A month after Square Enix shut down the ability for players to buy houses in its MMO game, producer Yoshi-P has finally confirmed the Final Fantasy XIV Housing Lottery return date for later this month – with maintenance and testing kicking off on Monday.
As of patch 6.1 with the Endwalker expansion, the Final Fantasy XIV team introduced a housing system for the Empyreum residential district. This is governed by a lottery system where players get randomly chosen for a plot of land, which worked well – until it didn’t, choosing the winning number of zero despite no players being able to select it.
In a new update, producer Naoki Yoshida confirms that the team has finally “completed preparations to implement our fixes and restore lottery data”. The team will conduct maintenance to restore the correct lottery results this Monday, May 16, and any “temporary suspensions” on buying plot purchases and relocations will be lifted. Winners will have until the next lottery cycle to claim their plots of land, and even if their ticket was refunded they’ll still be able to finalise the purchase – although Yoshida asks that players kindly return their refunded deposit voluntarily.
Once Square Enix confirms that all the fixes have been successful, the housing lottery will properly resume on May 26 at 8am PDT / 11am EDT / 4pm BST. In closing, Yoshida extends his “deepest apologies for the trouble and inconvenience these issues have caused” and the team will “do everything in our power to safely restore your data, fix any remaining issues, and bring you all a fair and functional housing lottery system”.
Elsewhere in Final Fantasy news, Yoshida confirms that Final Fantasy XVI is in its “final stages” of development and its next trailer is done, apparently – so expect to see it soon.