Instanced would be the easiest way to code/impliment this design.
This is actually a really cool idea/battle concept. That would work for the new Grand Company Siege PvP content that they are already developing.
Overall this is one of the most brilliant suggestions I've seen put forth. SE could use this as a huge time/gil sink and it would help the economy from just running away.
On the flip side this would be a nightmare to code. And outside of the instanced idea this would be an extremely large server load. SE would have to invest in almost EVE level of server mainframes to tolerate the load of that many ships moving across the world. Not to mention that Ezora is not that large of a world/continent. Its big, but not that many hours to cross by Chocobo.
At earliest this would have to be an expansion. Unless Yoshi has this up his sleeve as a secret for 2.0 anyway.
However he has mentioned the possibility of eventually having flying chocobos. That could be peoples way of getting on/off Airships when they are in range. That would be a blast.
I love all of the ideas put forth here and I really hope SE takes a good long look at this idea. It has merit and deserves to be mapped out and found if it is at all affordable to implement. Hopefully they are building the world in such a away to leave it open for the possibilities of something along this line in the future. Who knows, XI has lasted 10 years now, who knows where XVI will be in 10.
