Final Fantasy MMO Servers Closed Due To Japanese Quake

Tweet

The whole world has been pretty caught up on what’s with happening in Japan the past few days. Obviously, more important issues are involved there (and not that we’re insensitive to such things), but there has been some tech angles to the disaster as Sony and Toshiba have had to close factories in Japan and now, the interruption of services are spreading to gaming where Square Enix is temporary shutting down their servers for their two MMO games – Final Fantasy XI and Final Fantasy XIV.

As anybody in IT will tell you, farms of servers will consume a fair bit of power and Japan is having serious problems with their electrical infrastructure, as you may have seen on the news. So, to conserver power in the country, Square is shutting down their servers for “at least a week” starting today – March 13th. Although it’s been a few days since the big earthquake, the country has been hit with several aftershocks and, as mentioned, they are having on going issues with power plants.

There are no words on when the servers will go back up, but Square Enix is promising to keep users updated on the situation. Because of the server outage – Square Enix will not be charging their monthly fees for either game for the month of March or April.

I have seen some users online suggest that FFXI and FFXIV players should donate their monthly fees they would have paid to Square Enix to the Red Cross relief efforts, which I think is a pretty noble idea. If you are a Final Fantasy online player and plan to do that, just be sure to give your money to the right charity as they are a few scams out there, which is sad.