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FF14 Dawntrail world travel change leaves players locked out at launch

As FF14 Dawntrail early access begins, some players have been unable to login as world travel restrictions block them from returning home.

FF14 Dawntrail congestion leaves some players unable to return to home world, meaning they can't play the expansion at launch - Krile looks sad, tears welling up in her eyes.

It’s a glorious day for MMORPG fans as FF14 Dawntrail early access begins. After much waiting, it’s finally time to sail off to Tural in search of the new adventures and the mysteries that await us there. The good news is that, so far, the queues have been fairly short, so while you might be waiting a while to login depending on the time of day, you should get there eventually. That is, unless you logged out on another world, in which case you might be out of luck for now.

Square Enix warned prior to launch that the world visit and data center travel systems in Final Fantasy 14 would be subject to restrictions when the FF14 Dawntrail release date arrived. However, some additional changes were made to the plans on the morning of Friday June 28, just ahead of the early access launch for the new chapter of the critically acclaimed MMORPG.

If you were not on your home world when you last logged out of the game, you will no longer be able to log in to return to your home world during server congestion. Instead, you must return to your home world from the login screen – right-click on your character’s name to bring up the sub-menu and select the option from there.

Many players attempting to do this, however, are simply receiving the message “Unable to submit return to home world request at this time,” or “unable to select <server> as a destination for return to home world requests at this time.”

FF14 Dawntrail - System message reading, "Unable to submit return to home world request at this time."

As such, a megathread has appeared on the FF14 Reddit concerning some players’ inability to return to their home world as planned, alongside many replies to official posts on social media platforms from users experiencing the problem. Unfortunately, if you’ve been affected by this there don’t appear to be any reliable solutions besides continuing to attempt to transfer, or waiting for the congestion to ease.

Square Enix also warns of an ongoing issue with the Syrcus Tower alliance raid that is preventing players from being able to finish the penultimate fight in the encounter. While that’s an old piece of content that anyone heading into Dawntrail will have completed previously, it’s one you might run into if you’re queuing for an alliance raid roulette to level up one of the new FF14 jobs. You may wish to steer clear of those until a fix rolls out, then.

Update: If you’ve been waiting to transfer, you might find more success now. Square Enix announces, “The technical difficulty upon returning to you Home World using the Data Center Travel Feature preventing players from returning in the North American and European Data Centers has been recovered. We apologize for any inconvenience caused, and we thank you for your patience.”

If you’ve managed to get in, be sure to check out our starter guides for the two new additions, the Viper and the Pictomancer. We’ll also make sure you know where to find all the FF14 Dawntrail Aether Current locations to unlock flying in each zone as soon as possible.

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