Final Fantasy 14: Endwalker is upon us, and the hype is very much real. New expansions are always exciting regardless, but the game has been having a fantastic year with a record number of active players. More people playing is a great thing, but longer login queues as a result? Not so fun.
That's only going to be exacerbated with players coming back for Endwalker's launch. Square Enix has done its best to prepare for what may be the game's highest-ever player count—servers have been optimised, AFK timers have been tweaked and multiple instances of new areas are waiting to handle the strain. But queue times are still unavoidable, and they may be so massive that you end up with a funky little Error 2002 message.
What is Error 2002 and how do I fix it?
The Error 2002 message may pop up for two reasons. The first is simply if the login server is experiencing high levels of traffic, which has a good chance of happening several times over the first few weeks of release.
The second reason is if the Data Center you're on exceeds 17,000 players waiting in the login queue. The cap is there to ensure things don't become too overloaded and buckle under pressure. With NA Data Centers having eight servers each and EU ones having six, that's roughly 2,000-3,000 people trying to log onto each server. I've been in queues close to 2,000 in the past, which makes me think we'll be seeing Data Centers capping out a couple of times over early access weekend.
The best thing to do if you get the error message is to simply wait it out for a couple of minutes rather than ferocious click-spamming. An increase in simultaneous logins and the 30-minute AFK timer should mean there's a fairly steady stream of players moving in and out, freeing up space in the queue before you know it. Patience grasshopper: It's annoying for sure, but it shouldn't be too frequent a problem.
Yoshida has already apologised in advance for any inconvenience the congestion may cause. The ongoing semiconductor shortage means the game hasn't been able to implement any new servers to accommodate the huge influx of new players, but the team appear to have done the best possible job to ensure the current ones can stand up to the challenge.
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