Final Fantasy 14, the critically acclaimed MMORPG entry in the series, has launched a week-long public cloud server stress test. Some hardcore raiders have apparently decided that the best way to stress test the server is to run one of the hardest raids in the game on it!
Have you heard of the new cloud data center for the critically-acclaimed MMORPG Final Fantasy XIV Online ? Although the game's next expansion is still a ways off, its developers are apparently already looking into ways to mitigate the usual congestion troubles that come with every launch of an MMO expansion. Which is why they've launched a public stress test of their new cloud server solution this week!
And naturally, this means that there are plenty of new Server-First records up for grabs. Or were, rather. In fact, a group of veteran hardcore raiders cleared one of the hardest raids in the game, The Unending Coil of Bahamut (or UCoB), on the test server only two and a half hours after it went live!
Cloud Nine clears Unending Coil of Bahamut (Ultimate) World First9:34 PM PST pic.twitter.com/XiGXLq6Pl5
— clees (@cleeeees) November 21, 2023
Final Fantasy 14: CoB Cleared On The Cloud
Now, this isn't actually as difficult as it seems at first glance. At least on paper. New characters created on the test server get a pretty generous stipend of 50 Million Gil, level skips to Level 80 for every job and a matching set of level 80 gear for every role! But all of these bonuses are deleted along with the characters that received them and can't be transferred outside the cloud server, so don't get any ideas.
Unlocking the raid itself only takes a few minutes, as long as your group isn't asleep at the keyboard. You do still have to clear UCoB itself though, and a gear and level advantage won't help you there, since all your stats are downscaled once you enter the instance.
So, unless you have months upon months of experience with it, which this particular group of raiders had, you probably wouldn't have had a shot at this server record yourself.
The fact that it still took them 2.5 hours to clear a 20-minute encounter should tell you as much. Plus, they had to work with suboptimal gear, time pressure and server instability, so this was an impressive achievement either way! And I can't imagine a better way to stress-test this new server.
If you'd like to give the cloud server a shot yourself, it's open for everyone until next Monday, November 27, 7pm PST. Just don't get too attached to any characters you create on there, since they'll be deleted when the server shuts down.