Regarding cross-region datacenter travel

I'm honestly pretty sad. The OCE servers were announced in the middle of the raid tier. My static is pretty much going to disband because of the split between transferring and not transferring. And I'm losing half my friends list cause we're an aussie/nz + south east asia mix of people and I'm never gonna be able to play with them again unless I make an alt on the OCE servers. Endwalker truly was, the end of an era.

Whatever happens it doesn't seem like they would implement cross-region travel until sometime after DC travel is added (which is already currently scheduled for a 6.15 or some such), so I think there's plenty of time for players to transfer over and start forming a community. But personally I think the decision to transfer would be made easier for people if we knew that eventually we'd be able to visit other regions. Besides just visiting old friends, knowing that they have access to those larger communities and their events I think would abate some of the worries people have about transferring.

The decision to disallow cross region travel was the nail in the coffin for a lot of our raiding OCE community over here on NA. Why would we move? We can clear everything well as it is right now. We'd lose FC, workshops, fc points, housing, our NA community, friends, a populated raid scene.

There are too many cons that don't balance out the one pro - ping.

Edit: - probably a topic for a different day but, I do wish they had some sort of FC transfer system. The workshop unlocks and rebuilds and rng stuff is such a pain.

I am happy they reopen the World Transfer cause I live in EU now and want to move my account. But this makes me sad cause this will mean I will be cut off from my friends :(

I wanted to move to EU cause I am not part of a raid static and PF is cruel for EU times on NA servers...

Not to mention for all who wants to move to the new OCE servers, I would suggest to WAIT and do not transfer on the first day! Their page states if many people are using this service then it might take longer than expected (not defining how long) and as far as I heared it can be days. For this period you SHALL NOT enter until it is done. You would be cut off the game during raid content entry... that is no bueno.

Don't get mistaken, you CAN enter, but if you start playing during the transfer all your efforts/ gear and so on that you would get during transfer phase will disappear. So you would just waste energy.

I think they do want to encourage people to move as they made it free to move to non congested or new data centers. But they just dont understand that they are not creating enough pros for all the cons...

Japan needs to get over it and join us in the 21st century if they're truly that xenophobic. Personally, I doubt this has anything to do with that, though.

The "walled garden" stuff has one major fallacy.

Anyone can transfer to JP or even make a new character there.

If this is the underlying reason that SE don't want cross region travel....

Then Japan needs to get over itself tbh. No one is staying on Tonberry for the "priviledge" of playing with the Japanese players. They're staying because it's been almost a decade now of community and friendships, achievements and so on.

As OP said in their post, language and culture are probably the biggest reasons why JP players are super against having people from other DCs inter-mingle. I think sure we can argue that IRL, many people come from overseas to visit Japan and still have pleasant experiences and can communicate okay.

But we're also talking about a team-effort game. One where we need to properly communicate any mechanics, coordinate positions, etc.
We can't use IRL gestures to kinda get across what we're trying to say, all we have is typing. And translator programs aren't gonna cut it and are a "hassle".

It has especially flared up and you can read about it on reddit, etc... but there's a huge problem and fight right now between CN users coming to JP DCs.
We've always had "JP ONLY" PFs for savage and high-end content, but I think at it's come to a boiling point with ENDWALKER.

Also Shout and Say chats are generally not a thing that happen on JP DCs. There's a certain etiquette when doing those kind of things like for Mob Hunts, etc.
People tend to stay in their groups or their FCs, not all of them but a good majority. Of course there are Japanese people that also want to learn English too.
I think JP people don't really mind the overseas DCs to come and talk or chat, but I think raiding is a whole different story.

Just trying to give a perspective.

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Originally Posted by PangTong

Most people I see discussing this seem to believe the reason cross-region travel is being held back is because of the JP datacenters. The belief is that JP players don't want foreign players to interfere with their community culture after hearing that JP datacenters get everything done easily, or otherwise just don't want to deal with players who don't speak the language.

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I wouldn't be at all surprised if this were the case. It's extremely difficult to properly express how polar opposite Japanese public behavior expectations are from Western countries, particularly the US. They really are 180 degrees different in the most important ways; most *especially* gaming culture/behavior in public spaces on the internet. I'm an American who started playing XIV on a JP server in 2014, not long after I returned home from living in Japan, if that gives any credibility to what I just said.

The sentiment that JP players don't want non-Japanese on their servers is true to a greater extent. It's not ubiquitous, but it's certainly a thing. This stems from two reasons:

1. Extreme differences in expectations for public behavior.

2. Language differences making communication difficult, if not impossible, in many cases.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Nafreyu

Allow our communities to form and new connections to be made by bringing the best behaviours from EU, NA, JP while setting new standards for what we do and don't expect.

I do not want to the everyday argumentative NA BS that half my region have been exposed to on NA and think is normal to filter through on the new servers. Especially when the other half come from JP and do not have this.

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THIS ^^^

Personal Opinion Incoming: I intentionally chose to play on a JP server in large part because of the increasing prevalence and acceptance of behaviors I find disagreeable in US-based MMOs. I 100% absolutely, unconditionally, do not want the doors opened to let those behaviors find their way to the place I went to get away from them.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by PangTong

However as for my opinion on cross-region travel, I'd say that it would be a bit cruel to hold that feature back for everyone because of the opinions of one region. In particular, not allowing travel between the NA and OCE datacenters makes transferring to Materia a much harder decision for OCE players, which will be an important factor in deciding the viability of the OCE datacenter. Even if JP remains isolated, I feel that at least travel between the other regions should be allowed.

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I believe JP data centers should be closed to cross-region DC travel. Letting NA, EU, and OCE be cross-linked is a good idea as long as OCE is 100% economically closed off from the rest of the world until its economy has been firmly established. No purchasing anything by people from other regions/data centers Going from Crystal to Materia to raid with your friends is one thing. Going on a shopping spree and keeping the emerging economy in a state of flux due to massive differences in wealth is not.

I'll pay a visit one of these days.