpecificDenial He also insisted that it had nothing to do with him wanting to play it as well.]]

** ''XIV'' has a long, complicated history with long-time MMO juggernaut ''VideoGame/WorldOfWarcraft''.

** ''Endwalker'' was originally scheduled to be released on November 23, 2021. However, on November 5, Yoshi-P announced a two week delay in the 67th Letter from the Producer, shifting the release proper to December 7 instead. Yoshi-P explained in the Live Letter that he wanted everything to be as good as possible, but spent too much time fine-tuning the expansion's content, which delayed QA testing enough that a delay was needed to find and fix bugs. Out of regret for needing to delay ''Endwalker'', when the next expansion was announced for ''Dawntrail'', Yoshi-P deliberately held back announcing the release date until he was absolutely sure that whatever date was chosen would not be delayed.
** ''Dawntrail'' originally was going to release around the last week of June, but Yoshida decided to delay the release by one week since DLC for ''VideoGame/EldenRing''' would becoming out at that time and he knew fans would want to play it. [[SuspiciouslySpecificDenial He also insisted that it had nothing to do with him wanting to play it as well.]]

** ''Endwalker'' was originally scheduled to be released on November 23, 2021. However, on November 5, Yoshi-P announced a two week delay in the 67th Letter from the Producer, shifting the release proper to December 7 instead. Yoshi-P explained in the Live Letter that he wanted everything to be as good as possible, but spent too much time fine-tuning the expansion's content, which delayed QA testing enough that a delay was needed to find and fix bugs. Out of regret for needing to delay ''Endwalker'', when the next expansion was announced for ''Dawntrail'', Yoshi-P deliberately held back announcing the release date until he was absolutely sure that whatever date was chosen would not be delayed.
* ''Dawntrail'' originally was going to release around the last week of June, but Yoshida decided to delay the release by one week since DLC for ''VideoGame/EldenRing''' would becoming out at that time and he knew fans would want to play it. [[SuspiciouslySpecificDenial He also insisted that it had nothing to do with him wanting to play it as well.]]

''Endwalker'' was originally scheduled to be released on November 23, 2021. However, on November 5, Yoshi-P announced a two week delay in the 67th Letter from the Producer, shifting the release proper to December 7 instead. Yoshi-P explained in the Live Letter that he wanted everything to be as good as possible, but spent too much time fine-tuning the expansion's content, which delayed QA testing enough that a delay was needed to find and fix bugs. Out of regret for needing to delay ''Endwalker'', when the next expansion was announced for ''Dawntrail'', Yoshi-P deliberately held back announcing the release date until he was absolutely sure that whatever date was chosen would not be delayed.

* ReleaseDateChange: ''Endwalker'' was originally scheduled to be released on November 23, 2021. However, on November 5, Yoshi-P announced a two week delay in the 67th Letter from the Producer, shifting the release proper to December 7 instead. Yoshi-P explained in the Live Letter that he wanted everything to be as good as possible, but spent too much time fine-tuning the expansion's content, which delayed QA testing enough that a delay was needed to find and fix bugs. Out of regret for needing to delay ''Endwalker'', when the next expansion was announced for ''Dawntrail'', Yoshi-P deliberately held back announcing the release date until he was absolutely sure that whatever date was chosen would not be delayed.

* CrossdressingVoices: The male Papalymo is voiced by actress voiced by Creator/EriKitamura in the Japanese version. Everywhere else, Papalymo is voiced by male actors.

** After the game was rebuilt into ''A Realm Reborn'', there was massive amounts of hype for the game and sure enough, tons of players rushed to log into the game once it went live. For weeks, many players could not log in due to the mass amount of traffic the relaunch generated. It got so bad that Square Enix temporarily removed the digital copies of the game from its online store and they also enforced an automatic AFK-logout system that forced players offline if they idled for too long. After things settled down and the servers were optimized, Square apologized and gave everyone one free week of play time. A similar phenomena happened again with a patch that introduced the Gold Saucer, where it became impossible to get into the area due to everyone trying to get in all at once and filling out the capacity. Even the chocobo races were open to having a race becoming impossible due to everyone trying to sign up for a race. Thankfully, the high traffic died down in a few days and the Gold Saucer is a lot easier to access.
** Square learned their lesson and prepared the servers for the launch of ''Heavensward'' by introducing several copies of the same instanced overworld maps so that players would still have space to get in whenever they move to another area. Square also took measures to make logging in with a minimal amount of trouble as possible. Both measure made the launch of the expansion pack a very smooth one, averting the trope.
** Square took extraordinary steps to make sure that ''Stormblood'' would have as few queue and overpopulation issues as possible by locking out the most populous servers (even disabling character transfers, which for the longest time was a reliable way to subvert locked realms) a full month before the expansion launched with plans to open up more (particularly EU, which is lacking in them). Like with ''Heavensward'', several areas from the new zones had multiple instances so that no one is blocked from entering if one instance is full. Unfortunately, the ''huge'' amount of players trying to start the first story quest battle for ''Stormblood'' overloaded the instanced servers, causing people that started the fight to suddenly find themselves kicked back to the overworld. Players from many servers tried to ease the pain by having everyone form a line to the NPC that starts the battle so that the instanced servers wouldn't be taxed, though it did little good. Square posted a response a week later (among the usual announcements of fixes planned or being in effect) that most of the problems came from an unknown party [=DDoSing=] the servers.
** Beginning in mid-2020, the game began to see an increase in players joining the game. This all exploded in July 2021, when fueled by the heavy anticipation of ''Endwalker'', many prominent content creators and streamers trying out the game, and the release of the controversial Patch 9.1 in ''VideoGame/WorldOfWarcraft'' that saw a large portion of its playerbase moving, ''XIV'' saw a massive influx of new players that overwhelmed both the North American and European servers for the game, resulting in many players having trouble logging in due to heavy queues brought by the servers being full, which was reported to have hit its maximum login capacity for 6-7 hours straight for a weekend. The congestion was bad enough that Square was forced to activate the automatic AFK-logout system normally saved for traffic during expansion releases and put out a statement [[https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodestone/topics/detail/c2d7b35d55577879086b64cfde0acb6c23ccd07f apologizing for not anticipating the overload, documenting the details of the server traffic, and encouraging players to log out whenever not actively playing the game.]]