XIV Docs

Launcher (ffxivlauncher.exe)

This is the program that logins into the official servers and launches the game.

History #

Since FFXIV has been around for a long time, it’s went through several launcher redesigns.

1.x #

This is the old launcher designed used for 1.x versions, before A Realm Reborn. This is a recreation by Ioncannon, as I can’t find a screenshot of the original login page anywhere online.

2.x #

The old launcher has been there since launch, but was on the path to be retired since the new launcher design was used.

6.5+ #

It seems as of Patch 6.5, the old launcher can no longer be used and all users must use the new design.

Internals #

The launcher is actually a website, and the launcher is served by the Frontier server on URLs such as https://frontier.ffxiv.com/version_4_0_win/index.html?1559390056785.

In order for the launcher to actually launch anything useful, it uses JavaScript callbacks into native code.

For details on how logging into the Square Enix servers work, see the relevant page on this concept.

Arguments #

• ExecuteArg (Required)

  • This is a strange argument. This appears to be a random gibberish of numbers:

  /T =1000000 /ExecuteArg =14431503 /UserPath =C:/users/yourname/Documents/My Games/FINAL FANTASY XIV - A Realm Reborn

  In reality, decompiling the launcher reveals that they are sprintf’ing in this format:

  %02d%02d%02d%02d

  • 1st arg - current month + 1
  • 2nd arg - current day
  • 3rd arg - current hour
  • 4th arg - current minute

• UserPath

  • Your usual path to your FFXIV data folder in My Documents.

Alternative Implementations #

• Astra (C++)
• XIVQuickLauncher (C#)
• XIVCore (C#)
• XIV-on-Mac (Swift)
• microlaunch (Rust)
• L4-cpp (C++)