Final Fantasy 14: A Realm Reborn's clogged servers due to 'conservative estimates'

Final Fantasy 14: A Realm Reborn, the revamped version of Square Enix's massively multiplayer online game, faced a rocky start with full servers due to "conservative estimates" on how many people would pick up the game, director Naoki Yoshida told Polygon.

Speaking with us at PAX Prime 2013 via translator, Yoshida explained that the team expected players to be cautious due to previous issues before jumping back in.

"Because of the rocky launch [of the 1.0 version] we were a little conservative in our estimates of what was going to happen with the second launch, because we thought people would be wary of that first launch and wait and see what the reaction was before coming in," Yoshida said.

"What actually happened was everyone decided to come and play at the beginning. That's why we've had our server problems and issues with logging in. The development team's been working on this for the past week 100 percent, and by Wednesday we hope to have servers implemented as well as several of those login issues relieved."

The rush to return to the game has proven to Square Enix that it's slowly regaining the trust of its players. After Yoshida was given charge of the project, he put priority on community response.

"Regaining that trust has been the biggest challenge for us," Yoshida said. "It's what we've been concentrating on for the past two and a half years by showing them that yes, we're not only going to be remaking this game, but also continuing updates while remaking the game so you guys have something to do."

A great deal of winning back lost ground with players had to do with being as open and honest as possible, Yoshida said — something the "Square Enix of the past" wasn't very good at doing. He and his team did this by talking openly about what went wrong with the original game and what needed to be done to fix it.

"We wanted to be as open as possible with the players, because if you're open with the players, that's how you gain the trust and hide nothing," Yoshida said. "Tell them no lies. Once you do it, you see the results."