Originally Posted by
DixieBellOCE
The issue here is that the majority of the 'English' population on Elemental are SEA players, Not OCE.
Square Enix have no data whatsoever on the SEA region due to the game being 'technically' unavailable in those regions. Most of them have their account addresses set to Aus or NA.
When OCE opened, it split the English community between two places, with a large majority of English players still playing on JP.
Materia was on a path to failure the moment that they decided to implement them in Australia and not a SEA country.