Final Fantasy XIV is temporarily logging everyone off once a day to keep login queues moving

Nobody likes having to sit through a queue to log in to a game. Absolutely no one. Part of the reason Final Fantasy XIV instituted a 30-minute kick timer with the launch of Stormblood. Some players have been bypassing this by logging in, starting a craft or opening a dialogue window, and then walking away; it prevents the AFK timer from logging your character off while also ensuring that you bypass the queues. And it also means that the servers are clogged with people who are not actually playing, thereby slowing up the queues to a crawl or immobility for other players.

So the game is putting in another measure for the moment. Once per day, with an hour of warning, all characters will be logged off of a server. Ten minutes later, everyone can log back in. An exact time has not been announced, but the intent is clearly to catch people who are off at work and sitting AFK (and thus will be logged off and not back in) to keep the queues moving for people who are playing. It’s a band-aid solution, but it’s explicitly meant as a way to keep the queues moving for players trying to get in and play during peak hours.