Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn has experienced one of the worst MMO re-launches in recent history. Players who have bought the game digitally, through Sony’s PS store, have received full compensation for their purchase. Sony has fully refunded customers who bought the game August 27 or 28.

Customers will receive a full refund to their wallet, the game reappearing in their download list, and the entitlements for the game reset.

Sony’s response: “We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and thank you for your patience.”

Of course as well documented over the past few weeks, FF XIV’s servers have been overloaded since it’s launch. Players all around the world are having difficulties logging in and experiencing the game they put $60 down for. Game director Naoki Yoshida explained that the reasoning behind FF XIV’s awful server performances is that his team did not expect the total number of players to be interested in playing the game. They have underestimated the fan base due to FF XIV’s first initial flop several years ago.

Yoshida had a detailed response to all of this:  “The night following the announcement of our plans to temporarily limit sales of the download version. A Realm Reborn recorded upwards of 218,000 concurrent connections. This is in spite of the fact that the peak login times for separate regions around the world arrive at differing intervals. We estimate that without time zone differences, the total number of concurrent connections would number anywhere from 300,000 to 350,000.”

“As many of you know, this is the second launch for Final Fantasy XIV–something unprecedented in the MMORPG market. Considering the outcome of our first launch, our sales estimates for this one were decidedly conservative, as we believed that there would be a more gradual rise in users over the opening weeks and months. Instead, to our pleasant surprise, we experienced tremendous support from a great number of players who were eager to get into the game from day one. To ensure that these players, once logged in, were able to play in a stable environment, we were required to implement login restrictions which kept server population near maximum capacity without exceeding those numbers.”

“The fact that we had to implement these restrictions is a direct result of my inaccurate sales and login estimates, and as producer, I must accept complete responsibility for this misstep. Each and every player who has been affected has my deepest apologies.”

Square Enix has chosen to freeze downloadable versions of the game in order to let their serves breath a little more. Logins will be restricted between 21:00 and 00:00.