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Players have been steadily making their way online today to play the pre-order early access of Final Fantasy 14's newest expansion, Shadowbringers. But also online was a DDoS barrage, slowing down and eventually crashing the North American FF14 data center.

Once the server went down, a thread sprung up immediately on Reddit, theorizing it was due to the time of day, as people would be logging on pretty soon at the end of the work or school day. But Square Enix released a statement not long after that confirmed it was a crash caused by a determined DDoS attack.

"We are currently experiencing connection issues related to ongoing DDoS attacks targeting the North American data center," wrote Square Enix on the Final Fantasy 14 English Twitter account. "We are looking into the way attacks are being made and taking countermeasures."

In a blog post on the FF14 site, Square Enix says North American players may experience disconnections, as well as difficulty logging into the servers.

Shadowbringers is the next major expansion for the overhauled Final Fantasy 14, bringing huge changes to the job system, combat, and quests. While the high-level Eden raid won't be available for a short while after launch, there's still a lot of content to pore over and dive into, all of which is now being prevented by a DDoS attack. Some people just get kicks out of ruining others' good time, I suppose.

In the meantime, if you're stuck on a login queue, you can spend the time diving into our long interview with producer Naoki Yoshida about all the ways Shadowbringers is set to change the world of Final Fantasy 14. Or read up on how a Final Fantasy 14 TV series is on its way, set in Eorzea.