Daily Briefing: Thursday 2nd December

Final Fantasy XIV will prioritise paying players during expansion queues

Final Fantasy XIV's new Endwalker expansion launches next week following a short delay, with early access set to begin this coming Friday. It was always going to be a big event as Endwalker seeks to conclude Final Fantasy XIV's ongoing narrative arc, but there really could be a lot of players trying to get in following the game's explosion in popularity this year. In an attempt to reassure fans, Square Enix published a lengthy blog entry on the game's official website outlining some of the way queues will be handled.

• Square Enix begin the post by confirming what everybody already knew anyway, that they expect Endwalker's launch to be significantly busier than previous expansion launches. The influx of new players are part of the reason for this, with the publisher also blaming the ongoing semiconductor shortage for inhibiting the FF14 team's ability to add new worlds. Queues will be lengthy, in other words, and Square also confirmed that queuing will work a little differently depending on what version of the game each player is running. Paying players will get queue priority, meaning they'll be able to log in before free trial players. There may also be in-game queues for instanced content. Good luck, everyone.

Major server update coming to Battlefield 2042

Battlefield 2042 really hasn't been having the greatest time of it since it launched last month, with developers DICE scrambling to enact a series of much needed patches in the wake of severe player complaints. Battlefield 2042 quickly became not only one of the worst-reviewed Battlefield games of all time, but one of the worst-reviewed games on Steam in general, so there was a lot to do. A big update launched this week and promptly caused a suite of server issues.

• The developers were quick to acknowledge this newest wave of issues, publishing a statement to Twitter which reads “we’re aware that many of you are receiving an error message while attempting to load into a Server, and then being returned to the Main Menu. Unable to Load Persistence Data is a connection issue on our side. We’re on it, for now you can hit Retry and attempt to join a server.” It feels like the folks at DICE really can't win at the moment. This week's patch included over 300 fixes before the servers started giving out, but it's nice to see the team at least trying to address it quickly.

The original Titanfall has been permanently removed from sale

In other EA-related news, the original Titanfall game has been permanently pulled from sale. Developers Respawn confirmed in a lengthy enough post earlier this week that new sales the historic shooter will no longer be possible, and that the game will be removed from subscription services come March 2022. The game will remain playable for existing owners until then.

• While Respawn didn't provide an official reason for the decision, it's sadly a very well known fact that both Titanfall games have been the subject of heavy DDoS attacks for the past few years. The sequel is slightly less affected because it at least has its singleplayer campaign to fall back on, but the original game was multiplayer-only and has therefore been essentially unplayable lately. In their farewell message, Respawn advised fans "rest assured, Titanfall is core to Respawn’s DNA and this incredible universe will continue. Today in Titanfall 2 and Apex Legends, and in the future. This franchise is the north star for the caliber of experiences we will continue to create here at Respawn.”